Dante is still gone.
Alessandro still chose silence when truth mattered.
And yet, Lucia is laughing because a ladybug has landed on the blanket, and Sofia has gone very still beside me, studying the insect with the same intensity I once reserved for surveillance patterns and unlocked doors.
And Alessandro is here. In the garden. Grumpy before finishing his espresso. Watching our daughters as if the act of looking at them is a form of penance.
Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s just fatherhood.
Teresa appears in the doorway a moment later, wiping her hands on a cloth that has seen better days and worse kitchens. “I told them not to eat the herbs,” she says, already walking toward us, already knowing they didn’t listen.
“They didn’t,” I reply.
“Of course they didn’t.” She glances at Lucia. “You’re your father’s daughter.”
Lucia considers this as if it’s a professional evaluation. Sofia, satisfied that the ladybug poses no immediate threat to civilization, leans slightly into me again.
Teresa crouches, presses a kiss to the top of Sofia’s head, then Lucia’s, who accepts it with the indulgence of someone granting access.
“I’ll watch them,” Teresa says, straightening. “You look like you’re thinking too much again,” she says to me.
“I’m always thinking too much.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “But today it’s louder.”
Alessandro sets his empty cup down on the stone edge of the fountain. I feel him before I look at him. The shift in air. Attention narrowing.
“Come,” he says to me, not loudly.
Not a request. It rarely is.
I don’t move immediately. Habit again. Assessment. Always the brief, involuntary scan. Distance, exits, angles, who is where.
Eight. Still eight.
Teresa’s voice cuts through the air. “Go before you start mapping the garden like it’s under siege.”
“I’m not—” I start.
“You are,” she says. Then softer, with something like fondness, “They’re safe. I’m here.”
Lucia has already moved on to a new objective: dismantling the blanket. Sofia watches her with quiet approval.
I exhale. Then I stand. Alessandro is already walking toward the house, not checking if I follow, which is its own form of certainty.
I follow. Through the terrace doors. Across the cool stone floor that still echoes faintly in the mornings. Past the hallway where light falls in long, obedient lines. His hand finds mine halfway up the stairs. Not tentative. Not hesitant. Certain.
Always certain.
The bedroom door closes behind us with a soft, definitive sound.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The world outside narrows to something contained and distant. Children’s voices, muted through the walls. The faint movement of the house settling into itself.
He turns to me. There’s no preamble. No careful transition. His hand lifts to my face, thumb brushing along my cheek as if confirming something he already knows is there.
Then he kisses me. Possessive in a way that isn’t about ownership but certainty. About choosing, again and again, without hesitation.
I feel it down to the bone.
