Departure

Catania was one of the few places Sonia appreciated when she went on vacation. Living in the north, in Brianza, she usually went to the mountains in Friuli, which she loved. Many of her friends from elementary school still lived there, in that forgotten village, and she spent her winter holidays in the snow, in the old house where her mother had also grown up, lulled by the crackling of the wood burning in front of the sofa, with the TV always on Rai 1, and the voices of politicians and their promises were like a lullaby. But recently, her mother had been insisting on going down to Sicily to visit her grandparents in Catania. And while, let's be clear, she undoubtedly enjoyed spending time in that gigantic, timeless house, listening to her grandfather's endless ramblings, always sullen and perpetually disappointed with the way things were going, and certainly adored spending time with her cousins, whom she hadn't seen in a year, she didn't really feel like going. She would undoubtedly have preferred to return to Friuli to see her friends, whom she had already called on the old house phone, saying she would definitely be coming this year too, and finally finding herself, not even a week after the calls, calling back, apologizing and explaining what had happened. In short, this Christmas vacation didn't seem to be looking very promising. She loved Sicily, but in the summer, when she could dive off the cliffs and drink granitas at the kiosk, but not in this season, when it was impossible to do anything except stay home with relatives and occasionally go out with her cousins. It was only a few hours after arriving home that Sonia realized how adults could wage war on each other, over something simple, material, something deemed morally useless, but which everyone, more or less, desperately needed: their grandfather's inheritance. And things suddenly got interesting.