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I collapse to the ground as they ease me down, my screams shrinking to broken gasps, hands trembling against the tile.

****

I sit on the hardwood floor of Nonna’s bedroom, cross-legged and broken. The hem of my black dress bunches around my thighs, stiff with dried creases. I haven’t moved in hours, maybe longer. My palms are pale, fingers stiff from gripping the edges of the documents spread across the rug like puzzle pieces I don’t know how to put back together.

The pages tremble faintly in my hands. Not from wind. There is no breeze here. The windows are shut tight, the curtains drawn. The air—heavy and unmoving—clings to my skin like a damp shroud. I can’t remember when I last drank water. Or stood up.

A birth certificate.

The names on it are strangers.

Another paper beneath it bears my name at the top—Lunetta Fiore, in elegant print—followed by legal phrases I can barely comprehend. A formal record of adoption. Carmela’s signature etched at the bottom, steady and sure. I run my finger over it. She signed it like she signed her love.

There’s a third document. Thicker. Older. A trust account with my name on it, passed down from the people I never got to know.

I stare at it all. Everything I believed I knew… was a story she had chosen for me.

Nonna is gone.

Buried yesterday in that church I used to love. I wore this same dress. The same shoes. I haven’t undone the braid in my hair since that morning. I can feel it loosening now, strands clinging to my cheeks.

I haven’t left this room. Not since the last guest left the wake. I’d come in here with a glass of untouched water, closed the door behind me, and when Bea knocked—I turned the lock.

Father Romani told me the truth at the cemetery gates. His words still echo.

“She wasn’t your grandmother, Lunetta. She adopted you the day after your parents’ accident.”

I didn’t ask questions. I couldn’t. My voice had vanished somewhere between the eulogy and the final shovel of dirt.

I hug my knees to my chest. My body aches from sitting, but I can’t stretch. I don’t want to feel the cold seeping into my limbs.

I miss the warmth of the café’s ovens. The way Nonna would hum while kneading dough. The way she’d tilt her head and ask, “Have you prayed today, my girl?” I’d always said yes. Back then, it was true. I felt God in those mornings—in the vanilla scent of pastries, in Bea’s laughter, in Nonna’s tired hands wiping flour from my cheek.

Now? Nothing. He took her from me and left me all alone.

I close my eyes, but it only makes the spinning worse. The shadows tilt. My head feels too heavy for my neck. My arms drop to the floor beside me, limp. I blink hard, trying to focus, but my vision shimmers at the edges like heat rising from pavement.

“Lune?”

Bea’s voice, muffled by the wood.

“You’ve been in there all night. I swear, I’m breaking this door—”

The panic in her voice cracks something open in me. I try to speak, but my throat feels packed with cotton. I reach for the documents, scatter them clumsily into a pile, but my fingers barely obey.

I push off the floor, dragging myself forward. One arm in front of the other. My knees scrape against the hardwood. I inch toward the door like someone crawling from a grave.

My fingertips touch the baseboard. Then the doorframe.

The knob is just inches away.

“Bea…” I whisper, or maybe I don’t. My lips form her name but no sound comes.

I grip the doorknob. But my strength gives out.

My body pitches sideways, shoulder slamming into the wall. I slump to the floor like a puppet cut loose from its strings. The room swims again, tilting. My eyes roll upward.

And then— the door flies open.