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“Maria?”

I’m already moving before my brain catches up. The bed feels too empty, the silence too loud. Panic grips my chest like a vice, the ghost of that night—the hospital, the monitors, the poison—seizing me without warning.

I call her name, but there’s no answer. I throw back the sheets, my heart already pounding. The panic that I felt that day returns and it takes every mental ounce of strength I have not to lose my shit.

I get my boxers on and head straight out of the room. I walk down the stairs and make my way to the kitchen, but I find it empty. I look to the living room, but no one is there. My mind goes to the worst possible place until I see the light that comes from her new studio room.

I make my way to the room, and my heart instantly eases when I see my wife—her messy bun and my white button-down—as she stands by her easel.

I step forward, but I pause and just observe her for a moment. Instead, I lean against the doorframe, mesmerized.

Her fingers move with practiced ease, coaxing color into life, breathing existence onto the canvas. She is completely lost in her art, unaware of the way she commands the space around her. The tip of her tongue peeks out in concentration, a habit I find both adorable and devastating.

How can she create beauty with hands that should be shaking? How can she love me with a heart I helped break?

I lean against the wooden doorframe and drink her in. Those legs had been wrapped around my waist not too long ago. Her mouth has screamed the most ungodly things in my ear and she?—

“I can feel you staring, Matteo.” She doesn’t turn back. Her eyes never leave the canvas. “Instead of being a creep by watching me, you should come to greet your wife good morning.”

The humor in her tone is apparent; I can even hear the smile in it.

“I like stalking you, don’t you know?” I push off the doorframe and make my way into the studio. I feel proud every time I see this room. It is the first good thing that I did for my wife. “What are we drawing?”

I come up behind her, wind my arms around her waist, and kiss the side of her face, pulling her into me. I bury my nose in her thick locks and breathe a sigh of contentment.

I don’t know how I ever survived without her. She eases all the aches and pains. She makes life make sense again.

Maria exhales a small breath, a wistful smile tugging at her lips. She melts her back into me and pauses for a moment to turn to the side and kiss me. Her kiss is brief but it is enough to shake the very foundation that I stand on.

She pulls away far too quickly for my liking and then turns back to her work. I move my eyes to the canvas and get a better look at what she is doing.

“A lake?”

“It’s the one by our farmhouse in Tuscany. My brother and I used to love going there every time we went down south for the summer.” The sadness in her voice is hard to miss. “I just woke up thinking of him. I had a dream that we were back there, and I… I just wanted to paint it, in honor of him.”

The guilt moves like a thick sludge in the middle of my chest. Antonio. A name I will never forget and I will never be able to pay enough penance for.

“He loved it there. He said the world made sense when he was near the water and me. I didn’t get what he meant back thenbut now, since being deprived of the water, I get it.” She moves her brush over the canvas. “There is a calmness that comes with the push and pull of the waves. It’s like nature’s melody.”

I say nothing, allowing her this moment to speak of her brother. She carries her grief so well that I often forget she is still in mourning. I need to be more mindful of that. Especially the fact that I am the cause of that pain.

She dips her brush into a deep shade of blue, dragging it softly along the surface of the water she’s creating. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m losing pieces of him,” she murmurs. “But when I paint, I remember as the memories come flooding back to me. I can almost hear his voice again.”

The truth is a curse I carry alone—a wound that festers, never healing, never fading. If I rip it open for her, it will only poison her too.

I should tell her. I should have told her the second she spoke his name. But how do you confess to the woman you love that you were the one who took away the person she loved most?

Her brother’s blood is still on my hands, no matter how many times I’ve washed them. And if she ever finds out, she will never look at me the same way again.

I would rather live with this sin buried in my chest than watch the light in her eyes dim when she realizes who I really am.

So I lodge the truth deep into my psyche and lock it away.

I can’t tell her…

“You won’t forget him,” I say, my voice lower than before. “He will forever be a part of you. And that will never change no matter how much time passes. He lives on in you, Maria.”

She looks up at me then, her warm eyes searching mine. I wonder if she can see it: the weight I’m carrying, the sins I haven’t confessed. But if she does, she doesn’t say anything.