Chapter 5
I sat in the chair by the windows where the daylight fell in warm bars across the wood floor. The glass of water they'd given me was cold against my palms and I hadn't put it down since Raffaele lifted me out. He stood a few feet away with his phone in his hand, the photos he'd just taken still lit on the screen. The housemaid stayed near the doorway with my son asleep against her shoulder now, his sneakers not quite touching the floor.
Raffaele didn't ask me right away. He looked at the trapdoor, still open, the dark rectangle cut into the polished floor like it didn't belong there. Then he looked at me.
"How," he said, and stopped. He swallowed. "How long were you—"
He couldn't finish it and I didn't make him.
"Twice a day," I said. My voice was rough and I took a small sip to steady it. "Morning and evening. She opened it twice a day."
I told them what it had been. The panel lifted from above, always by her. Bianca. No one else. A tray lowered on a rope, or a hand passing things down. Water in a plastic bottle, food on a paper plate. A bucket. She didn't speak much. When she did it was to tell me to keep quiet.
"If you scream, I'll tell him you left," she said once, and I remembered it word for word because she repeated it every few months when she thought I might try. "If you scream, you'll never see that boy again. I'll tell Raffaele you didn't want him."
I kept my eyes on the glass while I said it. I didn't look at Bianca. She stood by the sheer curtains with her arms crossed, perfectly still in that sequined dress. She hadn't denied it yet. She just watched me like she was waiting to correct my phrasing.
Raffaele's hand tightened around his phone. "She brought you everything herself? No one else came down?"
"No," I said. "I heard her steps. Always the same heels. She'd slide the panel just enough to fit the tray. She told me if I tried to climb out while it was open she'd close it on my hands."
The floor between us still had the vacuum cleaner lying on its side where it had caught the seam. I looked at it and then at the veil, which Raffaele had laid over the arm of the chair. The pearl edge caught the light.
"That was in there with you?" he asked.
I nodded. "I kept it folded in the mattress. The one piece she let me keep. For five years I kept it hidden."
I remembered pushing it that morning. I'd heard the vacuum upstairs, not Bianca's steps but someone else's. Lighter. The housemaid's. I hadn't heard that sound in a long time. I'd taken the veil from where I'd cut a small slit in the mattress cover and shoved it toward the seam, inch by inch, until the tulle caught. I didn't know if the floor would move or if anyone would notice. I just pushed until my fingers hurt and then I waited with my hand pressed against the wood, listening to the motor hum until it snagged.
"I pushed it through when she was vacuuming," I said. "I felt it catch. I didn't know if you'd find it. I just needed something white to show."
Raffaele knelt down and touched the edge of the veil without picking it up. His beard shadow showed in the light and I could see his breathing was shallow.
The housemaid made a small sound behind us. I turned. Her face had gone pale under her pulled-back hair.
"I didn't know," she said quickly, looking at Raffaele, then at me. "I swear I didn't know, ma'am."
She shifted my son a little higher on her hip and kept talking, her words coming fast and quiet.
"Mrs. Bianca told me to leave a tray at the top of the back stairs twice a day. Covered tray. She said it was for storage, for keeping the suite aired out, that no one was to go in. She took it from there herself. I never saw inside. I thought— I thought it was just she didn't want anyone in her private rooms. I left the food, she brought the plate back empty. I never saw you."
She said it like she was confessing to leaving the trays, not to knowing what they were for. I believed her. That was how Bianca had done it. Compartmentalized. No one saw the whole thing. One person carried a tray to a landing, another person lowered it through a floor. No one had to know they were feeding a person under the wood.
Raffaele looked up at Bianca then. "You had her bring food to the stairs?"
Bianca's mouth pressed into a thin line. She didn't answer. She didn't have to. The housemaid had just given us the link between the kitchen and the chamber without Bianca ever having to carry anything past another set of eyes.
I sat back against the chair and felt the daylight warm on my cardigan. My hands were still shaking around the glass. Raffaele finally stood and stepped between me and Bianca, blocking my view of her.
May you like
"We're not doing this twice a day anymore," he said, but he was looking at me when he said it, checking that I heard him. "You're staying up here."
I nodded. The veil lay beside me, the pearl trim still dusty from where it had dragged across the seam. I didn't let go of the glass.
