Morning arrived with Aria banging on the guest room door, shouting for her father before either man had even fully surfaced from sleep.

"Dad! Open the door! Aria's up!"

Enzo groaned into his pillow. "Go on, Donato. Your daughter's up disturbingly early."

Donato got up smiling despite the early hour and opened the door. Aria stood there in her nightdress, hair sticking up in every direction from sleep, clearly having come straight to him without stopping to freshen up first. He scooped her up and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Good morning, baby."

"Good morning, Daddy." She studied his face carefully. "Are you still sleepy? Did I wake you up?"

"No, baby, Daddy wasn't sleeping anymore." He shifted her onto his hip. "Why'd you wake up so early? It's only six."

"Because I wanted to check if you were still here or not."

Something in Donato's chest ached at that, the quiet fear underneath such a simple sentence--that she'd half expected to wake up and find him already gone again, the same way he'd disappeared out of her life the first time without her ever knowing why.

"I'm not going anywhere without you, baby. I'm here." He held her a little tighter. "You can still sleep a bit more if you're tired, it's early yet."

Aria shook her head firmly. "No, let's get ready. Mama said we're going somewhere today. But before we go, I want to show you the whole village and make everyone jealous." She giggled at the thought. "I want you to meet all my friends, and that auntie who always asks Mama about you and makes her sad.

Today I'm going to show everyone that my dad came back, after earning lots and lots of money." At the mention of money, something crossed her face, and she looked up at him seriously. "Dad. Did you earn lots of money?"

"Yes, baby. Dad earned a lot of money."

"So you don't have to go back to the city to earn more, right?"

"No, baby, I don't need to. But we could go to the city and live there, if your mama wants to."

Her eyes went wide. "Really? We can go to the city?"

"We can. We have a big house there."

"Aria wants to go there, Daddy." She said it with total conviction.

"We will," he promised, "whenever your mama's ready."

"Okay." She seemed satisfied enough with that. "Now let's get me ready. Do all the things I want today." Her whole face brightened at the thought that her father would be the one doing it, and she wriggled down and ran off to her room, returning a minute later dragging her toothbrush and the outfit Nova had already picked out and laid aside for the day.

Donato brushed her teeth carefully, helped her through her bath, and got her dressed, fumbling slightly with the small buttons on the back of her dress until he got the hang of it.

Once she was ready, he freshened up himself, and the two of them--father and daughter--set off together to tour the village, exactly as promised, ready to make sure every last person in Scanno knew Aria's father had finally come home.
_____

Aria led him down the first street with the confidence of someone who owned the entire village, one small hand wrapped around two of his fingers, the other pointing out landmarks like a tour guide who'd been rehearsing this exact moment for years.
"This is the bakery, they make the best bread, better than ours but don't tell Grandpa I said that."

She didn't even pause for breath. "And that's the fountain, sometimes coins fall in and if you make a wish it comes true, I wished for you last year and look, it worked."

Donato's throat tightened at that, but she was already tugging him forward before he could say anything. The first person they passed was an older man sweeping the front step of his shop, and Aria stopped dead in front of him, chest puffed out.

"Signor Marco! This is my dad!"

The man looked up, squinting first at Aria, then at the tall stranger beside her, clearly trying to place the sudden appearance of a father nobody in the village had ever laid eyes on.

"Is that so," he said slowly, a smile creeping in.

"Yes! He came back from the city. He earned lots of money, so now he doesn't have to go earn any more." She said it like she was reading off an official report. "And look- She pointed at her own eyes, then up at Donato's. "Green eyes. Same as mine. I told everyone I have green eyes because of my dad and nobody believed me, but now you can see I wasn't lying."

Signor Marco laughed, properly, and offered Donato a hand to shake. "Well. Congratulations, then. She's been telling that story about the green eyes for months, you know. We were starting to wonder."

"I wasn't lying," Aria said again, mostly to herself, satisfied, and pulled Donato onward before the conversation could go any further.

It went on like that for the better part of the morning. She stopped at the little shop that sold ribbons and hair clips, announcing to the woman behind the counter that her father was home and that he was, in fact, very rich, and very handsome, and that everyone should know it.

She stopped an elderly woman walking her dog and gave her the same speech, word for word, gesturing at her own eyes with the practiced flourish of someone who'd clearly given this presentation before, just never with proof to back it up until now.

