Slowly going up

It's still dark when the bus stops in front of the minuscule train station and she starts doubting again that being there it's not a good idea. Someone, in his need to get down at this stop decides for her pushing her gently toward the doors. Surprised, she just get off the bus and keeps going forward, passed by more determined former bus passengers, stopping just before entering the station itself. After a couple deep breaths she turns around and looks at the village square for the first time in a little more than twenty years.

It's so early and cold only a few places are open: the greengrocer (he is unloading fresh fruit and veggies from his truck), the newsstand, the bar and the station seems to be the only places alive. But something else is alive here: the sea. She hasn't been near the sea since when she lived here, hasn't listened to it, hasn't smelled it, hasn't seen it. Yes, she had her eyes closed for the last hour of the bus ride, she wanted her village sea to be the first sea she saw.

Pushing her backpack up she moves toward the promenade, she had a few hours to spend down here before she could go up, up there. So she sits on a bench on the promenade, well, on the new one as this isn't the one she remembers, they did renovate it: wider, surely nicer, but still not the one she is used to, one of the many things she wasn't used to she had to adapt in the last few years.  So she sits there, on a new unfamiliar bench, far away from the harbour where some of the older fishermen may still recognize her. She sits there, looking at the sea or at her tennis shoes, trying not to think too much about things she can't change anymore. The life she hears behind her is almost the same as twenty years ago, some people going the bar - newsstand - station route, a greetings there a joke here, others, mostly women, visiting, chatting and gossiping with the greengrocer or in the shops that opened in the meantime. For a few minutes the chaos kids going to the nearby school naturally brings with them fills the square. Many cellphone ringing here and there the biggest difference from her memories.

The pale winter sun is finally high enough to have warmed her up a little and the square is now almost empty after the early morning rush. She pats her legs awake, get up, tugs her coat, secure her wool hat on her head and her almost empty backpack on her shoulder, exhale and then she starts her slow climb.
She try to keep her eyes down, she walked and run up and down these small streets so many times, alone or in good company, even when she wasn't here, that she don't really need to see the street to climb it and then, then there is nothing nice for her to see now. All the windows closed, the smaller pots no more on the sills, the bigger ones just empty: the cold winter defeated them all.
She reach the little church, and find it closed. The old priest, her only contact with the village died a several years ago and the new one had no reason to really keep up the only correspondence she had. She still stops there, resting her right hand on the old wooden door. She knew the priest wouldn't be there today but still hoped to find the little church open, to pray there again while listening to the sea. After a couple minutes she get back to her climb.
It takes her little time to reach the gate of the white house, she stops there and, slowly, she gets out a  letter from her backpack and starts reading it. She really has no need to read it, she know it by heart, it is the reason she came here today.

Giovanni wrote her, again. He finally found Granny's pink brooch, the only thing she asked of Granny's things after she died a few months ago, and to invite her for her first grandchildren christening, still sad and wondering why she didn't came to his wedding and Granny's funeral.
Ad that's why she was there today, in front of her old house, sure the door key will be in the second pot on the left window, sure that there will be no one home. Because she didn't want, she didn't deserve to meet her son Giovanni or his wife Anna and even more so she didn't deserve to see her grandchildren being christened Antonio in that same moment. Little poor Antonio that would never meet his namesake grandfather, her husband Antonio that she killed twentytwo years ago.

This is obviously a sequel to Running to the sea... these past days/weeks, while I wanted to write something I had no idea what to write but today i reread that and finally got an idea...