Chapter 4 - The Room at the End of the Hall
Raffaele stood in the yellow bedroom that afternoon and tried to remember the last time he had entered it.
The room was across from his suite and one door down from Noah’s nursery. For years it had been a guest room nobody used. Victoria had suggested making it a playroom after the wedding.
Now two men from a design company were measuring the walls.
They stopped when they saw him.
“Mr. Marconi.”
Raffaele looked at the rolls of wallpaper on the floor.
Pale pink. Gold stars.
“What are you doing?”
The older installer glanced at the younger one. “We were scheduled to finish Miss Sophie’s room this week.”
Raffaele did not move.
“Scheduled by whom?”
“Ms. Hale. Her designer sent the final plan.”
The man reached for a tablet.
Raffaele raised a hand.
He did not need a digital plan to understand what pink wallpaper meant.
“When did you start?”
“Prep work Monday.”
He had been in Philadelphia Monday.
Raffaele walked into the hall.
Noah’s nursery door was open.
Nothing looked disturbed.
Blue rug. Small bookcase. Model sailboat on the dresser. A night-light shaped like a moon.
At the far end of the hall, a narrow staircase led to the third floor.
He climbed it.
The old schoolroom was the first door on the right.
It smelled faintly of dust and lemon polish.
Someone had cleared half the furniture.
A new toddler bed frame leaned against the wall.
Raffaele stopped in the doorway.
Margaret came up behind him several minutes later.
“I wondered when you’d find this.”
He turned slowly.
“You knew.”
“I knew they delivered the bed.”
“And you said nothing.”
Margaret crossed her arms. “We had this conversation last night.”
“No. We had a conversation about plates.”
“We had a conversation about why people in this house stopped bringing you problems.”
His anger hit a wall made of his own memory.
Raffaele looked back at the bed.
“When?”
“Last Thursday.”
“Where did Victoria say Noah was going?”
“Here.”
“Why?”
“She said the third floor would become the children’s wing.”
He gestured at the empty room. “Children?”
“Sophie was staying on the second floor.”
Raffaele laughed once, sharply.
Margaret did not.
“She told me you wanted privacy after the wedding,” Margaret said. “That you and Miss Victoria would need a quieter floor.”
Raffaele pictured Noah waking in the night and walking down a dark staircase looking for him.
His hands curled.
Margaret watched him.
“Do not break anything,” she said.
He looked at her.
“I’m serious. The boy already thinks people get moved when adults are angry.”
The sentence stopped him more effectively than an armed guard.
Raffaele opened his hands.
From downstairs came the soft thud of a door.
A few seconds later Isabella called his name.
They found her in the second-floor hall with a cardboard box.
“What’s that?” Raffaele asked.
“Things from the wedding planner.”
“I don’t care about centerpieces.”
“Neither do I.”
She set the box on a console table and pulled out a packet of printed place cards.
Raffaele saw his name first.
RAFFAELE MARCONI.
Then VICTORIA MARCONI.
Then SOPHIE HALE-MARCONI.
He frowned.
“She was changing Sophie’s name?”
Isabella shook her head. “This was mock-up stationery for after the wedding. I called the planner because I wanted to know why the children’s table only had seven chairs when eight children were invited.”
Raffaele’s attention snapped to her.
“What did she say?”
“That the original floor plan had eight.”
Margaret’s mouth tightened.
“Who changed it?” Raffaele asked.
“Victoria did yesterday morning. She told the planner Noah would sit with household staff because he was having behavior problems.”
Raffaele felt his pulse in his neck.
Noah had no behavior problems.
He was shy with strangers, stubborn about shoes, and occasionally refused vegetables with the strategic patience of a hostage negotiator. But he was not disruptive.
Isabella held up another card.
NOAH MARCONI.
No table number.
On the back, in handwriting Raffaele recognized as Victoria’s, were two words.
With Margaret.
He read them twice.
Isabella watched him carefully.
“I thought she was nervous about combining families,” she said. “I knew she was particular. I did not know she was doing this.”
Raffaele looked at his sister.
“You knew she was particular.”
“That is not an accusation.”
“It sounds like one.”
“Then listen instead of deciding what I mean.”
The family resemblance between them had never been stronger.
Raffaele said nothing.
Isabella rested both palms on the console.
“Three months ago, at Sunday lunch, Victoria corrected Noah when he called you Daddy in front of Sophie.”
Raffaele frowned.
“She said?”
“She said, ‘Let’s not make Sophie feel left out.’”
“That sounds like she was trying to protect Sophie.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And now?”
“Now I think she was trying to make your relationship with your own son smaller whenever Sophie could see it.”
The words were precise enough to hurt.
Raffaele remembered the lunches. The small corrections. Victoria asking him not to carry Noah into restaurants because Sophie walked by herself. Victoria suggesting he stop kissing Noah goodnight in Sophie’s room because it made her jealous.
Each request had sounded reasonable by itself.
Together they formed a shape.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.
Isabella’s face went flat.
“I did.”
Raffaele stared at her.
“Easter. On the terrace.”
He remembered wine. Luca talking about a union contract. Isabella telling him Victoria was trying too hard to make everything equal.
He had answered, Isn’t that what a blended family needs?
Isabella had said, Equal is not the same as making Noah smaller.
Raffaele had told her she was being territorial about Lucia.
He looked away.
The hall felt too bright.
Isabella’s voice softened.
“You were happy, Raff.”
“That isn’t an excuse.”
“No. It’s a reason you didn’t want to hear me.”
He picked up Noah’s place card.
With Margaret.
Not with family.
Not beside Sophie.
Not beside him.
Downstairs, Noah began laughing at something one of the kitchen staff said.
Raffaele closed his fingers around the card.
Then Margaret spoke.
“There’s something else.”
Both siblings looked at her.
Margaret glanced toward the third floor.
“Miss Victoria asked me last week whether I would consider moving to the lake house after the honeymoon.”
Raffaele’s face hardened.
“With Noah?”
Margaret nodded.
“For how long?”
“She said weekdays at first.”
Raffaele stared at her.
May you like
The lake house was ninety miles away.
And suddenly the room at the end of the hall no longer looked like the worst plan Victoria had made.
