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Still, Renate had been so right, maybe Chiara should just lay it all on the table?
“I had so much anger in me when I caught you, Frankie. So much disappointment.”
“Chiara, I’m sorry—”
“Yes, you are, and I believe you and that’s fine. But I wasn’t disappointed in you. I was angry and disillusioned with myself. Because I thought I did everything right. And yet you cheated anyway. Moreover, you’d been doing it for years. Once again, I wasn’t enough.”
Chiara felt her hands go numb, the old, familiar anxiety filling her to the brim. But she had to voice this, had to form the words and let them out of her chest. No more snakes at her breast.
“And this time, it was me, the real me, not someone who was pretending so hard to please her mother, or to satisfy her manager. It was just me, doing my best every day to be worthy of you, and yet… Not good enough again.” She shook her head, feeling Frankie tense up next to her. “And maybe I need to let go of that and forgive myself. It does take two, after all.”
“That’s not what happened, Chiara. And if Renate told you that—” All the tension in her ex-wife spilled, but Chiara was no longer prone to appeasement for appeasement’s sake.
“She didn’t. She said that I should move on and forgive myself for everything. For you, for Vi.”
“Well, whatever your sins against Vi were, let me absolve you of the ones you think you’ve committed against me.” Frankie drew a shaky breath and closed her eyes. “I was the one who wasn’t good enough, Chiara. I never was. It was so painfully obvious from the very beginning. You have so much shine. The beauty, the talent, the kindness. I never measured up to you. You were not just out of my league, you might as well have been playing another sport altogether.”
Chiara stared, her brain on fire, trying to process what was happening. She was catching the words like they were baseballs volleyed at her, very much afraid that, if she dropped one of them, the rest would just pummel her into a stupor and nothing would make sense.
“I am not a good person, Chiara. And my ego was bruised. With one idea, you created a collection in that very first year of ours that was miles ahead of anything I’ve ever put out. Everyone knew it, too. Renate, Aoife, the seamstresses. And since that day, nothing was ever the same. One smile and every room you entered was yours. Every new piece you designed was just better, more. So much more than mine.” A sudden sob left Frankie’s mouth, and she covered her face with her hands while Chiara sat paralyzed by her words.
Frankie groaned, angrily wiping her eyes, and continued.
“So I started seeking that high of being something, someone better, someone needed, wanted, lusted after—like you were by all those adoring faces no matter where you went.”
“I wanted you and I needed you…” Her own voice sounded foreign to her, choked and ragged at the edges.
“I… I don’t know why you ever did. I loved you more than I ever loved anyone. And I hated myself for what I was doing. Eventually, I despised myself so much, Iwantedyou to catch me. To punish you for making me do it. To punish myself, because I knew you’d throw me out that very second. You have no idea how many times you came close to walking in on me. Fuck, even Vi caught me that time in Como at the very end.”
Frankie gulped loudly, but Chiara didn’t care anymore. So Vi had known. And had kept it secret for weeks. If Aoife was right, and Vi’s reason for selling the pictures had been to break them up, all she had to do at the time was to tell Chiara…
Was this the last piece of the puzzle? That Vi might have lied to her, but she’d never betrayed her? Never sold the pictures? Because what would have been the point?
Chiara blinked once, twice, then realized she hadn’t been hanging by this thread for a while. That, after her admitting her love to Vi and letting go of the past, this confirmation that her lover was innocent, was—while sweet—thoroughly unnecessary.
Frankie’s hoarse voice brought her back to the present.
“Vi knew, Renate knew, and I felt like I was walking a high wire. I felt it was time. But then it happened in the worst possible way. And I dragged all those people into my mess. Not just Véronique, but Vi and Renate and Zizou and everyone.”
Chiara was stunned. All the threads, fragile lines of thought, were suddenly forming a pattern. She looked around the room with unseeing eyes, the light shockingly, impossibly brighter, hurting her eyes. Well, that pain would pair perfectly with her aching heart then.
“I don’t know how you can forgive me, Chiara. I don’t know how you can think you were not good enough. The harder you tried, the more I hated myself, because I could never ever touch you. Could never, ever reach you.”
“Frankie…” Words felt like razors. “God…”
“No, now you stop. I should've told you all those years ago. I ruined us.Idid. Nothing you could have done to fix it. And Renate knew from the start that I was sinking. She kept trying to pull me up, for years, to build me up. But then she found out about the cheating, and she dropped me faster than a hot potato. She was done with me. And I walked into that room today when they brought her in, because Arabella called me. Reluctantly, I might add. She couldn’t find you, I guess, so she calledme. And Renate refused to see me. Flat out. So I am begging you, if you can’t forgive me, then at least don’t hate me.”
The ticking of the clock on the wall played a tune in Chiara’s mind, saving her from this mental overload, which surely would have overwhelmed her by now otherwise. She clung to her earlier realizations and to the monotone sound.
Tick Tock…
She had been good enough…
Tick Tock…
She had always been good enough…
Tick Tock…
