The rain began as a distant murmur, a whisper running across the fields. Bianca was in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hands, when the first flash split the sky. The sudden, white light made the outlines of the hills beyond the windows quiver.

She had spent the morning rummaging through the boxes her mother had kept in the attic. That was where she had found them: three yellowed letters, tied with a blue silk ribbon, in her mother's elegant, slanted handwriting.
On the first page, at the top, a name: Andrea.
Bianca had hesitated for a long while before opening them.

"If you are reading these lines, it means my truth can no longer hurt you the way it once would have."
Her mother's voice seemed to rise from the words gentle, steady. Bianca learned that the man she had always believed to be her father dead since she was a child was not her real parent. Her true father, Andrea, had been a young Roman musician she met during a summer of freedom, but he had never known of her existence.

Bianca sat on the bed, her heart racing. Every sentence was a blow: years of silences, half-spoken phrases, empty spaces filled with simpler versions of the truth.
"I didn't tell you to protect you, but now I know that protecting also means giving answers."

A clap of thunder tore her from her thoughts. She looked out the window: the rain was lashing violently against the vines, and in the distance, a figure moved between the vineyard and the house. Leonardo.

A few minutes later, he knocked on the door, dripping wet, his hair plastered to his forehead.
"I'm sorry to bother you," he said, a little short of breath, "but the storm is stronger than I expected. May I wait here until it passes?"

Bianca hesitated, then stepped aside. "Come in."

The kitchen filled with the scent of rain and wet earth. Leonardo took off his jacket, revealing a damp shirt clinging to his shoulders. He sat at the table while she handed him a towel.

For a few minutes, they stayed silent, listening to the pounding of water against the glass. Then he spoke.

"I'm not good with formalities, so I'll get straight to the point. You've formed the wrong idea about me." He lifted his gaze. "I didn't come here to buy your house."

Bianca crossed her arms. "And why should I believe you?"

He inhaled, as though needing courage to reach into a place he had kept closed for too long.
"Because this wouldn't be the first time I've lost a place I cared about."

The words hung in the air, heavy with meaning.

"I had a sister," he continued, staring at some undefined point. "Elisa. Two years younger than me. She was... the bright part of my life. One day, coming back from a party, she had a car accident. I should have gone to pick her up, but I was buried in my projects, my drawings. I thought she could manage. She never made it home."

His voice wavered, but he didn't look away.
"Since then, everything I do is an attempt to create something solid, lasting. To make up for what I didn't protect."

Bianca studied him, at a loss for words. She felt a familiar pang—that sense of loss she knew all too well.

"I've also..." she murmured, then stopped. "I've lost someone, but in a different way. And today I found out that part of my life was built on a lie."

Leonardo didn't press her. He simply nodded, as if he understood that certain pains cannot be dragged into the light on command.

A thunderclap made the windowpanes tremble. The lights went out for a moment, leaving them in half-shadow. They looked into each other's eyes, and for a moment the sound of rain seemed to fade.

It was the first time there was not only suspicion and mistrust between them, but the silent recognition of a shared wound.

"The storm will end soon," Leonardo said at last, with a faint smile. "But I'm in no hurry to leave."

Bianca looked away, hiding the quickened beat of her heart.
Perhaps, she thought, she wasn't the only one in no hurry.

Under the sky of Val d'Orcia

Clayton Nightwhisper - All rights reserved©