°A boy who is just a 7 Years old, who looks so much like a 5 and half years old boy , being abused by his stepfather, neglected by his mother ,relaying on his crutches to move , can't say a sentence without stuttering , is finally with his family a...
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Massimo had just called Ricardo, the words spilling out of him like a confession, each one heavier than the last. He said they were coming home, but that wasn’t the part that made the world tilt on its axis. Luca had been abused. Oh God.
My heart clenched as if caught in a vice. This is all my fault—every bit of it. Massimo said Luca could barely walk now, that he needed crutches to move. Crutches.
The word echoed in my mind, a bitter reminder of everything that went wrong.
How did it come to this? How did I let it happen? If I had been stronger, if I had stopped Mama that night, none of this would have happened.
Luca wouldn’t have suffered. He wouldn’t have been taken from us, from me.
The blame is mine, and mine alone.
---
Five years.
Five long years have passed since that night, and yet it haunts me like a ghost that refuses to fade. I had woken up, thirsty in the middle of the night, and headed downstairs to get some water. The house was quiet, bathed in the soft glow of the moonlight that filtered through the windows.
But as I passed Luca’s room, I heard it—his cries, small and broken, the kind that tugged at your soul and left you feeling hollow.
I went to check on him, expecting to find Papa there, but instead, I saw Mama. She was holding Luca, rocking him in her arms. It was so out of place, so wrong, that I stopped in my tracks.
“Mama?” I whispered, my voice uncertain. She wasn’t usually the one to soothe Luca. That had always been Papa’s job. Mama wasn’t… she didn’t care about those things, about us, not really.
“Yes, Marco, it’s me,” she said, her voice soft but distant. “Go back to bed. Luca’s just hungry.”
Hungry? The word felt foreign coming from her lips, as if it didn’t belong there. Mama never cared if we were hungry or scared or lonely. So why was she there now, in the middle of the night, cradling Luca as if she actually cared? Was it possible? Could she be changing? Could she finally be trying to be the mother we needed her to be?
“Do you… do you want help with him?” I offered, my voice small, hesitant. Something wasn’t right. The whole scene felt off, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“No, go back to your room. I’ll take care of everything,” she replied, her tone final. Luca’s cries grew louder, more insistent, but she held him tighter, almost possessively.
I hesitated, torn between the instinct to stay and the desire to believe that maybe—just maybe—Mama was changing. Maybe she was finally going to be there for us, for Luca. Maybe I was wrong to doubt her.
“Okay, Mama,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I turned away. I went downstairs, the unease in my chest growing with each step. I tried to shake it off, to convince myself that everything was fine. Mama was his mother, after all. She wouldn’t hurt him. She wouldn’t.
