Chapter 5
Matteo kept his word about the duties. The next morning, he came down early and told me at the kitchen island, not in front of Bianca.
"Just kitchen, laundry, and Mia's room today," he said. "Leave the hall and the entry alone. Bianca will be out most of the day."
Bianca was already dressed by eight, hair done, keys in her hand. She stopped by the kitchen to get coffee and said to me, "Thank you for being understanding, Elena. I know change is hard," like we had agreed on something. Then she left through the front, her heels clicking on the marble I wasn't supposed to clean.
Mia had the day off from school for a teacher planning day, so she stayed with me. We did the breakfast dishes together. She liked to dry the plastic cups and stack them. While she worked, I started the laundry the way I always did on Fridays.
The laundry room was in the back hall near the garage, with white cabinets and a folding table. Mia's pink backpack hung on the hook by the door where I always put it after school. Bianca must have moved it, because it was zipped all the way shut and hanging crooked, and the lunchbox pocket was bulging.
I took it down to bring it to the kitchen table so Mia could pick a snack for later. "Did you pack this last night?" I asked her.
Mia shook her head. "Miss Bianca said she would do it."
That was new. I had laid out Mia's clothes and her folder on the kitchen counter the night before, ready for today, even though there was no school. I was supposed to put it away, not Bianca.
I unzipped the main compartment. Inside was Mia's blue dress that she only wore for picture day, folded roughly, and a single hairbrush. No folder. No change of clothes for daycare if she needed it. No water bottle. In the front pocket, there was a juice box that had leaked a little, sticky against the fabric, and a half-eaten granola bar from two days before that I'd thrown away and that must have been fished out of the trash.
"Mom, that's not my school stuff," Mia said quietly.
I felt my jaw tighten. It wasn't dangerous, exactly. It was just careless in a way that made me look careless if anyone checked. If Mia had gone to school with that bag, her teacher would have thought I didn't know how to pack for my own kid.
Matteo came through the back hall on his way to the garage, and he saw me holding the backpack.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
I held it open so he could see. "Bianca said she packed Mia's bag. This isn't what Mia takes to school. The folder with her homework is missing, and there's old food in it."
He took the backpack and looked inside, frowning. He pulled out the sticky juice box and set it on the table.
"Did you ask her to do this?" he asked me.
"No. I had her real bag ready in the kitchen. She must have swapped it or repacked it."
Mia stood next to me, holding the plastic cup she'd dried. She didn't say anything, but she tucked herself behind my hip.
Matteo zipped the bag back up slowly. "Leave it," he said. "I'll talk to her about staying out of Mia's things. I told her to give you space and this isn't space."
Later, after Bianca came home around three, I heard them in the entry. I was folding towels in the laundry room with the door open, Mia coloring at the kitchen table just out of sight.
"Were you trying to help with Mia's school bag?" Matteo asked, voice even.
Bianca answered quickly, "I saw it on the floor and thought I'd tidy. She had papers everywhere. I just put what I found back in."
"You put a juice box that had been in the trash in there," he said.
A pause. Then Bianca, lighter: "Oh, I didn't realize. It looked unopened. I was just trying to be useful while Elena was busy. You said to stay out of the hall, so I stayed in the back."
I closed my eyes for a second. It was the same pattern as before, helpful on the surface, messy underneath, and it left me to fix it.
When Matteo came back to the kitchen, he didn't make a big speech. He just said, "I told her not to touch Mia's things again. From now on, only you pack her bag, okay? And keep it in your room."
May you like
I nodded. "Okay."
Mia had crawled under the kitchen table with her crayons, like she used to do when she was smaller and wanted to hide. I let her stay there. The pink backpack stayed on the counter, zipped shut, sticky inside, a small piece of proof that Bianca's version of helping didn't line up with what actually helped.