When they reached a narrow street lined with small houses, she planted her feet in front of one gate in particular and cupped both hands around her mouth. "MIRA! MIRA, COME OUT!"

A window opened somewhere above, and a small girl's head poked out, hair in two uneven braids. "What?"

"Come down! Aria has something to show you!"

There was the sound of feet on stairs, and a minute later the gate creaked open and a girl about Aria's age came bounding out, still in her pajamas, eyeing Donato with open curiosity.

"This is my dad," Aria announced, tugging him forward by the hand like she was presenting evidence in a trial. "See? Green eyes. Just like me. I told you my dad had green eyes and you said I was making it up."

Mira leaned in, studying Donato's face with the deep, unembarrassed scrutiny only small children are capable of. "Huh. She wasn't lying."

"I told you," Aria said, triumphant, hands on her hips.

"Is he really rich?" Mira asked, tilting her head at Donato like she was assessing a piece of furniture.

"Very rich," Aria said, with total authority, despite having no actual concept of what that meant beyond the fact that her father had said so that morning. "And handsome. The most handsome man in the whole village. Everyone's going to be so jealous."
ˋ
Donato, standing there being discussed like a prize exhibit by two four-year-olds, could do nothing but laugh quietly and let it happen, something warm and slightly disbelieving settling into his chest with every new stop. Somewhere in the middle of the third street, he realized he hadn't stopped smiling in over an hour, and it had been longer than he could remember since that had been true.

They went to two more gates after that, one boy named Theo who immediately wanted to know if Donato could throw a ball far, and another girl whose name Aria forgot halfway through the introduction and simply gestured at instead, before finally circling back toward the café, Aria still narrating the entire walk like she was documenting a historical event.

"Everyone knows now," she said, satisfied, swinging their joined hands as they turned the last corner. "Nobody can say Aria was lying anymore."

"No," Donato agreed, throat tight in a way that had nothing to do with the morning's walking. "Nobody can say that anymore."
_____

By the time they got back it was already past eight, and breakfast was waiting. Nova had made coffee--espresso, specifically, without any real reason she could point to. She hadn't asked what he liked. Something in her had just moved toward it on its own, some old instinct steering her hands before her mind caught up to question it.

Alongside it sat a plate of olive oil bread and a stack of pancakes still steaming slightly from the pan. She saw Aria and Donato through the window before they reached the door and started laying the table properly, plates and cups in their usual places.

Enzo was already up and freshened for the day, out in the garden with the old man, the two of them crouched over a row of flowerbeds, the old man pointing something out about the soil that Enzo was nodding along to with more patience than Nova would have expected from him.

The moment Donato and Aria came through the door, Aria launched straight into recounting the entire morning to her mother--how she'd introduced her father to Signor Marco, to Mira, to Theo, mimicking each person's wide-eyed reaction with exaggerated gestures of her own, her small hands flying as she narrated.

Nova listened with the same enthusiasm Aria was performing with, laughing in the right places, asking the right follow-up questions, until Aria finally ran out of story.

"Go tell Daddy breakfast is ready," Nova said, nudging her gently toward the door. "And call Uncle Enzo and Grandpa in too."

The old woman came out from the kitchen at the same moment, carrying a kettle of black tea, setting it down at the center of the table.

Aria took off immediately, shouting the announcement across the garden first ''Breakfast is ready!" and both men straightened up, wiped their hands, and made their way inside. Then she ran down the hallway toward the guest room, where Donato had disappeared to clean up after the walk.

"Dad, are you there?" she called, standing right outside the bathroom door.

It opened a moment later, Donato drying his hands on a towel. "Yes, princess. What's wrong?"

"Breakfast's ready, let's go eat." She'd already grabbed his hand, pulling him along before he'd even finished drying off, and he let himself be dragged, laughing.

Once everyone had settled around the table, they started in on breakfast properly. Nova set the espresso down in front of Donato without a second thought, and it was only after she'd already turned back toward the stove that Donato registered what she'd done.

He stared at the cup for a second, something catching in his chest. Does she remember, somewhere underneath everything, that this is exactly what I always drink? Or is this just chance? He turned the thought over once, then let it go, telling himself it was probably nothing--a coincidence, nothing more, no reason to read into a cup of coffee like it meant something it couldn't possibly mean yet.

