Home to Italy by Peter Pezzelli

From what he writes, I’d say he’s settling in there for good.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” said his wife, picking up the receiver. “You think he’s going to spend the rest of his life cooped up in a little apartment out in the middle of nowhere?”
    Carmine shrugged and went back to reading the letter while Angie dialed Delores’s number again. Annoyingly, the line was still busy. She stood there by the telephone, waiting to try once more.
    â€œCoffee would be nice,” suggested Carmine from behind the letter.
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    Later, at the barber shop, Tony tried to read aloud the letter from Peppi that Carmine had dropped off. Doing so was no easy task given the constant interruptions from the others.
    â€œSo what else does he say?” asked Ralph eagerly. “Come on, Tony, keep reading!”
    â€œYeah, come on,” agreed Gino and Sal.
    â€œAll right, all right,” said Tony, waving his hand at them. “Gimme a chance here.” He held up the letter to the light. “Okay, where was I? Here I am. He says, ‘I met up with Luca on my first Sunday here just like I told you I would.’”
    â€œHow about that!” exclaimed Gino, laughing along with the others. “After how many years?”
    Tony continued reading. “‘We went on a nice long ride with a big group of riders,’ he says. ‘I’m a little out of shape, but Luca and the others took it easy on me. Things have changed since I left, but the region is still as beautiful as I remembered.’”
    â€œWhat about the mulino?” said Ralph.
    â€œHold on, let’s see what he says,” replied Tony. “Blah, blah, blah. Okay, here we go. ‘I had dinner with Luca and his family that night,’ he says. ‘The next day we went out to see the mulino.’”
    â€œI bet it was just like he remembered,” said Ralph.
    â€œNah,” said Sal. “The house you grew up in never looks the same when you go back and see it after you’ve grown up. It always looks way smaller. When I was a kid I thought our house in the old neighborhood was a castle. Now, when I drive by it sometimes, it looks like a little shack to me. I can’t believe we all fit in it.”
    â€œWell, you certainly couldn’t fit into it now with that gut of yours,” said Gino.
    â€œAre you guys gonna let me finish this letter or what?” said Tony.
    â€œGo on, go on,” said Ralph. “Keep reading.”
    â€œAll right,” Tony continued. “‘We rode our bikes out of the village but down a road I knew didn’t lead to the mulino. Luca told me he just wanted to go for a longer ride, that we’d end up there later. All the while he kept saying that maybe we should go out to the mulino some other day. I couldn’t figure out what was making him so anxious. It wasn’t until we finally arrived there that I understood.’”
    Tony paused, put the letter down, and rubbed his eyes.
    â€œWhat is it?” said Sal. “What’s the matter?”
    â€œCome on,” added Gino. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”
    â€œIf you say so,” said Tony with a grim expression. He picked the letter back up. “‘The mulino had been destroyed by an earthquake,’” he read. “‘So now my home that I came all the way back to across the ocean is nothing but a pile of rocks.’”
    Stunned by the news, they all sat there without speaking.
    â€œChe cozz’!” cried Gino, breaking the silence. “All that friggin’ way for nothing!”
    â€œCan you believe it?” muttered Sal.
    â€œBut I don’t understand,” said Ralph. “How could something like this happen?”
    The three of them carried on about the whole thing while Tony finished reading the letter to himself. When he was done, he folded it and tossed it into a drawer in the little desk he kept in the