Suitcase in hand, she went back to the station concourse, watched the names on the board flicker as another train departed.

The sound of laughter pulled her attention elsewhere, to a couple, wrapped around each other, him kissing her just below the ear, her reaching around his neck to pull him closer. A diamond on the third finger of her left hand made Emily think back to another couple only a heartbeat away from the table where she had sat, drinking in her grandmother’s words, realizing and remembering the horror of that day all over again.

A memory of when she found a ring tucked away at the back of a drawer in her grandmother’s study. A simple gold band in which a stone of deepest blue was set (the exact color of Lake Garda, her grandmother had said). It was given to her by a man who once loved her enough to ask for her hand in marriage, but Catriona knew it would never last. Her grandmother had smiled softly as she recalled the exact time and place he dropped down on one knee, placed a kiss on the pulse of her wrist, and said he would never leave her, not again.

“James Joyce,” Emily whispered, reaching into her bag and taking out the book Giancarlo had given her, in which one of the clues listed at the back, one of the clues to be found, was a tiny depiction of Ulysses, resting on the nightstand of a girl back home. It was a novel Emily had read out of curiosity after hearing the story of how someone had once asked Catriona Robinson to marry him in the exact same place James Joyce seduced his wife.

That very same day, her grandmother began to map out the idea of a new story. She’d asked Emily to draw her a phoenix with feathers the color of a setting sun. Emily had asked what love had to do with a phoenix, and her grandmother had replied that there was always time to start again, to become someone new, if only you were prepared to try.

“Scusi.” Emily attempted a smile as she approached a man in a flat cap and uniform. The collar of his shirt was damp against tanned skin, with a shaving cut on his neck that he had tried to cover with a piece of now dried-up tissue. He lifted his head, gave Emily the swift once-over, then adjusted his belt, leant forward as he spoke.

“Si, belissimo, come posso essere di servizio?”

“Sirmione? Train?” Emily made a chugging motion with her arms and tried not to notice his amusement.

“Il suo più rapido per guidare,” the man responded, miming a steering wheel and pointing toward the exit. “Il gruppo taxi e fuori.”

“Perfect,” Emily muttered as she nodded her head in thanks, before looking up at the yellow sign with a black symbol of a car glaring back at her. She headed outside, looked over to where a line of taxis stood, all neatly in a row, and tried to imagine they were like ducks, simply standing by a pond and waiting to go for a swim. Or schoolchildren fidgeting with conkers in their pockets, ready to soak them in vinegar after school and tie them up with string.