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“Eleonora.”

“Ciao.”

His eyes drop to the urn in my arms. He places one hand over his heart before continuing towards the beach.

A few steps later, another person greets me. Then another. People I've met over the last few days and people I've never seen before. An older couple, two men around our age, a woman holding the hand of a little girl. Some smile, others nod, but almost everyone looks at what I'm carrying.

They all know.

My steps slow, and when we finally reach the sand, I stop completely.

“Oh.”

There are so many people. More than I expected. So many more.

Some are already sitting in the sand while others stand in small groups, talking quietly. Damiano's family is here, of course. Nonna Carmela sits in a chair someone has brought down for her, dressed in black despite the summer heat, with Zio Nino beside her. Matteo is talking to a group of people I don't recognize, and everywhere I look, there are more faces.

His old friends. His cousins. People who knew him as a child, who knew him before America, before me.

Someone has placed candles in glass jars along the sand, stretching towards the water. There are flowers too, nothing elaborate, just little bunches of white flowers and olive branches arranged between the jars. The sun hangs low over the sea, bathing everything in gold.

For a moment, I can't move.

“He told me,” I whisper.

Chiara looks at me. “What?”

I stare at the people gathered here. “He told me everyone knew everyone here, but I thought he was exaggerating.”

A laugh catches somewhere between my chest and my throat.

“He always fucking exaggerated.”

Chiara laughs beside me. “Yeah.”

Except maybe he didn't.

Because they're here. All of them.

For him.

A woman I don't recognize approaches us. She doesn't say anything, just kisses both my cheeks, touches the urn gently and walks away with tears streaming down her face.

My throat tightens.

Then a man comes over and tells me he went to school with Damiano. Another remembers playing football with him on the beach, and a third announces, with an enormous grin, that Damiano broke his nose when they were seven.

“That sounds like him,” I say.

The man laughs. “He cried more than me.”

I burst out laughing. “Oh, that definitely sounds like him.”

And the stories keep coming. Damiano stealing someone's bicycle because his own had a flat tyre, getting thrown out of class for something he apparently still insisted wasn't his fault, jumping off the rocks into the sea after being specifically told not to. Someone remembers him dancing on this very beach, barefoot and completely convinced he was the best dancer in Sicily.

I can practically see him.

They're tiny stories, nothing important enough to make it into an obituary, but everything important enough to make up a life.