Chương 3
He had not slept properly in days.
The flight.
The drive.
The excuses.
The constant effort of appearing normal.
All of it collapsed at once.
Clarissa sat beside him.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Outside, a car passed on the street, and the sound disappeared almost immediately.
“I should have called you,” she said.
Emilio stared ahead.
“Would that have changed anything?”
She took a moment before answering.
“No.”
The honesty surprised him.
He looked at her.
Clarissa rubbed her thumb against the edge of her sunglasses.
She had always been good at managing appearances.
That was one of the things Emilio loved about her when they first met.
She knew how to enter a room.
She knew how to make people comfortable.
She knew how to turn uncomfortable situations into something lighter.
But over the last few years, he had started noticing that she used those same skills to avoid difficult things.
“We kept saying we would come back tomorrow,” she said.
Emilio looked down.
“Yeah.”
“And then tomorrow became next week.”
He did not respond.
“And next week became after the trip.”
The words sat between them.
Clarissa lowered her voice.
“I thought you were going to cancel.”
Emilio frowned.
“What?”
“I thought you were going to cancel the vacation.”
He looked at her.
She looked away.
“You told me you were thinking about it.”
“I was.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
The simple answer made the conversation heavier.
Clarissa leaned back in the chair.
“I should have pushed harder.”
Emilio almost laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
That sentence stayed with both of them.
Because it was true.
The responsibility had belonged to him.
Not her.
Not Lucia.
Not Giovanni.
Not anyone else.
A staff member walked through the room collecting leftover programs.
One paper remained on a chair near Emilio.
He picked it up without thinking.
Helena’s name was printed at the top.
Below it were the dates of her life.
The space between them looked impossibly small.
A person reduced to two numbers.
He folded the paper carefully and placed it in his pocket.
Outside the reception room, Giovanni stood near a window speaking with an older relative.
His voice was low.
His posture was controlled.
Emilio watched him and remembered being a child sitting in the passenger seat of Giovanni’s old truck.
His father had never been the kind of man who gave emotional speeches.
He showed love through tasks.
Through repaired fences.
Through packed lunches.
Through arriving early.
Emilio used to think that was a limitation.
Now it felt like a language he had never learned to speak.
The older relative left, and Giovanni noticed Emilio watching him.
Neither man moved.
The distance between them was only a few feet.
It felt much larger.
Finally, Giovanni walked over.
“You should go home,” he said.
Emilio nodded slowly.
“I know.”
Giovanni looked at the suitcase beside him.
Then at his son.
“I don’t care about the trip.”
Emilio looked confused.
Giovanni continued before he could respond.
“I care that when your mother needed you, you were somewhere else.”
The words were quiet.
That made them impossible to avoid.
Emilio swallowed.
“She told me she was okay.”
Giovanni’s expression changed slightly.
“She told everyone she was okay.”
That answer stopped him.
Because it was true.
Helena had always done that.
She had always protected other people from her own pain.
She would complain about a broken appliance before mentioning a medical appointment.
She would ask about someone else’s problems while hiding her own.
“She didn’t want to be a burden,” Giovanni said.
Emilio looked down.
“I didn’t know.”
“No.”
Giovanni paused.
“You didn’t.”
The admission was painful because it was fair.
Emilio wanted his father to accuse him of something impossible.
Something he could deny.
Instead, Giovanni gave him the truth.
“You were her son,” Giovanni said.
Nothing else followed.
He did not need to explain.
Emilio felt his throat tighten.
Giovanni walked away before the emotion on his face could become visible.
That was his way.
Even now.
Even broken.
Even grieving.
Emilio remained seated until the room became almost empty.
He watched workers carry flowers toward waiting vehicles.
He watched strangers leave the funeral hall and return to ordinary lives.
People would go home.
They would eat dinner.
They would answer emails.
They would complain about traffic.
The world would continue.
And somewhere inside that normal world, Emilio would have to live with the fact that he missed the one moment that could never happen again.
The world would continue, but Emilio knew he would never return to the person he had been before that morning.
The drive home felt shorter than the drive to the funeral, though he could not remember most of the roads they passed.
Clarissa drove with both hands on the steering wheel, keeping her eyes forward.
The radio remained off.
Neither of them reached for their phones.
For once, there was nothing happening online that mattered more than what had happened inside that room.
When they reached their apartment, Emilio stood outside the door for almost a minute before unlocking it.
The place looked exactly the same as when they left.
That was the strange part.
The shoes by the entrance were still where they had been.
The kitchen counter still had the coffee cup he forgot to wash.
A jacket he had thrown over a chair was still hanging there.
Nothing in the apartment knew what had happened.
Nothing had changed except him.
Clarissa walked inside and placed her suitcase near the bedroom.
She did not open it.
The black luggage suddenly looked like something that belonged to a different life.
Emilio carried his suitcase into the living room instead.
He sat on the couch and stared at the airline tag hanging from the handle.
The tag had been torn slightly when Giovanni grabbed it.
May you like
A small piece of paper had peeled away from the corner.
He reached toward it, then stopped.
