I reached out to the letter,s. but my fingers were shaking so hard that I couldn’t get it. Luke noticed and gently pushed the glass of water towards me, while Matteo sat in the chair to my right.

I felt a sting in my chest.

Do you think I didn’t want to?

“No, Paola,” Luke said. That’s exactly what we wanted to understand. I knew you did everything you could to stay together.
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Ezoic

Matteo pushed the rest of the documents to me.

I talked to Aunt Cristina, then a lawyer. And I discovered that there are things I didn’t know about those years.

I watched the paperwork.

The first page was a copy of a statement from the legal proceedings that followed Marco’s death.

The document noted that the boys had clearly expressed their desire to stay in the family home with me.

I remembered that discussion.

But I didn’t know that Luke and Matteo had kept her memory so alive.

On the next page was a statement from Cristina.

I started reading.

She admitted that, after Marco’s death, she had initially considered that the boys would have been better off with her family.