3. Claire
CLAIRE
I give up on sleep and check the cottage’s coffee tin.
There is enough coffee inside to prove someone once had good intentions. There is not enough to make anything I am willing to drink.
I stare into the tin anyway, as if another spoonful might appear out of shame.
It does not.
My body still thinks it is somewhere else. I slept for four hours, woke convinced I had missed a flight, spent twenty minutes trying not to look at the photographs from yesterday, and then listened to a bird outside my window conduct a personal campaign against silence.
Fine.
Coffee wins.
I pull on shorts, a loose shirt, and sandals, tie my hair up without checking the result, then put my smaller camera over one shoulder. Leaving it behind feels stranger than taking it, even when I have no intention of working.
The public path is easier to find in morning light.
The coast has not fully started its day yet.
A man in rubber boots is rinsing yesterday’s grit from a doorway.
Somewhere below, dishes knock together behind an open kitchen window.
Laundry hangs motionless between two buildings, waiting for the first real breeze.
I take one photograph of a blue shirt clipped beside a child’s yellow towel, then make myself put the camera down. Not everything interesting has to become work before breakfast.
Seventy-three steps are involved, because apparently Matteo’s counting has infected the landscape.
I do not count them.
I make it to sixty-one before realizing this means I have, in fact, been counting them.
Annoying.
The little bar I find twenty minutes later is tucked beside a road that curves above the water. Three metal tables sit outside under a faded awning. An old man is reading a newspaper at one. A woman behind the counter is stacking warm pastries into a glass case with the concentration of a jeweler.
No tourists yet.
Perfect.
I step inside, order a cappuccino, reconsider my life, and change it to a double espresso.
The woman raises one eyebrow.
“Long night?”
“Wrong time zone.”
“Same problem.”
She points toward the tables without asking what problem she means.
I turn with my cup.
Matteo is sitting outside alone.
Of course he is.
He has chosen the table with its back to the wall and the clearest view of both the road and the sea.
His phone lies facedown beside a small black coffee.
There is a folded newspaper near his hand, untouched.
He is wearing a pale blue shirt with the top button open and no trace of last night’s dinner-table formality.
Last night’s dinner table made him look like Bellandi the billionaire. Here, he is the man who arrived before the chairs finished cooling from the night air.
He looks up.
His eyes go to the espresso in my hand, then to my face.
“You counted the steps.”
I stop beside his table. “Good morning to you too.”
“You did.”
“I absolutely did not.”
“How many?”
“Sixty-one before I realized what was happening.”
One side of his mouth moves.
I already know that almost-smile.
“Sit,” he says.
He makes it sound less like an order than the most efficient solution to the fact that I am standing there.
I should choose another table on principle.
Instead I pull out the chair across from him.
“I am only sitting because carrying espresso is difficult.”
“Naturally.”
The woman behind the counter brings a small glass of water to my table without being asked. Matteo thanks her by name.
I notice because he does not perform the courtesy. He says it the way people say something they have said many mornings before.
“You come here often,” I say.
“When I’m at Bellamare.”
“At six thirty in the morning?”
“Usually earlier.”
I look at the coffee in front of him. “That is upsetting.”
“Why?”
“Because there should be consequences for being functional this early.”
“There are. Everyone else is asleep.”
He says it dryly, but something in his face loosens when he looks toward the empty road.
Sebastian is asleep somewhere instead of turning every silence into a sport, and Luca is not moving plates around because he thinks somebody needs feeding. It’s only Matteo, coffee, and a road not yet full of engines.
Messy may be beyond Matteo Bellandi, but he is quieter when nobody else is asking anything of him.
I take a sip of espresso.
It is excellent and strong enough to restart a small country.
“Do you always carry a camera to get coffee?” he asks.
I glance at the strap over my shoulder. “Do you always notice what people carry to get coffee?”
“That was not an answer.”
“It was adjacent to one.”
He waits.
I sigh. “Most of the time.”
“Because you’re working?”
“Because I don’t know when I will be.”
He gives a small nod, as if this makes sense to him.
“What are you working on here?”
