14. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
I don’t sleep.
I sit in the chair by Gio’s bed and watch him breathe, the way I’ve done a thousand times since he was born - counting his exhales, memorizing the curve of his cheek, reassuring myself that he’s real and safe and mine.
Except now he’s not just mine anymore. Now Giovanni knows. Now everything changes.
Around three in the morning, Gio stirs and opens his eyes.
“Mamma?” His voice is foggy with sleep. “Are you watching me again?”
“I’m just making sure you’re okay, piccolo.”
“I’m okay.” He rubs his eyes and sits up. “Is Signor Giovanni still here?”
“No. He went home. He’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
He’s quiet for a moment, processing this in that serious way of his. “Mamma, is he really my papa?”
“Yes, Gio. He really is.”
“Like in the picture?”
“Like in the picture.”
“Why didn’t he come before?”
The question I’ve been dreading for four years. I take a breath.
“Because I was scared, piccolo. I was scared that some bad people might hurt you, so I took you somewhere safe. And I didn’t tell your papa where we were, because I was afraid the bad people might find us.”
“But he wanted to find us?”
“Yes. He looked for us for a very long time.”
Gio absorbs this, his brow furrowed. “Was he sad? When he couldn’t find us?”
My throat tightens. “I think so. Yes. I think he was very sad.”
“That’s not very nice, Mamma.” He says it without accusation, just stating a fact. “Making someone sad.”
“No. It wasn’t. But sometimes-” I stop, struggling to explain adult complications to a four-year-old. “Sometimes we do things that aren’t very nice because we’re trying to protect the people we love. Even when it hurts someone else.”
“Like when you made me eat broccoli even though I cried?”
Despite everything, I laugh. “Something like that. Yes.”
He nods, satisfied with this explanation. “Can I show him my drawing? The one with the family?”
“What drawing?”
He scrambles out of bed and digs through his backpack - the one covered in rocket ship patches that he insisted on carrying himself through the airport. He pulls out a piece of paper and holds it up proudly.
It’s a crayon drawing. Three figures under a yellow sun: a woman with dark hair, a small boy, and a tall man with a circle for a face and dots for eyes.
“See? That’s you, and that’s me, and that’s Papa.” He points to each figure in turn. “I drew him from the picture. You said I could draw him even though I never met him, remember? Because he’s still my papa even if he’s far away.”
I remember. I remember him asking, his small face so earnest, and me saying yes because what else could I say?
“It’s beautiful, piccolo.”
“I want to give it to him. So he can remember us.”
“I think he would like that very much.”
Giovanni comes back at nine the next morning.
He’s brought pastries - a whole box of them from the bakery three blocks away, the one Delphine took Gio to yesterday when she was trying to distract him. He stands in the doorway holding the box like an offering, his face uncertain in a way I’ve never seen before.
“Gio mentioned pastries,” he says. “I didn’t know which kind, so I got several.”
“Come in.”
He steps into the house carefully, like he’s entering a minefield. Delphine is watching from the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
“Signor Giovanni!” Gio comes barreling down the hallway before I can stop him and skids to a halt in front of Giovanni. “You came back!”
“I told you I would.”
“Some people say things and don’t mean them.” Gio tilts his head, studying Giovanni with that assessing look. “But you meant it.”
“I always mean what I say.”
“Mamma says that’s a good quality.” He spots the pastry box. “Are those for me?”
“For everyone. But you can choose first.”
“Can I, Mamma?”
“Yes, but only one-”
But Gio is already taking the box from Giovanni’s hands, examining the contents with intense concentration. “There’s chocolate ones AND jam ones. And ones with cream. And - what’s this one?”
“Almond,” Giovanni says. “That was your mother’s favorite. I don’t know if it still is.”
I feel myself flush. He remembered.
“Mamma, do you still like almond?”
“Yes, piccolo. I still like almond.”
“Good.” He pulls out the almond pastry and hands it to me solemnly, then selects a chocolate one for himself. “Zia Delphine, which one do you want?”
“The jam, mon petit.”
“And you?” Gio looks up at Giovanni. “What’s your favorite?”
“I don’t really eat pastries.”
“Why not?”
“I never got in the habit.”
Gio considers this, then hands Giovanni a cream-filled one. “You should try this. Zia Delphine says cream ones are for special occasions, and this is a special occasion because you’re here.”
Giovanni takes the pastry, and something in his expression makes my chest ache - a mix of wonder and grief and desperate, desperate hope.
“Thank you, Gio.”
“You’re welcome.” He takes a bite of his chocolate pastry, getting crumbs everywhere. “Mamma, can we eat in the garden? It’s sunny.”
“If Zia Delphine doesn’t mind-”
“I’ll supervise,” Delphine says. “Come, petit monstre. Let’s let your mamma and-” She pauses, clearly unsure what to call Giovanni. “Let’s let the adults talk.”
Gio hesitates, looking between me and Giovanni. “You won’t leave while I’m gone?”
“I won’t leave,” Giovanni says.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Gio nods, then reaches into his backpack and pulls out the crayon drawing. “This is for you. I made it. It’s our family.”