Partway through breakfast, Enzo reminded everyone that the clinic appointment was at ten, which meant they needed to leave shortly after finishing up. Everyone nodded, the mood shifting slightly, quieter now, aware of what the day still held.

Once breakfast was done, Nova cleared the table and tidied the kitchen while the old woman washed the cups, and then she took Aria to get her properly dressed she'd already had her bath that morning, so it was just a matter of changing into a fresh outfit.

Nova changed too, quickly, and by the time she came back out, Donato, Enzo, and the old man were already by the door, ready to go. The old woman joined them a moment later, locking up the shop behind them.

They split between the two cars the old couple riding with Enzo, while Nova and Aria climbed into Donato's car with him and together the small convoy pulled away from the café, heading out toward the clinic and whatever the next few hours were about to confirm.
______

Once they reached the clinic, the doctor took the samples--a quick swab from Aria, still half-asleep and mildly annoyed about it, and one from Donato, who sat perfectly still, watching the whole procedure like it mattered more than anything he'd ever witnessed.

They were told the results would be ready within two hours, sent directly to Enzo's number rather than requiring anyone to wait around in the clinic itself.

With nothing left to do but wait, they decided to head back. Enzo still had to get to the city eventually, but he chose to drop the old couple home first and stay close by until the report came through, rather than leave things unfinished.

They settled back into the two cars and made the drive back to Scanno. Aria, worn out from a longer stretch in the car than she was used to, gave up fighting sleep somewhere along the way and slumped against Nova's lap, out cold by the time they pulled up outside the house.

Donato got out first, lifting Aria carefully into his arms so she wouldn't wake, then turned back and offered his free hand to help Nova out of the car. She took it without hesitation, without even seeming to register that she'd done it-- the gesture arriving so naturally between them that neither of them thought twice about it in the moment.

Donato noticed, though. He always noticed things like that now, small unconscious movements that felt too familiar to be coincidence. Somewhere in Nova, Kiara is still there, he thought, settling Aria more securely against his shoulder. Memory can disappear, but the body remembers things the mind forgets.

He let himself hold onto that thought a little longer than usual, turning over an idea that had been forming since breakfast that maybe taking her back to the city, back to the family, back to the rooms and faces she used to know, might do more to bring her memory back than anything he could tell her here. He decided he'd bring it up with her, gently, once the results were in.

They went inside. Donato carried Aria to the guest room and lay down beside her to rest while she slept, and Nova retreated to her own room, worn out in her own way. The old couple went to their room too. A few minutes later Enzo came in as well, and before long the whole house had gone quiet, everyone giving in to the exhaustion of the morning.

About two hours later, Enzo's phone started ringing. He blinked awake, fumbled for it, and saw the clinic's number on the screen. He picked up, listened for a moment, said a quiet "thank you," and hung up.

The results were in. Positive. The doctor had already sent the written report through to his email. He got up and went straight to wake Donato.

"It came back," Enzo said quietly, crouching beside where Donato lay next to his still-sleeping daughter. "Positive. She's really yours."

Donato just smiled, unsurprised. He'd known it the moment he'd seen her--the DNA test had only ever been for the old couple's sake, and for Nova's, so that neither of them would ever have reason to doubt what he already knew in his chest.

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Aria's forehead, still fast asleep, oblivious to what had just been confirmed about her entire life.

"We should show Kiara," Enzo said gently.

Donato nodded, and the two of them got up and made their way out to the living room, where they found the old couple and Nova already sitting, having clearly woken from the sound of the phone ringing through the thin walls.

Donato and Enzo sat down, and Enzo held out the report, the printed confirmation plain and undeniable on the page.
The old couple's faces broke into wide, relieved smiles. "Thank god," the old woman said, pressing a hand to her chest. "Nova's finally found her family. Everything Mr. Donato said--it was all true."

Nova sat very still, tears building in her eyes without her quite understanding why they'd come so easily. She didn't know what to say. Somewhere underneath the shock of it, underneath five years of uncertainty finally collapsing into a single, undeniable fact, there was something like relief too--that her daughter would finally have a whole family again, that the questions that had followed her for so long finally had at least one real answer.

