Read Online The Glass Butterfly by Louise Marley - Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t about you,” Emilia admitted, dropping her gaze back to the sheet of ravioli dough. “They say there is someone, but no one said it was you.” She took the dough in her hands, but she looked up under her thick eyebrows at her daughter. “I would defend you. I know you’re a good girl.”
    â€œA good girl!” Doria gave the pestle an irritated twist. “I nursed him, Mamma. When he was so injured in the automobile crash, all those months he couldn’t walk, I did everything for him. The signora wouldn’t do it, I can tell you! She wouldn’t touch a bedpan, or wash him, or do any of the hard things. I was the one to sit up with him when the pain kept him awake.”
    â€œ Sì, sì, sì . Everyone knows that, mia figlia .”
    â€œShe never thanked me, either.”
    â€œShe is the signora, Doria. It’s her house. She doesn’t have to thank you.”
    Doria sighed, suddenly weary of it all. She wished, after all, she had simply held her tongue. One day, she prayed, she would learn to stay silent. “The maestro is kind to me.”
    â€œThat’s as may be,” Emilia snapped, giving the dough on the floured table a sharp turn. “But he has a taste for young girls.” Her eyes glittered a warning. “You must take care. And keep your mouth closed! You always did talk too much.”
    â€œIt’s a family tradition!” Doria responded. Emilia only grunted, but her lips twitched with something like humor.
    Still, Doria felt impatient with her mother. She stood for a moment, staring at the rack of ancient cast-iron skillets on the wall, then pulled her apron over her head with both hands. It caught on her hairpins, stinging her scalp the way her mother’s words had stung her spirit. She ripped it free, and threw it at the hook beside the kitchen door. She missed, and the apron fell in a heap of printed cotton on the plain wooden floor.
    â€œWhere are you going?” her mother asked. “What about the ravioli?”
    Doria didn’t turn back. She heard the thump of the rolling pin as it struck the floury board, stretching, thinning the dough. Her mother’s ravioli were the best in Torre, but she couldn’t bear the thought of them now. “Give my share to someone else,” she said. “I’m not hungry after all.” She slid out through the door, letting it bang behind her. Her mother didn’t call her back. She was probably just as happy, Doria thought, to have one fewer mouth at the table.
    Doria trod angrily through her mother’s tiny garden, where fennel and parsley drooped in the sun. She stepped down the single stone step directly into the dirt lane. The heat was so thick she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. It was her half day, and she had meant to spend the afternoon with her family, to return to Villa Puccini after the Puccinis had finished supper, when the signora had retired upstairs and the signore retreated to his studio. Now Doria didn’t know where to pass the afternoon. It was too hot to sit in the piazza. She had no money for a café, because she had just handed over all her wages to her mother. Her room behind the kitchen at Villa Puccini would be nearly hot enough to boil Mamma’s ravioli.
    As she walked, picking the sweat-dampened fabric of her dress away from her skin, she thought longingly of the cool fragrance of the maestro’s beloved garden. He had ordered it planted with sweet bay and privet, and the heart-shaped leaves of a Judas tree shaded a small wooden bench. Perhaps, if she were very quiet, she could sit there for an hour. She had a book in her pocket, one the maestro had given her. An hour’s solitude, reading in the shade, would soothe her temper and cool her hot skin.
    Hopeful, she turned toward the lake, where Villa Puccini rose in modest splendor above the lakeshore. She loved the house, she was sure, even more than the maestro