The weight of it
921 Words
~ Eleanora's POV ~
I could not sleep.
It happened sometimes - nights when the villa felt too quiet, where lying still only made my thoughts louder. Eventually I stopped fighting it. I would go downstairs, sit in the library, make tea I never finished, and wait for the restlessness to pass.
It was after midnight when I reached the library.
The door was slightly open. Light spilled across the hallway floor.
Vincenzo was already inside.
He sat in the armchair near the window, shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, jacket discarded somewhere out of sight. A book rested open in his lap. A glass of whisky sat untouched beside him.
He looked up when I entered.
For a second neither of us spoke. The library had become that kind of place for us somehow - a room where the usual distance loosened without either of us acknowledging it.
"I did not know you were still awake," I said.
A faint shift of his shoulders. "I am usually awake."
I crossed to the other chair and curled into it with my book. The fire had burned low, leaving the room warm and amber-coloured and still.
He returned to his reading.
So did I.
Neither of us turned a page for several minutes.
~ * ~
"My father used to sit in here at night."
His voice cut softly through the quiet.
I looked up. He was still staring at the book in his lap.
"When things were bad," he continued. "He never brought it into the rest of the house. Not around my mother. Not around me." A pause. "I understood why later."
The fire shifted quietly.
"Some things feel heavier when the people you love can see them."
I stayed silent.
At some point I had learned that Vincenzo only spoke like this when silence gave him room to continue.
"I used to watch him from the doorway," he said. "I was twelve, maybe thirteen. I did not understand what he was carrying. I just knew it followed him everywhere."
His thumb rested against the edge of the page without turning it.
"And now?" I asked quietly.
This time the silence stretched longer.
Then:
"I think I became very good at pretending the weight was not there."
Not hiding. Not managing.
Pretending.
The distinction mattered.
~ * ~
He closed the book slowly and set it aside.
"When my father died, everyone kept telling me I was ready." A humourless breath of laughter. "Nineteen years old and suddenly people were looking at me like I had become someone else overnight."
The lamp beside him cast half his face in shadow.
"The last real conversation we had was three days before the end. He barely spoke by then." His jaw shifted once. "But for an hour he was himself again."
I listened.
"He did not talk about the family. Or business. Or responsibilities." A small shake of his head. "He talked about a fishing trip we took when I was seven. Sicily. A fish that got away."
Something softer entered his voice then. Not warmth exactly. Memory.
"He laughed about it. First time I had heard him laugh in almost two years."
The room felt smaller somehow.
"I never understood why that was the thing he chose to leave me with," Vincenzo said quietly. "Out of everything."
I watched him for a moment before asking:
"Do you understand now?"
His eyes lifted to mine.
"I think he wanted me to remember there had been a version of him before all of this."
The words settled between us.
Outside, the lake was invisible beyond the glass. Only darkness and our reflections looking back.
For the first time since I had met him, Vincenzo looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
Not weak.
Just tired of carrying himself so carefully.
I stood before I could overthink it.
Crossed the room.
Sat on the arm of his chair.
Not touching him. Just close enough that he would know I intended to stay.
His gaze moved to me slowly.
"You do not have to do that," he said.
"I know."
I stayed anyway.
~ * ~
Time blurred after that.
The fire died completely. The whisky remained untouched. At some point I slid down from the chair arm onto the floor beside him, my shoulder resting lightly against the side of the chair.
Neither of us moved away.
"The Rome assessment came back clean," he said eventually.
I looked up at him. "Marco told me."
"You can go."
The simple certainty of it surprised me more than the answer itself.
"Thank you."
He nodded once.
Quiet settled over us again.
Then:
"Eleanora."
Something in the way he said my name made me look up immediately.
He was already watching me.
"The fish," he said after a moment. "I think I understand now why he chose that memory."
I held his gaze.
Neither of us explained the meaning aloud.
We did not need to.
At two in the morning I finally stood.
"Good night, Vincenzo."
His eyes stayed on me for a second longer before he answered.
"Good night."
I left the library slowly.
Just before I reached the door, I heard him exhale behind me - long, quiet, unguarded.
Not the controlled breathing of Vincenzo Esposito.
Just a man alone in the dark finally letting the weight shift for a moment.
And somehow, without looking back, I knew he had let me see something almost no one else ever had.
- Writer
