Palazzo

She always told their son that she still had warm memories of Olivier and that he had been a lovely man, but the art instructor she had left him for, and never married but still lived with, was the love of her life. He drove the short distance back to his own palazzo, with their secret wrapped around him like a magic cloak which gave him life, and Cosima rode upstairs in the elevator to her room, with an aching heart, which was so familiar to her now. For both Cosima and Gian Battista, their relationship even in its diminished state was a way of keeping her parents alive. She was finally free of the love that had devoured her for fifteen years.