Dad, you better be home already. Don’t ignore us.
Bianca, wait. Why isn’t Luca answering? Did he go somewhere?
Mo, the keys are missing off the hook. Luca, answer me.
Dad, tell me you didn’t just leave the airport with our car.
And then just 5 minutes later:
Mo, there’s a note. Luca, what is going on?
I muted the thread and leaned back in my seat. The hum of the cabin around me was a bomb compared to the noise I’d been waiting through my whole life.
I closed my eyes and pictured them standing in our empty foyer, that folded notes staring back at them from the polished wood dining table.
I wondered who read it first.
I imagined the silence, thick and unfamiliar.
My parents weren’t used to being left out of the loop, especially by me.
The plane touched down 12 hours later, and the difference in air alone felt like a whole new chapter. I didn’t post anything online, didn’t tag my location, didn’t leave a trail.
I rented a car, found my Airbnb tucked into the hills, and sat out on a balcony overlooking cliffs that dipped into turquoise water.
The kind of place that made you forget how many times you’d been overlooked.
The kind of place where the only person who got to define your worth was you.
It took two days for the real unraveling to begin.
It started with a voicemail from Bianca, one I actually listened to just out of morbid curiosity.
“Hey, um, Luca, mom’s freaking out. Dad’s pissed. They think you did this, too. Like, punish them or something. I don’t know. I told them you probably just needed a break, but you could have said something. Kind of messed up that you just took off.
“They left me a bunch of calls, too, because now I’m stuck dealing with the house stuff and they’re saying I should have stopped you. I don’t even know what that means. Call me back.”
I didn’t.
By the fifth day, things escalated. I had an email from my dad, which was rare. He only ever emailed me when it was something official.
Subject: Come home, Luca.
We didn’t raise you to be this reckless. You can’t just disappear and leave everything on our shoulders. We trusted you to be responsible while we were away. This is not how a mature adult behaves. If you’re trying to prove a point, fine. You’ve made it. Now come home so we can talk like adults. Dad.