Chapter 12 - Alessia’s Shadow
Victoria resented a dead woman.
She denied it initially.
Then stopped.
Alessia’s photographs remained in the mansion.
Not everywhere.
One in Noah’s room.
One in my study.
One family portrait in a hallway.
Margaret spoke about her.
I visited her grave twice a year.
No shrine.
Still, Victoria felt the absence as a presence.
During couples therapy before the engagement, she once said:
“I don’t know how to compete with someone who never gets older or makes a mistake.”
I answered badly.
“You’re not competing.”
True.
Dismissive.
She was telling me she felt second.
I thought the correct response was logically denying competition existed.
Maybe I should have asked:
What makes you feel that way?
Later she told Celia:
Raffaele gets to have a perfect dead wife and I get to negotiate with her housekeeper.
Cruel.
Also honest.
Margaret had strong opinions.
Sometimes too strong.
She resisted changing Noah’s bedtime.
Correctly often.
But she also resisted Victoria choosing flowers in the breakfast room because:
“Alessia preferred yellow roses.”
That was absurd.
I told Margaret later.
She admitted:
“I was protecting things that did not need protecting.”
There.
Everyone contributed to atmosphere.
Victoria’s solution was not conversation.
It was removal.
Move Margaret with Noah.
Change house staff.
Reduce Alessia objects.
Send Sophie to Daniel.
Create adult center.
Then I would belong fully to the marriage.
That was the fantasy.
No competing child schedule.
No old housekeeper.
No deceased wife’s routines.
No daughter negotiating between households.
No toddler interrupting dinner.
Just us.
The fantasy ignored one fact.
I was a father before I was her fiancé.
Daniel was a father before she remarried.
Sophie was a daughter before she was material for our blended-family photograph.
A marriage can become central without demanding every other bond move to the edge.
Victoria had not learned that.
Neither had I communicated it clearly enough.
May you like
But the relocation plans were still hers.
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