Giovanni takes the paper like it’s made of glass. I watch his face as he looks at it - at the three figures, at the yellow sun, at the representation of everything he didn’t know he had.
“I drew you from Mamma’s picture,” Gio explains. “She keeps it in her special box but I looked anyway. You can keep this one so you don’t have to look in boxes.”
Giovanni’s jaw works. He doesn’t speak.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s the best thing anyone’s ever given me,” Giovanni says, and his voice is rough enough that I know he means it.
Gio beams. “Okay. I’m going to go eat in the garden now. Don’t leave.”
He bounces away, Delphine following, and Giovanni and I are left standing in the living room with a crayon drawing between us.
“Cielo-”
“We need to talk about what happens next.”
“Yes.” He carefully folds the drawing and tucks it into his jacket pocket. “We do.”
“There were men at the airport yesterday. Someone knew I was coming.”
“I know. I’m already looking into it.”
“And until you figure out who-”
“You’re not safe here.” He meets my eyes. “Neither is Gio. Which is why I’m asking you to come back to Milan.”
“To your house.”
“To my house. It’s secure. Protected. No one gets in or out without my knowledge.”
“You’re asking me to move into your fortress.”
“I’m asking you to let me protect my son.” His voice sharpens. “And you. Whether you want my protection or not.”
I think about the men at the airport. About the years of running. About how tired I am, how bone-deep exhausted from constantly watching every shadow.
“If I agree,” I say slowly, “it’s for Gio. Not for you. Not for us.”
“I understand.”
“I want divorce papers drawn up. I want this to be temporary - protection, nothing more. When the threat is handled, I want the option to leave.”
Something flickers across his face - pain, maybe, or anger - but he controls it. “Fine. I’ll have my lawyer draw up whatever you want.”
“And Giovanni-” I step closer, making sure he hears me. “You don’t get to use this as leverage. You don’t get to claim him just because I’m staying under your roof. Gio is my son. I’ve raised him alone for four years. If you want to be part of his life, you’ll earn it. Not demand it.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He holds my gaze. “I know I don’t deserve either of you. I know I have years of earning ahead of me, and I know you might never trust me again.” He takes a breath. “But I’m not going to fight you about the past, Cielo. I’m just going to spend as long as it takes to earn my family back.”
“Starting when?”
“Starting now.” He glances toward the garden, where Gio’s laughter floats through the window. “Starting with learning about stars and planets and whatever else that incredible child wants to teach me.”
We arrive at the Milan house in the late afternoon.
I’ve been bracing myself for the memories - the gate, the drive, the imposing facade that always made me feel like I was entering a museum instead of a home.
But the house that comes into view isn’t the one I remember.
“You painted it,” I hear myself say.
“Three years ago.”
“Terracotta.” The warm color I begged for when we first married, when I was naive enough to think paint could make a prison feel like home. He always said no. Too traditional. Too soft.
“I thought if you ever came back-” He stops. “I wanted it to look the way you imagined.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.”
But his voice says he hopes it might.
Gio, unaware of the adult tension, presses his face against the car window. “It’s so BIG, Mamma. Is this really where we’re staying?”
“For a while, yes.”
“Does it have a garden?”
“A very big garden,” Giovanni says. “And horses. And two men named Beppe and Rino who are going to be very excited to meet you.”
“HORSES?” Gio whips around. “Real horses?”
“Very real.”
“Can I ride one?”
“When you’re a little bigger, yes.”
“I’m almost five!”
“Almost five is big enough to learn.”
Gio turns to me, his face incandescent with joy. “Mamma, did you hear? HORSES.”
“I heard, piccolo.”
We pull through the gates, and I feel the walls closing in - but also, unexpectedly, something else. Something that might be relief, might be surrender, might be the simple exhaustion of finally stopping.
The first days are difficult.
Giovanni is gone most of each day - dealing with the investigation into the airport attack, he says, and I believe him because what else can I do?
Gio adapts with the resilience of children, making friends with Beppe and Rino, exploring the garden, chattering endlessly about horses and stars and pastries.
And I wait. Watch. Try to figure out what my life looks like now.
On the third evening, Giovanni finds me in the garden.
“The divorce papers are ready,” he says. “You can review them whenever you want.”
“Fine.”
“Cielo.” His voice shifts. “Can we talk? Really talk?”
“I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”
“There’s five years left to say.” He moves to stand beside me.
“I’m furious that you kept him from me. I’m devastated that I missed his first word, his first steps, his first everything.
But I’m also-” He stops, struggling. “I understand why you ran. I failed you. I let someone get close enough to destroy us, and I wasn’t there when you needed me. ”
“No, you weren’t.”
“I can’t change that. But I can change what comes next.
” He turns to face me. “I’m not going to fight you about the past. I’m not going to argue about who was right.
I’m just going to be here. Present. The way I should have been from the beginning.
” He pauses. “Starting with learning everything there is to know about space, because my son wants to be an astronaut and I’ve missed four years of his dreams.”
He walks toward the house, and I watch him go.
And despite everything - the fury and the fear and the walls I’ve built - something in my chest shifts.