OLD WOUNDS

The cemetery is on a hill just outside the city, rows of gray stone under a sky that can't decide if it wants to rain.

Wind pushes through the grass in long waves.

A few bare trees stand near the edge of the hill, branches knocking together every time the wind picks up.

Elena's never been here. She's sure of that much, at least.

But her feet know where to go anyway, and she finds herself walking past name after name until she stops in front of one.

Matteo Rossi. Beloved Father. Beloved Husband.

The carving's worn soft at the edges. Someone's left flowers at the base — white ones, still fresh. Sofia, probably.

She stands there for a while, not doing much of anything.

Just breathing, mostly, while the wind pulls her hair across her face and she doesn't bother fixing it.

Dante hangs back a few feet, hands in his pockets, letting her have this. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.

"I don't remember your voice," she says, quiet, to the stone. "I've tried. Some nights I just lie there trying to remember what you sounded like and there's nothing. Victor took that too."

She shuts her eyes and tries for his face. Nothing comes. His laugh. Also nothing. Just a gap where a person should be.

She crouches down and runs her fingers over the letters. Cold stone. Rough under her hand.

"I know you loved me," she says, and her voice catches on it.

"Sofia told me you used to sing off-key on purpose. Just to make me laugh." A small laugh escapes her, wet and unexpected.

"I wish I remembered that."

That's when it really hits her — everything she's been holding together through weeks of trial dates and search meetings and Victor's calm, awful face across a courtroom.

She presses a hand over her mouth, but the tears come anyway.

"I'm sorry," she says, and she can barely get the words out clean. "I'm sorry it took me this long.

I'm sorry I didn't know your name was one I should've been grieving. I'm sorry I forgot you."

Dante kneels beside her and puts a hand on her back. He doesn't try to fix it. He just stays there.

"You don't have anything to apologize for," he says after a minute.

"Feels like I do." She wipes at her face, annoyed at herself for crying.

"He died because of me. Because I existed. Because Victor couldn't risk me remembering."

"He died because Victor's a monster who cares more about power than his own family."

Dante's voice doesn't waver. "None of this is on you. You were a kid."

"I know that." Her hands are shaking. "I know it doesn't make sense to blame myself. Grief's not really big on making sense, though."

"No," he says. "It isn't."

They sit like that a while. Somewhere below the hill a car passes on the road. A bird calls out once from the trees and nobody answers it.

"Tell me about him," she says eventually, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, not caring how she looks. "You knew him. Tell me something real."

Dante thinks about it for a second. "He scared me more than Victor ever did," he says, and there's a smile creeping into it now.

"Not because he was mean. Because he adored you, and every time I got near you at some party, he'd look at me like he was deciding on the spot whether I deserved to be standing that close."

"Did I notice that? You two doing your whole thing?"

"You thought it was funny. You used to tell him he'd scared off every man in the city except the one too stubborn to leave."

She laughs — a real one this time, surprised out of her. "Okay, that sounds like me."

"He came around, eventually. Gave us his blessing about a week before it all happened.

Told me if I ever hurt you he'd make me regret it, then hugged me like I was already his son."

Something in her chest twists — not quite pain, not quite comfort, some mix of the two she doesn't have a word for.

"I wish I remembered him saying yes to us."

"Doesn't need your memory to be true." He takes her hand, presses his mouth to her knuckles. "He loved you.

That part never stopped being real just because you forgot it."

She looks at the flowers again. "Sofia leaves those?"

"She comes up here a lot, from what she's told me. Says it helps."

"I should've come sooner."

"You came when you could." He squeezes her hand. "That's what counts."

"What did he love most about me? Do you know?"

"Your laugh." Dante's mouth curves. "He said it was the best sound he'd ever heard.

Told people that once they heard you laugh for real, they'd get why he was so protective."

Her eyes well up again, but it's different this time. Not grief exactly. Something softer.

"I wish I remembered that too."

"You will." He says it plainly, like a fact rather than a comfort. "Not all at once, probably. Bits and pieces, same as everything else so far. But it'll come."

She stays a while longer, talking to the grave the way you'd talk to someone who might still be listening.

"The trial's happening," she tells him. "Victor's finally answering for it. He can't touch anyone else now."

She stops, swallows. "I'm going to make sure he pays for all of it. I promise you that."

"He will," Dante says. "We'll see to it."

She stands, brushing dirt off her knees, legs stiff from crouching too long in the cold.

One more look at the grave, and something in her settles — not fixed, not whole, but closer to it than she's been in weeks.

"I love you, Dad," she says, and the words feel strange coming out, like a language she's only just learning to speak.

"Didn't get to say that before. Saying it now. And I'm going to make sure everyone knows what he did to you."

Then she turns and walks back toward the car.

They walk down together, her hand in his, the wind finally settling. Overhead, the clouds are starting to break apart, letting thin strips of sun through.

"Thanks for bringing me," she says. "I needed this more than I realized."

"Should've brought you sooner."

"No. I needed the trial first. Needed to see him actually facing it before I could grieve properly.

Otherwise it would've felt empty — mourning while he was still out there, untouched."

"Fair enough." He opens her door, pauses before she gets in. "How do you feel?"

She glances back at the hill one last time, stones catching the light now. "Lighter," she says.

"Not fixed. But lighter. Like I finally got to say goodbye instead of just finding out ten years too late that I'd already lost him."

"That's not nothing."

"No." She gets in, tired but smiling a little. "It's not nothing."

He climbs in beside her, takes her hand again as the car pulls off. The sky keeps clearing above them.

"Where to?"

She leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. "Home. Just home. That's enough for one day."

The hill shrinks in the window behind them until it's gone completely. Elena doesn't watch it go. She's already asleep.