He took out his phone and called Claire.
She answered after several rings.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Mum.”
“Everything all right?”
“We can see Sicily.”
Claire was silent.
Then she said, “Can you?”
Oliver turned the camera.
For a moment the picture shook as he tried to position it.
“There.”
His mother made a small sound.
“That’s beautiful.”
“That’s where Nonna is.”
“I know.”
Daniel leaned into the picture.
“We’re nearly there.”
Claire looked at them both.
Oliver saw that she was crying.
“Mum?”
She laughed and wiped her face.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.”
“I’m allowed.”
Oliver grinned.
“Nonna says that.”
“Your grandmother is right about many things.”
Daniel smiled.
“Don’t tell her you said that. She’ll become impossible.”
Claire laughed.
Then she asked Oliver to pass the phone to his father.
The two adults spoke quietly for several minutes.
Oliver turned back toward the water.
He did not try to listen.
Afterwards, Daniel stood beside him at the railing.
“Everything okay?” Oliver asked.
“Yes.”
“Was Mum upset?”
“She’s relieved.”
“Because we’re nearly finished?”
“Partly.”
Oliver watched a gull follow the ferry.
“Will she be happy when we come home?”
Daniel put a hand on his shoulder.
“Very.”
The island continued growing larger.
For the first time in weeks, Oliver allowed himself to imagine the moment of arrival without immediately calculating how many kilometres remained.
He pictured the green shutters.
The worn staircase.
The little brass number on Teresa’s apartment door.
He imagined pressing the bell and hearing his grandmother’s slippers move across the tiled floor.
He hoped she would not be too tired to open it herself.
Then he felt ashamed for thinking it.
He had learned that hope and fear could occupy the same thought without cancelling each other out.
He looked at the island again.
“We’re really going to see her.”
Daniel nodded.
“Yes, Oliver. We are.”
They did not ride into Palermo to the sound of cheering crowds.
The final stretch was inconvenient, noisy, and tiring.
They passed apartment blocks, shops, parked cars, and streets where the traffic required more attention than Oliver had expected. Daniel repeatedly checked the route, reluctant to make a careless mistake so close to the end.
The heat had become oppressive by late morning.
Oliver’s shirt clung to his back, and the straps of his helmet had left red marks against his cheeks.
He was hungry.
His knees ached.
One of the panniers had begun making an irritating rattling sound that neither he nor his father had been able to eliminate.
It seemed absurd that after travelling so far, he should spend the last few kilometres annoyed by a loose buckle.
They stopped outside a small grocery shop for water.
Oliver stood beside his bicycle while Daniel bought two bottles.
A woman passed carrying a shopping bag filled with vegetables. Somewhere nearby, a scooter engine started with a sharp mechanical whine.
He recognised the sounds.
Not the individual voices or vehicles, but the particular mixture of noise that belonged to Palermo: people speaking across the street, traffic moving too close to the pavement, shutters being raised and lowered, shopkeepers calling greetings to acquaintances.
He had heard those sounds every summer.
For a moment, he could almost believe that he had simply arrived from the airport.
Daniel returned with the water.
“How are you feeling?”
Oliver drank.
“Fine.”
His father gave him a sceptical look.
“Actually fine?”
“Tired.”
“Anything hurting?”
“My legs.”
“More than usual?”
“No.”
Daniel nodded.
“Not much farther.”
Oliver wiped his mouth.
“How much?”
“About five kilometres.”
He looked up.
Five kilometres.
At the beginning of the journey, it would have sounded like an afternoon’s outing.
Now, after thousands of kilometres and nearly three months away from home, it seemed both ridiculously short and almost impossible to finish.
He tightened the lid on his bottle.
“Okay.”
They rode on.
At a junction near a familiar church, Oliver suddenly recognised the road.
“Dad!”
Daniel glanced back.
“What?”
“This way!”
He pointed toward a narrow street.
Daniel checked the map.
“Yes.”
“I know where we are!”
His father smiled.
“Lead on, then.”
Oliver rode ahead.
He recognised a bakery where Teresa sometimes bought bread, a small square with benches beneath the trees, and a pharmacy where she had once argued with a clerk about the price of cough medicine.
Then he saw the apartment building.
It looked smaller than he remembered.
The green shutters were open on the second floor. A flowerpot stood on the balcony. Someone had left a broom leaning against the entrance.
Oliver stopped so suddenly that Daniel had to brake.
For several seconds, neither moved.
They had reached the place that had occupied their conversations, maps, arguments, and dreams for ninety-three days.
Oliver looked up at the windows.
“That’s her apartment.”
Daniel nodded.
“I know.”
