2. Matteo
MATTEO
Dinner is seven minutes late, which means Luca considers it perfectly on time.
I consider it seven minutes late.
“If you look at your watch again, I’m putting it in the wine,” Sebastian says.
I set my phone facedown beside my plate instead.
“That was not the watch.”
“Same disease. Different symptom.”
Across the outdoor table, Nico reaches down without looking and catches the wobbling leg with one hand. The old terrace table has been wobbling for at least twelve summers. Luca refuses to replace it because, according to Luca, furniture that survives Sebastian deserves respect.
Nico folds a paper napkin twice, wedges it beneath the leg, and lets go.
The table steadies.
“Fixed,” he says.
“You see?” Luca points at him with a wooden spoon. “This is why we keep you.”
“For folded paper.”
“For competence. It is rare here.”
Sebastian reaches for the bowl Luca has just set down.
Luca slaps the back of his hand with the spoon.
“Wait for Adrian.”
“Adrian has been late to dinner since the first summer. At this point, waiting is enabling.”
The empty chair beside Nico remains set anyway.
The open archway into Casa Bellamare stays empty. No footsteps. No Adrian.
Seven minutes becomes eight.
Luca catches me checking the archway and makes a sound of disgust.
“You are all impossible,” I say.
“And yet you come back every summer,” Sebastian says.
That is harder to argue with.
The terrace is the same collection of old habits it was last summer: Luca’s herb pots moved again, Sebastian’s sunglasses on a chair that is not his, Adrian’s untouched wine beside the empty place.
Beyond the eastern boundary, one set of shutters at Casa Ginestra is still open.
I looked when I came back from speaking to Claire.
Eight weeks.
I have more useful numbers to remember.
The side door opens before I can answer, and Adrian walks onto the terrace with a laptop bag over one shoulder.
“Eight minutes,” I tell him.
He takes in the table, the untouched place setting, and my phone facedown beside my plate.
“Good evening to you too.”
Luca puts food on Adrian’s plate before he has fully sat down. Sebastian steals a piece of bread from it. Nico moves the wine bottle out of Sebastian’s reach.
No one says we’re back. We have done versions of this dinner too many summers for speeches.
Luca finally sits.
“Now,” he says, “we eat.”
We manage perhaps four minutes before he looks toward the eastern side of the estate.
“Did the woman arrive at Ginestra?”
My fork stops against my plate.
Sebastian sees it.
Of course he does.
“Yes,” I say.
“Woman?” Adrian asks.
“Neighbor for the summer,” Luca says. “Ginestra is rented.”
“Photographer,” I add.
Sebastian’s eyebrows rise.
I should have left it at yes.
Luca asks whether she found the lower path.
“She did.”
“And you found her,” Sebastian says.
“She crossed the boundary. I pointed her back.”
Nico looks at me. “She understands it now?”
“Yes.”
“Then there is no problem.”
Exactly.
Luca glances toward the cottage again. “She arrived today and probably has nothing in the house.”
“She has groceries,” I say.
Silence.
Four faces turn toward me.
I pick up my wine, but it is too late.
Sebastian smiles first.
“This is excellent.”
“I saw a grocery bag through the open kitchen door when I asked how long she was staying.”
“You asked how long she was staying?”
“The owner said eight weeks. I confirmed it.”
“For security?” Sebastian asks.
“For accuracy.”
Nico closes his eyes briefly.
Luca stands.
“Where are you going?”
“To invite her to dinner.”
“She has eaten.”
The four faces turn back to me.
I put my fork down.
“There was a plate on the terrace.”
Sebastian looks delighted enough that I consider throwing the water at him before he can speak.
He speaks anyway.
“Matteo, I need you to understand how much joy you’re bringing me.”
“She had bread and cheese,” I say to Luca. “Possibly wine.”
Luca looks offended on behalf of the entire country.
“That is not dinner.”
“It is food.”
“It is surrender.”
He disappears through the side door.
I turn to Nico.
“Do not involve me,” he says.
Adrian reaches for the bread basket. “You could try not noticing the contents of the neighbor’s plate.”
“I noticed the open door.”
“Of course you did,” Sebastian says.
