I look up at Nico. “Grief has a way of erasing the future, doesn’t it?”
He smiles gently at me and strokes a finger down my cheek.
“But I know this, Nico”—words clog in my throat for a moment—"when the moment came, I was not alone.”
Nico kisses my forehead. “And,cara, neither was Matteo.”
35
NICO
He may have looked broken outside Matteo’s house, but the man pestering me during his best friend’s funeral is definitely the Cesare we all know and dislike.
As Alessia warned me, even though I didn’t want to believe it, Cesare doesn’t wait.
Not for grief to settle like morning mist.
Not for the dark earth over Matteo’s grave to finish collapsing into itself.
He starts on the day of the funeral, one that begins before sunrise, when the air is still blue with night and the stones of Castagneto Carducci sweat quietly from the cold.
The bells have not yet rung, but the church doors stand open, their dark mouths breathing incense and wax into the narrow street.
I arrive early to be there for Alessia.
Toni and Alba are with her as well, and she takes comfort in them.
But through the tragedy—I’ve reclaimed my place in her bed, not for sex but for intimacy, for comfort, for assuaging pain.
“Nico. Good, you came early,” Cesare remarks.
I don’t tell him that I’m here out of reverence and a need to stand still somewhere sacred before the world begins asking things of me again.
He wouldn’t understand.
“Not here,” I tell him calmly.
“Of course not,” he snaps. “At the Palazzo during the reception. We need to get things back on track now.”
I struggle not to roll my eyes.
I don’t respond to his ridiculous statement; I walk around him and into the three hundred-and-forty-year-old church.
Built by the Della Gherardesca family to commemorate the liberation of Budapest, the church of Sant'Antonio a Bolgheri still bears the family crest on its façade. Its illusionistic interior decor creates a sense of greater space with paintings depicting the castle of Bolgheri and the church itself.
Candles flicker along the side altars, their flames trembling in the draft that follows mourners through the nave. The scent of beeswax, old stone, and lilies makes the air heavy.
Matteo’s coffin rests before the altar.
It’s per his request, simple—unadorned wood. He didn’t want excess or a spectacle, only the quiet dignity of a life lived in devotion to craft, soil, and patience.
He will be buried beside Isabella today. After all this waiting, all this endurance, they will lie together again.
Cesare pushes past me and goes to the front pew. He leans down to talk to Renzo, who gives him a flat but disapproving glare, but says nothing.
Before my father-in-law can bother my wife, I step beside her.
She’s stopped crying, but her face is pale and her eyes puffy.
