Page 173 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

A note slipped out from a stack of printed photographs.

For you

There was no signature, no other words. Nothing that could be read, obsessed over, analysed. Her handwriting was prettily sloped and he stared at it like a lovesick teenager.

His mother put down a glass of water beside him and picked up the silky photographs that he’d not even spared a glance at yet.

‘Oh…’

The word slipped from his mother in surprise and he peered over her shoulder to see the image she was looking at. It was from the party. Of him, his mother and Maria all laughing together.

One by one she leafed through the pictures, all beautiful, intimate moments captured perfectly by Ivy’s skill and masterful eye.

‘I saw her with the camera, but I didn’t expect… I didn’t think…’ His mother trailed off as she gazed at one of Maria talking to her father, with Micha looking on in the background—the look on his face unfathomable. ‘Hmm,’ she said, before turning to the last one. The picture Ivy had taken of him in the glade, the day before she’d left. ‘Oh, Antonio,’ she said, turning to him.

But all his attention was on the photographs.

‘She said that this was how she saw the world,’ he explained as he looked at picture after picture. They were good. Really good. There was a picture of him with the old couple laughing from the lace stall at the market. And once he reached the end, he went back to the beginning again.

‘What are you looking for?’ his mother asked.

He was about to say that he didn’t know, but then he realised that he did. He was looking for a picture of her. But she wasn’t in any of them.

He shook his head, thinning his lips purposely to stop them from trembling with an unnamed emotion.

She took the pictures back from him and looked at them sadly.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘You say this is how she sees the world?’

‘Sì.’

‘Then what do these pictures tell you?’ she asked.

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

His mother looked at him pityingly. ‘You. You’re in nearly every single one of these pictures. Youarethat world.’

That sudden realisation shot a sliver of pain so deep into his heart, he struggled to catch his breath.

Oddio.

He heaved a breath in, and his mother began to look panicked.

‘Antonio, please, you’re scaring me,’ she cried. ‘Talk to me,tesoro.’

‘I can’t afford to love her, Mamma,’ he said, the confession wrenched deep from within his heart.

‘Why not, Antonio?’

‘There is nothing equal to her love. Nothing valuable enough that I could ever give her in return.’

‘Mio cuore,’ his mother said, ‘in all the years I’ve loved you and cared for you, I’ve not once wanted anything in return. You may have thought I did, you may have pre-empted what you thought might be a request, but I’ve never wanted anything other than your happiness. You’ve bought me a house, jewellery, clothes, holidays—things I don’t want, becauseallI want is for you to be happy,’ she said with tears gathering in her eyes. ‘It breaks my heart that you think love is an exchange. I wish I’d never taken a thing from you if I taught you such a thing.’

‘No, Mamma, it wasn’t you,’ he said, unable to bear the tears she shed.

‘I’llneverforgive my husband for not being the man I thought he was. But Ivy is nothing like him. I saw that at the party and I see it with these.Youare enough. You,’ she said, holding him with a fierce grip, ‘are equal to her love. Just give her yourself. That is all she needs.’

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