Oliver was smiling, but his hands trembled slightly as he removed his helmet.
“Should we call her?”
Daniel took out his phone.
“I told Matteo we’d arrive this afternoon. He said he’d make sure someone was with her if she needed help.”
Oliver waited while his father called.
Teresa answered after several rings.
“Ciao, Daniel.”
“Mamma.”
“Where are you?”
Daniel looked at his son.
“Downstairs.”
There was a pause.
“Downstairs where?”
“Outside your building.”
Another pause.
Then Teresa spoke so quickly in Italian that Oliver could not follow all of it.
Daniel laughed.
“Yes, Mamma. We’re really here.”
Oliver heard a chair moving on the other end of the call.
Then the familiar voice said, “Tell him not to move.”
Daniel lowered the phone.
Oliver looked at the entrance.
A minute passed.
Then another.
His father placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Give her time.”
“I know.”
Oliver stared at the door.
He was suddenly frightened.
During the journey, he had imagined this moment hundreds of times, but he had never considered what he would do if the reality felt different.
What if Teresa looked much older?
What if she had become too weak to stand?
What if the loneliness he had been trying to relieve had changed her in ways he could not repair?
He was still thinking about these possibilities when the door opened.
Teresa Bellini stood in the entrance wearing a pale blue cardigan over a cotton dress.
Her hair was carefully pinned.
She had put on her pearl earrings.
One hand rested against the doorframe.
For an instant she looked at Daniel rather than Oliver, as though her eyes had found the son she had known for more than forty years before they could make sense of the taller boy beside him.
“Daniel?”
“I’m here, Mamma.”
She stepped forward.
Then she saw Oliver.
Her mouth opened slightly.
He had imagined that she would cry immediately, that she would rush toward him and wrap her arms around his neck.
Instead, she stood very still.
Her gaze moved over his face, his sun-reddened cheeks, the untidy hair flattened by his helmet, and the dusty shirt he had worn for the final stage of the journey.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Oliver smiled.
“Hi, Nonna.”
Teresa brought one hand to her mouth.
He moved toward her.
She reached for him before he had crossed the last few steps.
He wrapped his arms carefully around her waist.
For a moment, Teresa seemed uncertain how tightly she could hold him. Then her arms closed around his shoulders, and he felt her cheek press against his hair.
She was smaller than he remembered.
Or perhaps he had grown more than he realised.
Her cardigan smelled of lavender soap.
That smell undid something in him.
He closed his eyes.
Teresa began speaking in Italian, too quickly and quietly for him to understand. He caught his name, his father’s name, and a few expressions she had used when he was very young.
He felt her shoulders moving.
She was crying.
Oliver held her more tightly.
“Nonna, I’m here.”
She nodded against his hair.
“I know, tesoro. I know.”
Daniel stood a few steps away with the bicycles.
He had spent much of the journey worrying about how his mother would look when he finally saw her. Now he watched her hold his son, and the ordinary signs of her age were impossible to ignore: the slight bend in her back, the swollen joints, the effort required to remain standing.
But she had recognised them.
She was smiling.
And when Oliver finally loosened his arms, Teresa reached up to straighten his collar.
“Look at you,” she said.
Oliver laughed through his tears.
“Nonna.”
“Your hair is a disaster.”
He laughed harder.
“Some things never change.”
She put her hands against his cheeks.
“You’ve grown.”
“A bit.”
“A bit? You’re enormous.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“Hello, Mamma.”
Teresa looked at him.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then she reached toward him.
Daniel embraced her carefully.
He had expected to say something sensible, perhaps ask about her hip or whether the groceries had arrived.
Instead, he pressed his face against her hair.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” he murmured.
Teresa pulled back just enough to look at him.
“You’re here.”
“I should’ve come sooner.”
She studied him.
“Perhaps.”
Daniel let out a shaky laugh.
His mother had never believed in comforting someone with an obvious lie.
“But you’re here now,” she added.
She touched his cheek.
“And your father would have been very proud of you.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Teresa looked toward the bicycles.
“Now,” she said, recovering her usual authority, “are those dreadful things staying outside?”
Oliver laughed.
They carried the bicycles to a safe place, gathered their bags, and followed her upstairs.
The familiar staircase smelled of cleaning solution and old stone.
Oliver counted the steps without meaning to.
He had counted them when he was five, when he was eight, and during the previous Christmas visit. There were twenty-six to the first landing, then twenty-four more before the final turn.
He remembered running ahead of his parents, ringing the bell, and shouting through the door until Teresa answered.
This time, he walked beside her.
She moved slowly, keeping one hand on the railing.
Daniel offered his arm.
She accepted it without argument.
That worried Oliver a little.
