I still wonder what really happened that day. When I think back on it I start to shake, as did the floor under our feet. We were on the ground floor when the old man entered one of the rooms. It was a much smaller bedroom than the others we had seen. I followed him and stood motionless by the door because I did not feel safe. The old man walked over to the bed in the center of the room and sat on it, then gently curled up, closing his eyes. At that moment he no longer looked like an elderly gentleman but like a child waiting for a good-night kiss. I could not move my legs; I could feel my heart pounding in my throat. I felt that cold wind brush against my neck again. I managed in a whisper to ask, "Who's there!"

Suddenly the floor tiles shook until they jiggled, and a precise and powerful blast of air lifted the old newspapers covering them. That's when I saw an old photo and a letter pop up.

Here is the photo I found that day:

The child you see is the old man who was with me on the island. His name is Sebastiano and the person to his left is his father, Biagio. The old man followed me because he was looking for this photo, he wanted to find the only existing memory of his family. Sebastiano's mother was one of the hospital's cooks and gave birth to him in 1938. She and Biagio loved each other very much but never told anyone that he was the father because it was forbidden to have relations with patients. She was very young while he was a man over 50 with the beginnings of dementia.

Sometimes he was lucid and in her eyes he was charming and intelligent, but at other times he did not even know what day it was and the woman felt deep tenderness for him. This photo was taken secretly so that the child could have a memory of his father but then his mother hid it. She was living together with the child inside the hospital when in 1945 she suddenly became ill and died within a few days from severe pneumonia. When Sebastiano's mother died he was just seven years old, and Biagio, already very ill, was aggravated by shock until he lost his memory completely; he could not even remember his own name. Sebastiano had nowhere else to go, so he stayed to live there, but he became a lonely child, difficult to handle, did not speak and was aggressive, and was soon kicked out, condemned to a life of loneliness on the street.

That old man I saw every day often looked at the island because there, over that land that has witnessed thousands of deaths over the years, he lost his mother, his father, his entire family. But why did he wait for me to reach that place? That cold, that wind: it was a spirit that wanted him to find that picture, his one precious memory. I am sure of it: on that bed he felt her caresses. Laura's caresses. His name was the same as mine; it was his signature on the letter I found.

Laura was the young nurse who took care of Sebastiano, and she knew her mother's secret and the place where the photo was hidden because she had revealed it to him at the point of death. He wanted to give Sebastiano the photo, along with the letter in which everything was explained, but unfortunately he could not. Do you remember the name of the boat I came in that day to the island? It is called "Secret Angel," yet another sign, because Laura has been watching over him all this time. It was her unfinished business that did not allow her to go further into the Hereafter.

Now Sebastiano is back on the street and still staring at the Island, but he is no longer shouting.

Now he softly whispers the word Dad, and clutches in his hand the photo he always keeps in his large pockets. Some look at him with disgust and some with compassion. I, when I meet him, I leave him some bread and something warm to drink. He smiles at me and starts to eat. Now, finally, he is happy.