First full day home. I woke with a scream jammed under my tongue—the same nightmare on loop: his bedroom, that poster, my mother’s face watching while he whispered my not-name. Papa pounded on my locked door.
“Bella! Are you alright?”
I swallowed the tremor. “Just a bad dream about exams.”
A pause, then his footsteps softened away. He believed me. The house decided to be ordinary.
At breakfast I counted the kitchen tiles instead of my feelings—forty-eight from stove to window, a neat grid I could survive. Papa spread papers like a sunrise: the university welcome packet, housing forms, a course catalog that looked heavy enough to anchor a boat.
“Look, tesoro! It’s all happening.”
Rome glowed on the page like a dare. Rome meant corridors where everyone says “Dottore,” a man who wears charisma like a lab coat and speaks with silverware words—outcomes, consent, modality.
“Wonderful,” I heard my mouth say.
“And if you need anything, Dr. Ferraro will be close,” Papa added, proud and tender. “He’s already offered to help you settle in.”
My hands started shaking under the table; I hid them in my lap.
“You’ve barely touched your breakfast.”
“Not hungry.”
He saw the worry, tucked it away for later. My phone buzzed: How are you settling in? Your father and I will talk soon—L. I put the screen face down and stared at the butter knife until it looked like a lighthouse I couldn’t reach.
Late morning, I stood at my window and turned the curtain into armor. Matteo was in the lower vines, pruning with that patient gentleness he has with everything alive. Sun on his forearms, cap pushed back, breathing in rhythm with the rows.
He glanced toward the house. I flinched backward like I’d been caught stealing.
The bell rang at noon.
“Bella! Luisa’s here!” Papa called, relief braided into his voice.
I walked downstairs on borrowed legs. Luisa saw the hacked dark hair, the weight carved out of my cheeks, the way my eyes skittered past hers. She stopped short.
“Bella… what did you do to your hair?”
Concern, confusion, stubborn love—all of it plain as day. We went to my room and she closed the door carefully, like a nurse about to lift a bandage.
“What happened? You’ve lost so much weight. And you won’t look at me.”
“I’m just tired.”
“You’re lying.” No heat, just the fact of it. “Did something happen in Tuscany?”
“No. The internship was intense.” My voice tried to be casual and missed the mark by a mile.
“Bella, please. I’m your best friend.”
The photos. The threats. My father’s heart. I saw the whole mess rise like a wave and I stepped back from it.
“I just need space right now.”
“Space from me?” Her face crumpled, then steadied. “Fine. But I’m not giving up on you.”
In the afternoon Papa prescribed “fresh air,” which he trusts more than most medicines. I took the long path that skirts the gardens, sunglasses on like a shield.
“Bella!” Matteo’s voice reached me—warm, familiar, an ache you can recognize with your eyes closed.
Every cell wanted to turn. I speed-walked instead, a coward in ballet flats, and slipped through the side door before the second syllable of my name finished ringing. I leaned against the wood and pressed my pulse down with my palm.
Evening settled like a sheet. At dinner I practiced moving food without eating it.
“You haven’t eaten since you got home,” Papa said, careful as a doctor with bad news.
“Just not hungry.”
He set down his fork. “Is this about university? Or…” he picked a softer landing, “about Matteo? I noticed you’re avoiding the gardens.”
I seized the excuse like driftwood. “Things are just different now.”
He nodded, misreading with love. “You’ve grown up. That’s natural.”
Upstairs I stared at Matteo’s message: Can I see you? Typed: Maybe later. Still tired from internship—and sent it. The sentence looked like it belonged to a stranger wearing my face. His reply came fast: That doesn’t sound like you. Bella, what’s wrong?
I shut the phone off because I couldn’t shut myself off. One more message slid in before the screen went dark: Sleep well, Isabella. Talk soon. Ferraro wrote like a calendar entry—concise, inevitable—as if the word mentor could disinfect a memory.
I lay in the dark and counted breaths because numbers obey even when people don’t. One. Two. Three.
Matteo knew something was off. Luisa knew. Even Papa felt the outline of it and mistook the shape. I was home, technically; the walls recognized me. My body did not.
I lit a small white candle behind my old desk, the kind I used to hoard for birthdays, still dressed in a ring of silly little star stickers. The wick caught, and a quiet circle of light took the room’s pulse down.
In that patient glow I opened my closet and reached behind winter coats to the hidden cubby Papa built when I was ten—a secret “box” in the cabinet, our private kingdom for treasure.
My fingers found the soft spine of my old fluffy diary. I tugged it free and sat on the floor with my back against the door like I was guarding a vault.
The diary smelled like dust and cherries. Inside were crooked hearts around M + B, lists titled Reasons Algebra Is Rude, and—pressed in the back—a note Mama helped me write to my future self: Be brave, but also leave when things are unkind.
I traced the loop of her B with my thumb and felt eight and safe and almost new.
A film reel unspooled: me and little Matteo in the courtyard, jump rope thwip-thwip on stone, Mama clapping off-beat on purpose so I’d giggle and miss on purpose too, the three of us trapped in a golden afternoon that never ended because we didn’t know time yet. For one whole hour the room loosened its grip while I read page after page of a girl who believed everything good would happen, and soon.
The candle burned lower. I blew it out and the dark came back honest and full.
I closed the diary carefully and kept it in my hands. Tomorrow would still come with its problems—Luisa and Matteo and Papa and the version of Rome I am supposed to want. But for one hour I sat with the girl I used to be and let her remind me I existed before he named me something else.
The flame guttered, steadied. I whispered goodnight to the room, to Mama, to the fig tree I couldn’t see. And if sleep finally found me, it was because the past held my hand long enough to lead me there.