“My dad got sick two years ago,” you say. “At first he thought it was just tiredness. He kept working at the garage even when his hands started shaking. Then one day he collapsed next to a car he was fixing, and after that…” You pick at a splinter in the root. “After that he never really got back up the same.”
Matteo does not interrupt. That, somehow, makes it easier to continue.
“The doctors said his lungs were damaged, and then there were problems with his joints too. He can’t bend, can’t lift, can’t stand for long. Some days he can barely breathe without coughing until his face turns red.” You shrug, because if you do not shrug you might shatter. “So my mom started doing more laundry for people. I help sell eggs, take care of the chickens, gather scrap, carry things for the shopkeepers if they pay. Sometimes I skip school when there’s too much to do.”
His head snaps toward you. “Sometimes?”
You give a small, humorless smile. “A lot of times.”
For a moment he says nothing at all. The silence between you becomes crowded with everything that didn’t happen while he was gone: the letters that were never sent, the phone calls never made, the seasons of hunger, the fevers, the arguments whispered at night, the way your shoulders learned to carry weight that should never have belonged to them.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks at last.
You shake your head.
“You were gone. You had your own life. I didn’t want to be the poor friend asking for help from another country.” You keep your eyes on the ground. “I didn’t want you remembering me like that.”
He laughs once, but there is no humor in it. It is the sound people make when pain outruns language.