____

After the confirmation, Donato said what he'd been holding onto since morning-- that he wanted to take Kiara back to the city with him.

The old couple had no objection. They were happy, genuinely happy, that Nova had finally found her family, even with the quiet sadness underneath it--the knowledge that soon this house would be without her and Aria both, after five years of the three of them being each other's whole world. But they didn't let that sadness show more than a flicker.

Kiara didn't say anything right away. Donato waited, patient, telling himself he'd accept whatever she decided--if she wanted to stay here longer, if she needed more time before making any kind of move, he wouldn't push. But somewhere underneath that patience sat the plain, aching truth that he wanted her to come back with him more than he'd wanted almost anything in five years.

The old woman noticed the hesitation sitting behind Kiara's eyes and reached over, taking her hand. "Kiara." She used the real name this time, gently, like she was helping Kiara grow into it. "Sweetheart, you have a whole family out there waiting for you. What is there to think about? Go with your husband. Aria deserves her whole family. She deserves to be loved by everyone who's supposed to love her."

"But aunty." Kiara's voice wavered. "If I go, you two will be all alone. How can I just leave you both?"

"Oh, Nov- Kiara, stop that." The old man cut in gently, correcting himself mid-word. "You worrying about us instead of yourself, that's exactly what we don't want. We didn't bring you into our lives so you'd owe us anything, Kiara. We were already planning to move here, to Scanno, that very day, five years ago, with or without you.

Finding you was just how things happened to fall. We've always wanted this for you--for you to find your family again, to be happy with them. Having you these past five years, watching you become like our own daughter, that's been more than enough for us. So think of it this way. We're not losing you.

We're just sending our daughter off to be with her in-laws." He smiled, eyes wet despite himself. "We'll come visit you in the city. And you'll come back here too, whenever you want. This house isn't going anywhere."

Kiara couldn't hold it back after that. She pulled both of them into a tight hug, crying freely now, the old woman patting her back gently the whole time.

When she finally pulled away, she turned to Donato. "Mr. Donato. I want to talk to you first. About everything. After that, I'll decide if I want to go with you or not."

Donato nodded, and the two of them walked out to the garden, settling onto the same bench from the night before. He started slowly, telling her everything--how they'd met, how they'd gotten married, and then, a year into the marriage, how he'd found out she'd been the one watching him, following him. He told her all of it. What he'd done. What his family had done.

What Rose had done, and how it had all led to Kiara being sent away, institutionalized, how and why she kill tara. why she started to stalk him. and eventually the accident that took her from all of them. He told her that she'd been in love with him even before the marriage had been arranged, long before any of this began. He told her everything that had happened after she disappeared too--the search, the years of nothing, the fire, Enzo, all of it, laid out in full.

Kiara listened, and her tears didn't stop the entire time. So much had happened to her, in a life she couldn't remember living. She didn't excuse what she'd done--some part of her, listening to it now with no memory to soften it, still understood plainly that following someone, watching someone without their knowledge, wasn't right, whatever the reasons behind it.

And when he mentioned Tara, mentioned what she'd apparently been accused of doing, something cold moved through her. She couldn't imagine herself capable of taking someone's life, couldn't reconcile the version of herself being described with anything she felt sitting on this bench right now.

Guilt settled into her chest for a version of herself she didn't know. She decided, quietly, to leave that particular judgment for later for when, if, her memory ever returned and she could actually understand what she'd been thinking, what she'd been protecting, rather than judging it secondhand through someone else's retelling.

But the part that hurt most wasn't what she'd done. It was everything done to her in return. Donato not trusting her. Not giving her the chance to explain herself. Rose's role in all of it. The way an entire family had turned on her without once asking her side. She could accept that she'd been wrong.

But nobody, she thought, deserved to be treated the way she'd apparently been treated--accused, isolated, sent away, judged by everyone who was supposed to love her, without a single person stopping to actually hear her out.

When he finished, she sat with it for a long moment, then stood.
"I need some time to think," she said quietly, and walked back toward her room, leaving Donato alone on the bench.

He sat there afterward, still hoping, still holding on to the thin thread of possibility that she'd choose to come with him anyway. He knew how hard this had to be for her--accepting a truth this heavy about people she couldn't remember loving, about a past that had broken her in ways she had no memory of feeling.