I am deciding whether the evening would improve if I moved him physically into the sea when Luca returns.
Claire is with him.
The decision becomes less urgent.
She has changed since this afternoon. Shorts, a loose pale shirt, damp hair that has started drying in uneven waves. No camera in her hands this time, although the strap mark is still faintly visible across one shoulder.
She stops just inside the terrace and takes in the table before she looks at me.
There is a fractional pause.
Then her mouth curves.
“Seventy-three steps.”
Sebastian turns to me so quickly his chair scrapes the stone.
I keep my expression neutral.
“Claire.”
Luca is already pulling out the chair across from mine. “Ignore him. Sit. You do not have to eat, but if you tell me bread and cheese counts as dinner on your first night in Italy, I will take it personally.”
Claire looks at him. “I also had wine.”
Luca presses one hand to his chest.
“Worse.”
She laughs and sits.
I reach for my glass before Sebastian can look at me.
Introductions happen around the table with the usual lack of order.
Luca gives his full name and immediately asks whether she eats seafood.
Sebastian introduces himself as “the reasonable one,” which Nico corrects without lifting his eyes from his plate.
Adrian gives Claire a quiet hello. Nico moves the bread basket within her reach before saying his name.
When Luca gets to me, he gestures with his wineglass.
“And you met Matteo Bellandi.”
Claire’s eyes shift to mine.
The change is small, but I see the recognition.
“Bellandi,” she repeats.
“Yes.”
She studies me for one second longer. “Hospitality.”
“Among other things.”
Sebastian makes a choking sound into his wine.
I look at him.
Claire does too.
“He means hotels,” Sebastian says. “A lot of them. And real estate. A lot of that too. Matteo likes ‘among other things’ because saying billionaire at dinner is considered poor manners.”
“Sebastian,” I say.
“See? Disapproving face.”
Claire’s gaze comes back to me. I wait for what usually follows recognition: extra attention, caution, a quick calculation of where I might be useful.
She only reaches for her water.
“So the seventy-three steps are billionaire-approved?”
Sebastian laughs into his glass.
“Do you count everything?” she asks me.
“Only things that benefit from being counted.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
“He has spreadsheets that require other spreadsheets,” Sebastian says.
“That is not true.”
Nico looks up. “It is close enough to true that arguing makes it worse.”
Claire’s mouth twitches. “I’m starting to understand the estate culture.”
“You have been here three hours,” I say.
“Four.”
I almost correct her, then stop. The challenge in her face says she was waiting for it.
Instead she looks past me at the wall beside the terrace doors.
“Is that stone original?”
I turn.
The section she is looking at has been repaired twice since we bought Bellamare, but most of the outer face is much older.
“Mostly,” I say. “The interior was reinforced. The exterior was left where it could be.”
She leans slightly to see the line where newer mortar disappears into older stone.
“Good.”
Sebastian looks between us. “That is your response to discovering he is obscenely rich? Masonry?”
Claire reaches for the bread Nico moved toward her.
“I already knew he was annoyingly specific. The money is new information.”
Luca laughs loud enough to startle a bird out of the lemon tree.
She tears the bread and glances at me as if she has not just improved Sebastian’s mood for the next week.
“You asked,” she says.
“I did not.”
“You looked like you were going to.”
“Looking is not asking.”
“I’m learning that accuracy matters here.”
I eat instead.
Claire does too, despite her claim that she has already had dinner. She takes one bite, then another, and on the third she closes her eyes for less than a second.
Luca sees it.
His entire face changes.
“Do not,” Claire says without opening her eyes.
“I said nothing.”
“You became smug at me.”
“You liked it.”
“I did not say that.”
“You did not have to.”
She opens her eyes and catches me watching.
I look down at my plate a fraction too late.
Luca, fortunately, is too pleased with himself to notice anything except her emptying dish.
The conversation moves without anyone steering it. Sebastian tells a story that grows less credible every thirty seconds. Nico corrects only the parts that affect physics. Adrian asks Claire whether the road to Ginestra was as bad as it looked last summer.
“Worse,” she says.
“What time did you finally get here?” Luca asks.
“Four twelve,” I say.
