He Called the Waitress His Wife at the Gala

CHAPTER 2 - THE DEAD MAN IN THE BANQUET HALL

The service corridor behind the ballroom was narrow, hot, and smelled of coffee, bleach, and burned butter.

Clara set the tray down with shaking hands.

Her manager, Denise, folded her arms. "Do you know that guest?"

Clara wiped her face fast. "I used to."

Denise looked toward the ballroom doors. "That man just told half the room you're his wife."

"I know what he said."

"Is it true?"

Clara gave a broken laugh. "It was."

Denise's expression softened, but only a little. "Can you finish the shift?"

Clara thought of rent due in six days. Of the shared apartment above the bakery. Of the suitcase under her bed with the cracked wheel and the envelope she had never thrown away.

"Yes," she said. "I can finish."

But when she returned to the kitchen station, a server handed her a folded linen napkin.

"He asked me to give you this."

Inside was one line written in quick, slanted handwriting.

Please meet me in the west garden. Ten minutes. Matteo.

Her chest hurt.

Three years earlier, Matteo Bellini had left Marseille on a business trip by ferry to Corsica. A storm had torn through the coast that night. There had been names on the news. Missing passengers. Presumed dead. His family had sent formal notices. There had been no body, no goodbye, only silence and signatures and pity.

Clara had been twenty-four and newly married.

By twenty-five, she had learned what creditors sound like on the phone.

By twenty-six, she had crossed half of Europe and taken whatever work she could find.

Now he was here. Alive. Wearing a three-piece suit. Standing under chandeliers with another woman on his arm.

She should have torn the note in half.

Instead, she slipped it into her vest pocket.

When she stepped back into the ballroom, she saw the blonde woman watching her from across the room with hard, bright eyes.

Then the woman crossed the floor, stopped inches away, and said in a low voice, "If you care about him at all, don't go to that garden."

Clara stared at her. The woman swallowed once.

"Because if Matteo speaks to you tonight," she said, "my father will know he remembers."