I expected the flight home to make Bellacosta feel like a finished chapter.
Instead, the city kept returning in small flashes. The fountain, the lemon cake, the ferry rocking at the dock. Clara's precise voice telling me that time and labor were not the opposite of kindness.
For the first two days at home, I did not message her.
I unpacked. I put the pottery cup beside the kettle and placed the photograph of Lena and me on the desk. I finished a book from the parcel and wrote in the notebook for the first time. My handwriting slanted across the page.
I wrote that I had spent much of my life waiting for someone to notice I was tired before I had to say it.
Then I closed the notebook.
A week later, I got an email from the booking site asking for feedback about Clara's tour. I started t
