The events of Ansel's funeral had left Luca so shaken that he found himself replaying the whole thing in his mind again and again. The kind of treatment he received from Laura needed some sort of explanation. It was even for this very explanation that he had risen to his feet back then, taking a step forward to approach her.
But in response to his attempt, Laura—alongside Emma's mother—quickly gathered themselves and yanked Emma away, hurrying off from the column where they had once stood.
Luca was further humiliated by that second act, leaving him stranded in a whirlpool of thoughts. A part of him had initially assumed Laura had only called Emma's name in that sharp, alert tone simply because she had just spotted her and reacted out of instinct. But it was Emma's words that followed that flipped everything on its head, and Laura's urgency to distance herself from him made her feelings painfully unambiguous.