The question is simple enough that I almost give him the brochure version: personal project, eight weeks, photographs.
Instead I turn my water glass between my fingers.
“It’s called Return. Working title.”
“Return to what?”
“Exactly.”
His expression says he finds this answer unnecessarily Claire-shaped.
I smile into my coffee.
“Client?” he asks.
“No client.”
His attention sharpens. “Personal?”
“Dangerously.”
“Why dangerously?”
“Because clients give you deadlines and page counts and somebody to blame when an idea stops behaving. Personal projects just sit on your hard drive judging you.”
His gaze flicks toward the camera strap. “How long has this one been judging you?”
“Almost a year.”
I have shot pieces of it between assignments in Lisbon, Chicago, Buenos Aires, a town in Maine where one family has rented the same crooked cottage for thirty-four summers.
Thousands of frames. Too many nearly-right photographs.
A folder on my laptop called FINAL SELECTS that currently contains four different folders also called final.
Tessa claims this is evidence of avoidance. I claim it is an advanced filing system.
Neither of us believes me.
“I’m photographing places people go back to,” I say.
“Not landmarks. Not the obvious things. Places with repetition attached to them. A café where somebody has had breakfast every Sunday for twenty years. A public bench two sisters still meet at even though they live an hour apart. The ugly beach a family refuses to replace with a prettier one.”
Matteo’s gaze shifts briefly toward the road, then back.
“Why?”
“Because people tell you what matters by what they return to.”
He takes a second before answering.
“Sometimes they return because changing is inconvenient.”
“That too.”
“Or because they own the place.”
“Less poetic, but useful.”
“You asked why.”
“I didn’t, actually.”
“You implied it.”
I laugh.
“Fine. What about Bellamare? You all come back every summer. Luca said every year.”
“We do.”
“Because you own it?”
“No.”
The answer comes too fast to be casual.
I set down my cup.
“Then why?”
He reaches for his coffee, though there is almost nothing left in it.
“It works.”
I wait.
“That’s your answer?”
“It’s a good place. The houses are private. The staff know how we use them. The airport is manageable. We can work from there if we have to. The dock makes the coast easier.”
“You just described an asset with excellent transportation access.”
“You asked a practical man a practical question.”
“I asked why five friends keep returning to the same place for fifteen years.”
His fingers still on the cup.
The pause is small enough that I might miss it if I were listening only to his words.
“History,” he says.
The word is quieter than the others.
The road below us catches a stripe of sun. A scooter passes, the first one since I arrived, and for several seconds it is too loud to say anything without raising our voices.
Neither of us does.
When the sound fades, Matteo looks toward the sea rather than at me.
“We knew one another before most of what came later,” he says. “Before the companies were this size. Before people had reasons to be careful around us. Bellamare is one of the few places where nobody at the table is impressed by anybody else.”
I think about Sebastian announcing Matteo’s wealth with the enthusiasm of a man lighting a fuse.
“I noticed.”
“Sebastian considers respect an optional seasonal service.”
“Nico seems supportive of that policy.”
“Nico is supportive of anything that irritates Sebastian.”
I smile.
“So history matters more than the dock.”
“I didn’t say the dock doesn’t matter.”
“There he is.”
“Who?”
“The man who refuses to let an emotional answer survive without adding infrastructure.”
Matteo looks at me for a long second.
Then he laughs.
It is brief, low, and completely different from the almost-smiles he rationed yesterday.
My hand moves toward the camera before I think.
I stop it on the table.
He sees that.
The laughter fades.
His gaze drops to my hand, then returns to my face.
“You remembered.”
“I have basic retention skills.”
“Apparently.”
A delivery van starts reversing badly beside us before either of us fills the space.
I take another sip and discover my espresso is gone.
This feels unfair.
“Do you want another?” Matteo asks.
“No. One is safe. Two becomes a personality decision.”
“You ordered a double.”
“I stop after lunch. Caffeine after noon means I get to know the ceiling personally at two in the morning.”
He glances at the empty cup as if filing this somewhere.
“Do not make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where information becomes a spreadsheet.”
“I don’t have that face.”
