Costanza had described the humble appearance of the bench, and its striking position, but mainly she had told him about it because it stood just outside her mother’s house, and whenever she was feeling especially claustrophobic there, and yet not so ambitious as to want to set off on one of her hikes through the hills, this is where she came to sit. She had come here to sit when she had brought home her one less than perfect grade in school and her mother’s reaction had been over-the-top. She had come here when her mother found her kissing her first boyfriend in the garden (he had joined her afterward to continue the kiss). And she had come here the day she learned about her father’s death, fleeing down the stairs her mother had just climbed, for a few moments breathing some air that her mother was not breathing with her. Her own breath, her own air, her own grief.

Henry felt a deep cold ache as he reviewed these episodes: Costanza had entrusted him with these intimate memories of hers, and then—

And then.

It didn’t matter where he turned his mind: sea or no sea, the events of April and afterward followed him like a knife; like a pocketknife whose blade had sprung open in his pocket and threatened to stab his flesh if he took one step too far off the course of waking, eating, shitting, showering, working, eating, sleeping, then waking to start the cycle all over again. This was pretty much how he had endured the last nine months of his life.

A week before he was to leave for Berlin, a card arrived in the mail. It was the first time he had heard from Costanza in all those months. The one-year anniversary of Leopold’s death was on the horizon that spring, she wrote, and she had learned from Morton how important it was to acknowledge these milestones. With distance Leopold’s truthfulness, she added, had come to resonate with her in ways that she was only now beginning to understand.

The card arrived at the end of December. Leopold had died in early March. Wasn’t three months in advance a little too early to be remembering someone’s yahrzeit? And that remark about Leopold’s truthfulness? It felt like she was trying to communicate something to him. But what?

Henry studied the letter as if it held some kind of encrypted clue. On the envelope Costanza had carefully, and clearly, written a return address, the address of her mother’s house in Recco, which Henry interpreted as a signal. Even if it wasn’t intended as a summons, Henry had decided to allow himself to be summoned. He had allowed himself to travel to Italy and find his way to this bench, and now … now what? That was the question.