Page 55

“Will it ever get better?” I ask quietly.

Her face softens, and she cups my cheek. “Tesoro mio, a lot of people will try to fix your wound, but there is no fixing that... I will try to help you understand it instead.”

She stands and walks to the window, looking out.

“Sometimes, even after thirty years, I still wake up in the morning convinced my Vincenzo is lying next to me... and then I remember.”

Her voice dips slightly.

“And for a moment, that pain can feel as fresh as the day I lost him.”

She turns back to me.

“It never leaves, but...”

She comes back and sits beside me again.

“Like when you lose a leg or an arm, you learn to live with it. Manage it.”

Her eyes flick to the bottles scattered across the floor.

“I had my children to take care of, and I let that be what numbed me.” A pause. “You found another way.”

Shame flickers through me, but I push it down.

“But you can’t keep going like this,” she continues, softer now. “Believe me, I tried. I worked, I raised my children, all while feeling nothing inside... until one day my little Beatrice was crying.”

She shakes her head slowly.

“When I asked her why, she told me she was sad because the day her papà died... I died too.”

The words settle heavy in the room.

“That woke me up,” she adds quietly. “And it wasn’t gentle.”

Her gaze drifts somewhere far away.

“The first months, when I started feeling again... it was too much. Too much joy when I played with my children. Too much pain when I turned to tell their father what we did and remembered he was gone.”

Silence stretches between us.

“Well,” I mutter, my voice hollow, “I guess I’m lucky I’m childless then.”

I try to laugh, but it dies before it even forms. A child with Damiano’s face would have been a comfort... but God couldn’t even give me that.

“They gave me a reason to get up every morning until, eventually, I learned how to find reasons of my own.”

She stands.

“I spoke to your Mamma and Papà. They agree.” She pulls a letter from her purse.

“This is from your Damiano. He told me to give it to you when the time was right.”

My breath catches.

Then she sets down a set of keys beside it. “And these too.”

I stare at them like they might disappear. Damiano wrote me a letter?