“For a second I thought you were her.” His voice was low and melodic, but not the one she had been expecting. Not the one she was trying to remember from long ago.

“Apart from the hair.” And the scar.

“I think it’s the dress. She wore one just like it the first time we met. I took her and Gigi dancing on the hills behind Rome. The two of them had all the men wrapped around their fingers.” He smiled as he spoke, and Emily could tell he was thinking of that night, of when two young women thought they had the rest of their lives to be friends. It made Emily sad and happy all at once.

“I never wear dresses.” She looked down at the red dress she had chosen that morning, but didn’t remember putting it in her suitcase, couldn’t remember the last time she had worn it.

“You should. Beautiful things shouldn’t only be kept for special occasions.”

Emily smiled. She thought of how at home her grandmother used bone china, crystal glasses, and silver forks for breakfast—a mismatched collection of things that she had bought, and broken, over the years, along with silk blouses and diamonds, never caring if something got lost, always saying that life was too short to care about possessions.

Someone came out, placed a pot of coffee on the table, along with a plate of individual millefoglie cakes. Giancarlo picked one up and broke it in two, handed half to Emily, waited for her to bite down, for the hit of salt and caramel to reach her taste buds. She made the necessary noises of appreciation, and he chuckled before eating his own.

“They were Gigi’s favorites,” he said, pouring a line of dark, steaming coffee into both cups, then holding up cream and sugar in turn. “She told me they’re what made her fall in love with Italy, with me.”

Emily shook her head to both. She looked over to see the crossword Giancarlo had been attempting was from The Sunday Times.

Giancarlo saw her looking. “Gigi introduced me to it and, I understand, she got the tradition from Catriona. A way to help improve her English, but I think just a way to link them together even when they were oceans apart.”

“We always did it too.” Sometimes it took them all week to finish. Her grandmother would burst in from the garden to announce that the answer to five down was “tyranny,” or Emily would wake in the night to realize that the alternative word for “genie” was “jinn.”

Another tradition. Another secret that united friends across time and even death. An idea passed along from one to another. Just like Tyler. Emily fingered the earrings he had gifted her, trying not to think about the way the very nearness of him always left her feeling more alive, more invested in the day.

“I wish I could talk to her.” Sometimes Emily would get to the end of the day and realize she had nothing to talk about, and no one to talk to.