12. Cassandra
— ? —
Cassandra
The Acardi estate sits on a cliff overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, the same way it’s sat for four generations.
I used to hate it here when I was a teenager - the isolation, the quiet, the way everyone in town knew my family’s business before I’d even decided what my business was. I fled to LA at nineteen, chasing runways and freedom and a life that felt bigger than this rocky coast could contain.
Now, at thirty-two, the isolation feels like the only thing keeping me sane.
My mother, Marta, has been handling me with kid gloves since I arrived.
She brings me tea I don’t ask for, leaves plates of food outside my bedroom door, and doesn’t ask questions about Antonio except once, on the first night, when she looked at me with those sharp eyes that have always seen too much and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “When you do, I’ll be here.”
That was ten days ago. We haven’t mentioned him since.
My father, Carlo, is even more careful. He’s the kind of man who shows love through action, not words, so he expresses his concern by fixing things - the shutter on my bedroom window that’s been broken for years, the squeaky hinge on the garden gate, the loose tiles in the kitchen.
Every day there’s a new project, a new way of saying I’m here without actually saying it.
Today he’s in the garden, pruning olive trees that don’t need pruning, when I hear the car on the drive.
The estate has a long gravel road that winds up from the main gate, and you can always hear visitors coming before you see them. I’m on the terrace with a cup of coffee I haven’t touched, watching the sea and trying not to think, when the distinctive crunch of tires on stone breaks the silence.
My mother appears in the doorway behind me.
“Are you expecting anyone?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you should come inside.”
But I’m already standing, already walking toward the garden, some instinct I can’t name pulling me forward. My father has stopped his pruning, shears still in hand, watching the road with the wariness of a man who spent forty years as a magistrate and learned to distrust unexpected visitors.
The car comes into view.
It’s not Antonio’s - not the black sedan Francesco drives, not the sports car he keeps for weekends.
It’s a rental, modest and forgettable, the kind of thing a tourist might use to navigate the coastal roads.
It stops outside the main gate, which is closed and locked, and for a long moment nothing happens.
Then the driver’s door opens, and Antonio steps out.
He looks terrible. Even from fifty meters away, I can see the hollows under his eyes, the way his clothes hang loose like he’s lost weight.
He’s alone - no driver, no publicist, no entourage of handlers to manage the conversation.
Just a man standing outside a gate, looking up at a house that isn’t his.
My father moves first, walking toward the gate with his shears still in hand. I follow before I can think better of it, my mother calling something after me that I don’t catch.
“Signor Guerriero.” My father’s voice is polite but cool. “This is unexpected.”
“I know.” Antonio’s eyes find mine through the iron bars. “I know I’m not welcome here. But I had to come.”
“My daughter asked you not to follow her.”
“She did. And I know showing up anyway is breaking that boundary.” He takes a breath, and I see something I don’t expect - acknowledgment rather than excuse.
“I’m not going to pretend I have a right to be here.
I don’t. But I couldn’t let her think I’d just…
given up. I needed to say that once, in person, and then I’ll leave.
I won’t come back unless she asks me to. ”
“What you broke may not be fixable,” my father says.
“Maybe not. But I have to try.”
I step forward, placing my hand on my father’s arm. He looks at me, a question in his eyes, and I nod slightly. He steps back, giving me space.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I say.
“I know.”
“I told you I needed time.”
“I know that too. But the separation papers came, and I signed them, and I sat in our empty house looking at your signature and I couldn’t…” His voice cracks. He looks away, composing himself. “I couldn’t let you think I was just going to let this happen. Let us happen.”
“Let what happen?”
“Let us end without fighting for it.”
I stare at him through the iron bars, this man I married six years ago, this stranger who shares my bed and my name and almost nothing else anymore. He looks smaller than I remember. Diminished by something I can’t name.
“You quit the film,” I say. “I saw the news.”
“It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except…” He gestures at me, at the house, at the impossible distance between us. “Except this. Except trying to make this right.”
“And how exactly do you plan to do that?”
“I don’t know.” The honesty in his voice is startling.
“I don’t have a plan, Cass. I don’t have a grand gesture or a speech that’s going to fix everything.
I just have - I have time, now. Time I should have had all along.
And I want to spend it proving to you that I can be the husband I should have been. The husband I promised to be.”
“Pretty words.”
“I know. Words are easy. But I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m asking you to let me show you.”
“Show me how?”
“However you need. Whatever you need. I’ll stay in Calabria - not here, not on your parents’ property, I’m not trying to invade your space.
There’s a town down the coast. I’ll get a room.
I’ll be nearby if you need me, and I’ll stay away if you don’t.
I just - I need you to know I’m not giving up. Not on us.”
I feel my mother’s presence behind me, hear my father’s careful breathing. The sea crashes against the rocks below, the same sound it’s made for a thousand years, indifferent to the small human dramas playing out on its shores.
“And if I tell you to leave?” I ask.
“Then I’ll leave. Right now. I won’t come back to this gate again - I mean that. But I’ll be nearby, in town, if you ever decide you want to talk. That’s not a threat or pressure. It’s just… I want you to know I’m not disappearing. Not this time.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s not. It’s a promise. The only kind I know how to make anymore.
” He steps closer to the gate, his hands gripping the iron bars.
“I failed you for a year. I let you become invisible in your own life, and I didn’t even notice until you were already gone.
I can’t take that back. But I can spend however long it takes proving that I see you now.
That I’m paying attention now. That you matter more than the work ever did. ”
My breath catches. The anger I’ve been using as armor suddenly feels too heavy to hold.
“I want you to leave,” I say.
He flinches like I’ve struck him. But he nods, stepping back from the gate.
“Okay. I’ll go.”
“Don’t come back uninvited.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it, Antonio. I’m not ready for - I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for…”
“You don’t have to decide anything right now.” His voice is gentle, careful in a way I haven’t heard in so long. “You don’t have to decide anything at all. I just wanted you to know that I’m here. That I’m not running anymore.”
He turns and walks back to his car, and I watch him go - the slump of his shoulders, the weight of everything he’s carrying visible in every step. He opens the door, pauses, looks back at me one more time.
“I love you, Cass. I never stopped. Even when I was too stupid to show it.”
Then he gets in the car and drives away.
I stand at the gate long after the sound of the engine has faded, listening to the gravel settle, watching the dust drift back to earth. My father puts his hand on my shoulder. My mother appears at my other side, her presence warm and steady.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I don’t think I am.”
But I don’t go after him. I don’t call him back. I turn and walk toward the house, my parents flanking me like sentinels, and I tell myself I’m doing the right thing.
Behind me, the gate stays shut.
I don’t look back.