“Your friends would disagree.”
“My friends have poor judgment.”
“You jointly bought an estate with them.”
“Exactly. Evidence.”
I laugh hard enough that the old man at the other table looks over his newspaper.
Matteo’s mouth curves again.
I am smiling too much for someone who came out here only for caffeine.
I pick up my water instead.
“So,” he says, “you photograph return because you think repetition proves importance.”
“Not proves. Suggests.”
“Difference?”
“A big one. People repeat things that are terrible for them too.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
I glance toward the woman behind the counter. She is setting two cups in front of a man who has just arrived, one for him and one for someone who is apparently still parking. She does not ask what he wants.
“Maybe whether people still notice.”
Matteo follows my gaze.
“That is vague.”
“You hate vague things.”
“I prefer useful ones.”
“Fine. The small things people keep doing after a place, or a person, stops being new.”
He looks back at me.
More honest than I meant.
I keep talking before I can decide whether to take it back.
“Beginnings are easy. New place, new job, new relationship. Everybody notices everything at first. Later...” I lift one shoulder. “Sometimes they stop.”
Matteo’s expression barely changes.
“You think familiarity can make people careless.”
“Sometimes. Not always.”
“That sounds different.”
“Congratulations. You found nuance before breakfast.”
“It’s after breakfast for me.”
“Of course it is.”
He leans back slightly.
“Consistency is a choice.”
The sentence is so Matteo that I nearly laugh again.
Instead I look at him over the rim of my water glass.
“That’s a very confident thing to say.”
“It isn’t confidence.”
“What is it?”
“If something matters, you make room for it. Again and again.”
“Until you don’t.”
“Then it didn’t matter enough.”
I put the glass down.
“That is brutally convenient.”
“Why?”
“Because it turns every failure into a scheduling problem.”
He frowns.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You almost did.”
“No. I said consistency is a choice.”
“And people are excellent at choices when they are trying to win something.”
At win, the humor leaves his face.
“You assume effort drops once someone feels secure.”
“I think it can.”
“That is not the same as saying it has to.”
“I did not say it has to.”
“You implied it.”
“You are stealing my methods now.”
“They are efficient.”
“I regret teaching you anything.”
The woman behind the counter appears with a small plate between us.
Two warm cornetti.
“Eat,” she says to Matteo.
“I ate,” he says.
She gives his empty coffee cup a pointed look.
“Coffee is not food.”
Then she pushes the plate toward the middle of the table.
She is gone before either of us can answer.
I look at the pastries.
Matteo looks at the pastries.
“Apparently your mornings come with supervision.”
“She has opinions.”
“You take one.”
“You ordered coffee.”
“And now apparently I benefit from them.”
He pushes the plate slightly toward me.
“You first.”
“Very civilized.”
“I can be.”
I tear one in half because it is still warm and because arguing while hungry is amateur behavior.
For a minute we eat without improving either of our positions.
The road gets busier. A couple with backpacks stops at the counter. Someone drags metal chairs across stone. We have to pause twice for traffic before I finish the last bite.
His attention shifts toward the road.
He checks his watch once.
“Work?” I ask.
“Eventually.”
“That sounded painful.”
“It was seven thirty-four.”
I look at my phone.
Seven thirty-four.
“I walked into that one.”
“You did.”
I finish the last bite and stand before I decide to stay longer.
Matteo looks up at me.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the cottage. Then out with the camera before the light gets rude.”
“The public path is easier if you turn right at the fountain instead of following the road.”
“How many steps?”
“None.”
“Suspicious.”
I settle the camera strap on my shoulder.
He watches the movement but does not look at the lens.
“Claire.”
“Matteo.”
“Your assumption is wrong.”
I blink. “Which one? I have several before eight in the morning.”
“That people stop paying attention once they think something is secure.”
For a second he looks exactly like the man from the boundary path yesterday, all precision and certainty.
Then his gaze drops to my empty espresso cup and back to me.
“I intend to prove at least one of them wrong.”
I forget to laugh.
I stand there with my camera on my shoulder and the ridiculous awareness that I want to know how he plans to do it.