Chapter One — The Silence After

Paolo Ferri was sixty-two years old, and until a few months ago, his life had been full of rhythm — voices, deadlines, colleagues knocking on his office door, people asking for advice or decisions.

For forty years, he had worked at TecnoVal S.p.A., a company specializing in industrial automation systems. He had started as a young technician, eager and full of energy, then gradually become a systems engineer, and eventually the head of his department. He loved that job — the precision, the logic, the satisfaction of solving problems that seemed impossible to others. Every day was a challenge, an opportunity to improve something, to make a process run more smoothly, to create order out of chaos.

Now, the factory existed only in his memories. His days moved slowly — silent, empty, colorless. He was retired — or at least that’s what everyone called it. For him, however, it felt like an unexpected blow, a door suddenly closed on a part of his life that had defined him for decades.

The first Monday without work, he felt free.
The second, he felt disoriented.
By the third, there was only emptiness, stretching endlessly.

His wife, Elena, fifty-eight, still worked as a middle school teacher. She came home exhausted, often buried under piles of assignments, test papers, and the daily worries of her students. She loved him, of course, but she had neither the time nor the energy to notice how deeply her husband was sinking into melancholy.

They had one son, Marco, married for eight years and living in the city. Paolo was proud of him — a good man, steady job, a house of his own. But Marco had no children. And over the years, that fact had become a quiet, persistent ache, a wound hidden beneath everyday life.

Paolo didn’t crave wealth or success — he had plenty of both. What he longed for was something different: a sense of continuity, a gentle touch of destiny — a small hand to hold, a granddaughter to take to the park. Every time he saw a father with his little girl, a sharp pang hit him inside. It wasn’t envy, but a deep, indescribable nostalgia.

That wound, however, had not started with retirement — it was much older.
When he was around thirty, he and Elena had dreamed of having two children. She had hoped for a boy, but Paolo — secretly — had always wished for a daughter. God had given them only one child, and Paolo loved Marco deeply. But the dream of a daughter lingered, suspended, unspoken, like a knot that never quite loosened.

Marco had always been very close to his mother — as a boy, a teenager, and even now, as an adult. He would confide in her, ask for advice, share his worries. Paolo often watched them with tenderness, but also with a quiet sadness. He felt left out — a silent witness to their bond, yearning for a connection that had never fully formed with him.

He still remembered the day he tried to speak about it: he had sat next to Elena in the living room, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Sometimes,” he said softly, “I miss having a daughter. I miss that kind of bond…”
Elena smiled absentmindedly, thinking he was joking or being sentimental. Then she returned to sorting her papers. Paolo didn’t say another word. That smile — light, distracted, almost careless — had pierced him deeper than any argument ever could.

They never spoke of it again.
The years passed, and Paolo buried that pain under mountains of work, meetings, and responsibilities. Whenever his mind began to wander, he immersed himself in projects — the only way he knew not to think.

But now, in retirement, there was no escape.
Free time had brought everything back — the thoughts, the emptiness, the desire he had hidden for decades.

He tried going out for walks, riding his bike, fishing by the river, even reading self-help books about overcoming depression and finding a new purpose. But nothing worked.
The more he read, the more he realized that other people’s words could not reach the wound inside him.

Every day, the house felt larger — and quieter.
Sitting in his old armchair by the window, he would watch the children playing in the courtyard and think:
“Maybe if I’d had a daughter, I wouldn’t feel so useless now.”

Then his mind wandered into memories.
He remembered when Marco was small and had fallen asleep in his arms after a long day at the park, knees smeared with mud, hands sticky with sand. He remembered the evenings they spent building model cars together, and the early mornings waking him up to go fishing at the nearby river, just to see him happy, smiling, eyes shining with excitement and wonder.

Those memories were both sweet and painful. They reminded him of what he had, and yet of what he was still missing. Marco was his greatest joy, certainly, but he could not replace the dream of a daughter, of a family continuity that had never come to be.

And then there was the evening. When Elena came home from work, tired and distracted, Paolo felt the weight of his isolation even more. They did not speak of Marco or friends’ children; there were no shared stories, no laughter filling the house. Only silence, broken by the sound of Elena’s footsteps in the hallway, or the rustle of papers she sorted.

The scars he carried were invisible, yet heavier than any wealth or success he had ever achieved. Paolo knew, deep down, with a lump in his throat, that some wounds never truly heal.

As night fell, sitting by the window, he kept dreaming of what he had never had — an imagined daughter, with gentle eyes and a smile that could fill the emptiness life had left him.

In that silence, his mind began to wander further: he imagined Marco becoming a father, himself becoming a grandfather, holding a tiny creature with soft hair, feeling the light beating of a heart that would be partly his, partly Marco’s. The thought brought both comfort and pain — a longing that had always been there, latent, hidden behind years of routine and responsibilities, a desire he had carried quietly for decades.