Elena almost laughed. “I’m sorry for the gnocchi.”

Marco fixed a wobbly chair. Elena hung laundry, watching the white sheets flap like flags of surrender against the relentless blue sky. They ate supermarket gnocchi in silence, the only sound the buzz of a fly trapped against the windowpane.

A silence fell, but this one was different. It was the sound of two people listening to the same rain.

They sat in the pitch black, on opposite ends of the sagging sofa.

“Look,” Elena said, pointing at the table. The wick had curled into a perfect heart before drowning in the white pool.

Not a gentle Roman shower, but a Pugliese bomba . It hit the tin roof of the farmhouse like a million tiny hammers. The power cut out. Wind howled through a crack in the old wooden shutters, sending a framed picture of a saint clattering to the floor.

“Maybe,” she said, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “But let’s skip the gnocchi tomorrow.”

They sat like that for an hour. When the rain finally softened to a whisper and the power hummed back to life, flooding the room with harsh, modern light, they both blinked.