After a while, I put the pad down and head out to the back deck.
The sun is gone, but the sky is still bleeding color over the horizon. I drop onto the top step, the wood still warm beneath my hands, and let the salt air wash over me. The waves are a steady rhythm, a constant, soothing presence in the deepening dark.
This is it.
This is the feeling I’ve been chasing without knowing it. Not peace, exactly. Something more like arrival. Like I’ve been drifting for weeks, and I’ve finally, finally washed ashore.
I’m not waiting for anything. I’m not restless. I’m just… here.
And it’s enough.
I let my head fall back against the post, my eyes on the first few stars blinking into existence. A ghost crab scuttles below the porch, moving sideways with that frantic urgency, late for something important.
I breathe.
I could get used to this. I could build a life out of nights like this.
Natalia stealing bites off the cutting board while I cook. Her curled up against me on that couch making fun of some terrible movie neither of us is watching. The windows open, the ocean loud enough to cover the sounds she makes when I take her to bed.
A figure moves at the edge of the waterline.
Far down the beach. Just a shape at first, dark against the last strip of light on the water. Moving with purpose. Moving toward me.
I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to stand. Hands loose at my sides, weight shifting forward.
Could be nobody. A jogger. A neighbor.
My body disagrees. My body is already in a stance I don’t remember learning, every muscle wound tight, cold focus settling into my limbs.
I move down the steps, onto the sand, putting myself between the house and the approaching figure.
“What the fuck do you want?” I call out, my voice a low growl that gets swallowed by the surf.
The man breaks into a jog, his arm swinging out in a gesture that is so familiar it makes my stomach clench.
“What the fuck do you think I want, Luca?!” The voice hits me like a fist to the sternum. “What the hell is going on?!”
I know that voice.
Paolo.
The recognition hits me like a pressure change—sudden, total, the world going muffled and distant for one long second before it all comes rushing back in.
I grip my hair with both hands because some stupid part of my brain thinks if I squeeze hard enough I can stop what’s happening behind my eyes.
This isn’t fragments. Not flashes. The whole thing comes at once, like a curtain ripped down, and behind it is everything.
Me and Paolo. My uncle. At a scarred table littered with maps and timetables, a half-drunk espresso gone cold by his elbow. His palm came down on my shoulder, heavy and sure, his voice a sure, steady presence in my ear.This is what changes everything, Luca. I know you can do this.
The weight of his belief in me. The only person in my family who looked at me and saw something other than the screw-up. Planning the route. Buying the boat. The feeling of finally being trusted with something that mattered.
And underneath the maps, on the table, half-covered by a flight manifest.
A file.
I opened it.
Her face looked up from the page.
