Page 68 of From Italy With Love

How to be enough for him when I’d never been enough for anyone.

Not for my own father.

Not for Madigan.

And now, probably not for Henry either.

I walked through the house in a daze, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors, Henry still crying in my arms, his sobs growing softer now, more resigned. I found myself looking at all the evidence of the life we’d built together. Madigan’s books on the shelves, organized by author the way she liked them. Her favorite coffee mug on the counter, still half-full from this morning, a ring of lipstick on the rim. The blanket she’d been knitting for Henry draped over the back of the couch, half-finished, the needles still stuck through the yarn as if she’d just set it down and would pick it up again at any moment.

All the small, ordinary pieces of a life that was already over. A life that had ended not with a bang but with the quiet click of a car door and the crunch of tires on gravel.

I ended up in our bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the pillow that still held the indent of her head, that still smelled like her. The faint scent of her shampoo—floral and something sweeter, something uniquely hers—lingered in the fabric. I reached out and touched it, my fingers trembling, half-expecting the warmth of her to still be there.

Gone.

She was gone.

And I knew—with a certainty that went bone-deep, that settled into my marrow like ice—that I would never see her again.

Not because she didn’t love me. She did. I knew she did. I’d seen it in her eyes every morning when she woke up beside me, felt it in the way she touched my face, heard it in the catch of her breath when we held each other. That love had been real. It had been everything.

But love wasn’t enough.

It had never been enough.

Not against the weight of obligation, the pull of family, the guilt that had been drilled into her since childhood—layer upon layer of it, year after year, until it became part of who she was. Not against Nolan Kelley’s manipulation and control, his ability to make her feel like she owed him everything, like leaving him behind would be the ultimate betrayal. Not against the expectations, the duty, the suffocating sense of responsibility that she carried like chains.

Not against the world we’d tried so hard to escape.

Henry finally cried himself out, exhausted, his small body shuddering with the last few hiccupping sobs before he fell asleep against my chest. I held him there, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other wrapped protectively around his tiny form, feeling his heartbeat—rapid at first, then gradually slowing—his warmth, the solid reality of him. His weight against me was an anchor, the only thing keeping me tethered to this moment, to this life.

He was all I had left.

And I would protect him. Would raise him. Would give him everything I could—every ounce of love, every sacrifice, every moment of my life from this point forward.

But it wouldn’t be enough.

Because he needed his mother. He needed her smile, her voice, her gentle hands. He needed the way she sang to him, the way she rocked him, the way she looked at him like he was the most precious thing in the entire universe.

And I had let her go.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Day four

I knew because I’d been counting. Marking time in the absence of her presence, in the silence that filled every room like water rising in a sinking ship. Each hour stretched into an eternity; each minute a small death.

Four days since she’d walked out that door with her hastily packed bag and that look in her eyes—the one that told me she was already gone before she left.

Four days since I’d slept more than an hour at a time, my body betraying me every time I closed my eyes, jolting me awake with phantom sounds of her footsteps or the imagined cry of Henry needing her.

Four days of Sinclair’s daily check-ins that told me nothing useful, nothing that mattered. She’s fine. She’s at the hospital. Her uncle is stable. She’s safe. The same empty reassurances delivered in the same professional tone, as if repetition would make them more comforting.

Safe.

The word meant nothing when she wasn’t here. When she was breathing the same air as Nolan Kelley, when she was within reach of his manipulation and control. When she was back in the orbit of the man who’d spent her entire childhood teaching her that love and duty were chains, not choices.

Henry began to cry, and I realized I’d been standing at the window for twenty minutes, staring at nothing, my coffee cold in my hand. The world outside was empty, the morning gray and lifeless. I set the mug down and went to him, my legs heavy, my body moving like I was underwater.