Page 198

“You and Lexy can have Mama and Papa's room. It's at the back overlooking the yard.”

“Why do we get the parents' room?” Lexy asks.

“Because it has the bigger bed.”

Dex nods. “Sold.”

“Of course.” I roll my eyes. “Chiara and I are in here, and Jude, there's a spare room right next door.”

“Works.”

“The spare room and ours face the sea, so you'll hear it at night.”

Jude looks toward the open window. “You hear it from here?”

I smile. “Wait.”

I leave them with the bags and keep walking.

I walk over and push the shutters open.

Blue.

Nothing but fucking blue.

The sea sits beyond the house, sunlight dancing across it, and warm air immediately pours through the window.

I stand there for a moment before turning back toward the kitchen, seeing it properly now with the afternoon light pouring in.

God, I missed this place.

This is where Mama taught me how to make pasta from scratch. Where I made my first biscotti and couldn't even reach the countertop, so Papa built me a little step to stand on. Mama sewed Chiara and me matching aprons, although Chiara mostly pretended to cook before turning whatever food she was supposed to be making into some kind of art project.

Every square inch of this kitchen holds a memory, and somehow, I forgot them.

Grief, I'm learning, can put everything else in shadows while the only thing it lets you look at is the one person you'll never get back.

But standing here now, with the window open and the sea right there, it feels like someone turned the lights back on and the shadows are slowly clearing.

A part of me still wishes I could show Damiano all of this. I wish I could bring him into this kitchen and tell him where Papa put my little step, show him where Mama taught me to roll pasta, take him down to the beach and show him all the places that made me me.

But another part of me needed to remember that this place was mine before I ever knew him.

I needed to remember that I'm Eleonora.

A widow, yes, but also the little girl who stood on a wooden step beside her mother. The girl who left this house at eleven with tears streaming down her face. The girl who grew up and fell in love and became a woman.

The pain isn't leaving. I don't think that's what this is.

It's changing shape.

It's still here and probably always will be, but somehow, grief and I are becoming friends.

Sort of.

I still call her a bitch most days.

But she's teaching me when it's time to let some of the pain out through tears, anger and words, and maybe I'm finally learning to listen before she has to scream at me.