01. Everything that came back
Charlotte opened her eyes and reached for the phone resting on the nightstand.
Morning light had already flooded the room, slipping through the powder-blue curtains left slightly parted the night before.
“I can’t wait to see you.”
The message had arrived at 8:17 a.m.
Charlotte stared at the screen for a few seconds, completely still, while a faint knot tightened in her stomach.
This was a terrible idea.
She let herself fall back against the pillows and pressed a hand over her face. Nine o’clock. Sharp.
Outside, the bora wind rattled softly against the villa’s windows.
Neri, asleep near the window, lifted his head the moment she moved. The large black mutt watched her in silence, then stood and padded over to the bed.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Charlotte muttered.
She scratched behind his ears anyway.
The night before, she had returned to Trieste after a long stay in New York, where her father and the rest of the Cooper family lived. Every time she came back to Italy, something shifted.
She could breathe again.
Maybe because the city never asked anything of her.
For the past three years, she had lived in a Liberty-style villa near the Botanical Gardens.
Three floors of old architecture, an English garden that smelled of rain and forgotten roses, and rooms she had filled slowly, carefully, with things that didn’t feel like they belonged to anyone else.
She loved that house.
It had once been her parents’ refuge.
Back when they were only Charles Cooper and Linda Evans, two English students in love with sailing, the Adriatic Sea, and dreams far too large for their future.
Charlotte slipped out of bed.
Neri followed.
Always.
Behind the illuminated glass doors of the dressing room, rows of coats, shirts, and cashmere were arranged with obsessive precision.
Her father used to say that true elegance wasn’t about wealth, but about permanence. Clothes that looked like they had always belonged to you.
Charlotte had taken that lesson too seriously.
White menswear shirt, navy cigarette pants, soft beige wool sweater draped over her shoulders.
Simple. Polished. Controlled.
An armor.
In the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror while tying her blonde hair into a loose ponytail.
Hurry.
And stop thinking about him.
Impossible.
For weeks, she had ignored her father’s calls. His voice always calm, always measured.
“Your hatred is unfair.”
“You need to hear his side of the story.”
“Charlotte, your memories of that time are confused.”
The last time they had spoken, Charles had said it the same way he discussed negotiations, sitting in his study, the scent of cigars heavy in the air.
“He’s a good man,” he had said quietly. “He only wants to explain what really happened.”
Really happened.
As if truth were still something simple.
Charlotte slipped on her navy coat and grabbed Neri’s leash.
Then she paused.
Her gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, to the nightstand.
In the bottom drawer, hidden beneath folded scarves, there was still one of Josh’s T-shirts.
Three years.
And yet nobody said his name anymore, as if he had never existed.
But Charlotte remembered everything.
Cedar Grove Cemetery.
Wet grass underfoot. Orange leaves spinning in the wind. A pale gravestone engraved with Joshua Lewitt Brown in an elegant script Josh would have hated.
Her father crying in silence. Richard with his head bowed. Christopher holding her upright because her knees had stopped working long before the coffin disappeared.
And then, him.
Standing apart.
Gray coat, dark sunglasses, perfect stillness.
As if grief could not touch him at all.
When the service ended, he had come to her.
“I’m sorry.”
Just that.
Charlotte still remembered the violence of what she felt then.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Christopher had pulled her away before she could say anything else.
They hadn’t spoken since.
And yet...
That morning, she was going to meet him.
She crossed the street with Neri as the bora wind tugged at her hair and rattled the half-open shop signs.
The café was almost empty.
She saw him immediately.
By the window.
One hand around an espresso cup, the other resting beside a heavy dark watch.
Every so often, he checked the time, his brows tightening slightly.
Impatience.
Or something else.
Charlotte stopped across the street.
Watching.
Through glass, through movement, through strangers passing between them.
He looked unchanged.
Controlled. Elegant. Distant.
As if nothing in the world could reach him.
For a moment, she considered turning around.
Leaving.
Then he looked up.
And their eyes met.