All he could do now was hope she had it in her to forgive him, even once, and give him one real chance. He knew, deep down, that he didn't deserve that chance. But he was selfish enough to want it anyway. He couldn't walk away from his wife or his daughter now that he'd found them both. He needed them. And for that, he can do anything.

____

Kiara sat alone in her room for a long while, the door shut, Aria now asleep on the bed beside where she'd settled on the edge of it. Maybe she comes to find her when she wakes up and falls asleep again.

She looked at her daughter's face--soft, unaware, breathing evenly--and something in her chest twisted at the thought of everything this small girl had already lived through without ever understanding the shape of it. A mother who didn't remember her own name. A father she'd only just met, calling him daddy the second she'd laid eyes on him, so hungry for that word to mean something real.

She thought about what the old woman had said. Your daughter deserves her whole family. She thought about what Donato had told her, too--all of it, replaying in pieces, none of it settling into any order that made sense yet. A version of herself who'd loved a man before their families arranged the marriage.

A version who'd apparently loved him so much she'd watched him in secret, hurt someone over it, and then been discarded for it without a single person asking why. She turned the guilt and the anger over in her hands like two sides of the same coin, unable to set either of them down.

A soft knock came at the door."Kiara?" The old woman's voice, gentle. "Can I come in?"

"Yes."

The old woman stepped in and sat beside her on the edge of the bed, glancing first at Aria's sleeping face before looking at Kiara properly. "You don't have to decide everything tonight," she said quietly. "Whatever you choose, we'll support you. But I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually think about it before you answer."

Kiara nodded. "Setting aside everything that happened five years ago the parts that hurt, the parts you're angry about, all of it. When you look at that man out there. What do you feel? Not what you think you should feel. What do you actually feel, sitting in your chest, when you look at him?"

Kiara was quiet for a long moment, staring down at her own hands. "I don't know how to explain it," she said finally. "I don't remember him. I don't remember any of what he told me. But every time I look at his eyes, something in me--aches. Like I've missed something for a long time without knowing what it was."

She swallowed. "And when Aria hugged him, when she cried into his shoulder like she'd been waiting for that exact moment her whole life-- I felt something too. Something that didn't need memory to understand it was right."

"That's your answer, then," the old woman said softly.

"But what if I go there, and none of it comes back? What if I spend the rest of my life surrounded by people who love a woman I can't remember being, in a house full of memories that mean nothing to me?" Her voice cracked. "What if I disappoint all of them? What if they compare me to who I used to be, and I keep failing to be her?"

"Then you tell them that," the old woman said simply. "You tell them exactly what you just told me. Any family worth having will learn to love the woman in front of them, memory or not. And if they can't well, then you'll know that too, won't you?"

Kiara let out a shaky breath, wiping at her eyes. "He said he'll wait," she said. "For as long as it takes. Even if I never remember. He said that."

"Then maybe," the old woman said, patting her hand, "it's worth finding out if he means it test him."

Kiara looked down at Aria again, at her daughter's small, peaceful face, and something in her finally settled, not fully resolved, but enough to move forward with. "Okay," she whispered, more to herself than to the old woman. "Okay. I'll go."
_____

It was lunchtime when everyone settled around the table, and once the meal was finished, Kiara finally spoke. "Mr. Donato." She set down her fork. "I've decided. I'm ready to go with you. I want to go to my family."

Both Donato and Enzo lit up at once, relief breaking across their faces so plainly that even the old couple exchanged a small, satisfied glance.

"Thank you," Donato said, voice thick. "Thank you so much, Kiara." He leaned forward slightly, already thinking ahead. "We can leave this evening, if you're ready. Or-- if you want to stay more we can go tomorrow then."

Kiara didn't respond right away. "We'll go tomorrow," she said finally. "I'll need to book tickets first. And I have packing to do."

Donato smiled, easy, already dismissing the concern. "You don't need tickets. We can just take my car."

"Mr. Donato." She looked at him steadily. "I don't think you heard me correctly." She said it slowly this time, like she wanted to make sure it landed exactly right. "I want to go to my family. My maternal family. I want to go to India. To my parents' house."

Donato's face fell. He'd braced himself for a lot of things sitting at this table hesitation, conditions, maybe even a request for more time before she'd agree to anything at all. He hadn't braced for this.

Thoughts 🤔