Claire turns toward me. “I was going to say four twelve.”
I remember the rental car turning into the lane because I had been on a call near the east windows when I heard the engine stop twice.
“I heard your car.”
“Of course you did.” Her mouth twitches. “And yes. Four twelve. Then I spent at least twenty minutes reconsidering every choice that led me there.”
Sebastian looks at me over the rim of his glass.
I ignore him.
Luca asks whether she has been to this part of the coast before.
“For work, briefly. Never like this.”
“Like what?” he asks.
Claire looks around the terrace, and her attention goes first to the worn edge of the table.
Then the mismatched serving bowls, Adrian’s laptop bag still on the floor, Nico’s folded napkin beneath the table leg, and the dark water ring where Sebastian has moved his glass three times without using a coaster.
“Like people actually live here,” she says.
A gust pushes one of the spare napkins across the table. Claire catches it against her wrist before it can reach the floor. When she puts it back, she spots the folded paper beneath the table leg.
“Please tell me that is not structural engineering.”
Nico lifts two fingers.
“Temporary structural engineering.”
“It has been temporary for years,” Luca says.
Claire looks at the repaired table, then at the old stone around us, and smiles as if both answers pleased her.
For once, Sebastian stops talking.
Most visitors start with the wall, the sea, the scale.
Claire is still looking at the folded paper under the table leg and the water ring by Sebastian’s glass.
“We do,” Luca says. “For as much of the summer as everyone manages.”
“Every year?”
“Every year.”
She looks at the five of us. “All of you?”
“In theory,” Nico says.
“In reality,” Sebastian adds, “someone is always late. Adrian has made an art form of it.”
Adrian lifts his glass. “I was eight minutes late.”
“Tonight,” I say.
Claire smiles. “You counted.”
“He always counts,” Luca says.
Her eyes meet mine again.
She has asked about the stone, the table, and whether we come back every year. I wait for the company question, and it never comes.
Luca offers her more food. She refuses twice and accepts on the third attempt, which is the correct way to manage Luca. By the time she stands to leave, the sky is fully dark and Sebastian has somehow convinced her that Nico once threw him off the dock.
“I pushed you,” Nico says. “There is a difference.”
“The sea did the rest.”
Claire laughs as she steps away from the table.
Luca points toward the eastern path. “Take the upper route. The lower one belongs to Matteo’s private kingdom of seventy-three steps.”
“I have been warned.”
I stand before I decide to.
“The path light near the wall is out.”
Nico looks at me. “Since when?”
“Since yesterday.”
“You did not tell me.”
“I was going to replace it tomorrow.”
Claire lifts her phone. “I have a flashlight. I survived airports before smartphone lighting. I’ll manage.”
She is already turning toward the path. I sit back down.
“Good night, Claire.”
“Good night. Thanks for the second dinner.”
“That was Luca.”
“I know. He made sure I knew.”
She waves at the table and disappears through the side path.
For several seconds, nobody says anything.
Then Sebastian says, “Four twelve.”
He is smiling into his wine.
“What?”
“She had not answered Luca yet.”
“I heard the car.”
“Yes. At four twelve.”
“It was relevant.”
“Naturally.”
Nico points his fork at Sebastian. “Leave him alone. We have been here less than a day.”
“I am leaving him alone. I am appreciating data. Matteo likes data.”
Adrian glances toward the eastern wall, then at me, and says nothing.
His silence is worse.
“She is the neighbor,” I say.
Luca smiles. “Yes. We established that.”
I finish my wine and refuse to provide any additional material.
Later, after the table has been cleared and the others have scattered through the house, I go to my residence on the quieter side of the estate.
At 11:17, I open my laptop.
At 11:24, I close the same email I have read twice without answering.
Music is coming through the open windows at Casa Ginestra.
Not the record Luca played at dinner. Something softer. Every few minutes the volume shifts.
The kitchen goes dark and the room beside it lights instead.
Worktable, probably. Editing.
She is a photographer. People with laptops do obvious things at night.
I stand to close my window.
Before I do, one rectangle of light remains visible through the trees beyond the boundary wall.
I catch myself wondering what she is photographing.