What seemed clear was that they might not be able to find her one. She wasn’t especially pessimistic about it, but a lifelong habit of reining in her hopes made her, she would have said, a realist. She had never given up on life; she was too pragmatic, and had been a survivor from birth. Her childhood had been emotionally suppressed. She was raised by a well-meaning father who suffered from a strict code of behavior dictated by his Sicilian-born mother, one that never forgave past hurts. He’d been deeply scarred when his wife had left without explanation. There was another man involved, Lucy knew; her mother had flown to Europe in pursuit of happiness. Husband and daughter were the casualties of this drama, and the crushed man had been unable to express any emotions, or let himself love or trust another being again. The daughter’s clear resemblance to her beautiful mother had made the pain unbearable, and he had become a dutiful parent without ever being an affectionate one. The world—and especially Lucy’s fiery grandmother—had judged the former Mrs. King harshly. But Lucy defended a tiny space in her heart to try to understand some of what she had done one day.

Coming to London had been an attempt to put one foot nearer her mother, though she had no idea where to look for her. Europe was not specific enough; and while she guessed it might be somewhere in Italy, she had no address, no clue really. Her father would answer no questions, and probably knew nothing anyway. So she put the problem away until later, and lived as an orphan. She quite liked it—nothing to explain, no one else to please—but she was aware that she was living in half a world, exercising her cerebral faculties, though not her emotions.

Yet here, in this last hour of light on a chilly October Friday, with a new heart and a new sense of life, she was walking the mile and a half to Chelsea for her weekly checkup with her cardiologist, full of both hope and happiness, not at all tired. It was impossible to explain how she felt to others. She had never seen anything like the world she now inhabited. Her visions and responses to it—even her wild, vivid dreams—were excited and passionate. Trees, losing their leaves, seemed more beautiful to her than they had been in her own sickly springtime, when they were in blossom. Dog walkers had once irritated her, as she watched them turn a blind eye to their four-legged charges fouling the parks, but now they smiled and made real eye contact as they passed her; and schoolchildren, walking in a file to their buses, seemed full of vitality and laughter instead of smart remarks and clandestine cigarettes. She shared their energy—and she felt surprisingly well.