The party was down in the Village, at that place run by the Italian department at NYU—I’d been to a lecture there about Moravia a few lifetimes ago. There was a spread of Chiantis and cheeses I would have loved at least to sample; instead I stuck to a glass of bubbly water and some nutritionist-sanctioned carrot sticks.

At one point Nathan, very likely egged on by Howard, came up to me and said, “You know there’s someone here you might be interested to meet.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why is that?”

“Because she’s interesting.”

He gestured toward the drinks table. “She’s standing just over there.”

Interesting is not the first word I would have used to describe this woman. I would have said, She is striking. Unusually striking. Very refined features, golden hair, eyes with focus and clarity. Lips pale and slightly chapped, maybe from being bitten or gnawed at. A good body, though this I had to deduce, since it was hidden under a skirt and big full sweater. Too much of both, the sweater especially.

That was interesting: a beauty who hides her beauty in yards of fabric. The opposite of all those leggy black-clad publishing girls.

“Costanza translates from English into Italian,” Nathan said. “Maybe we can convince her to take on your next book,” he said, “which will be done when…?”

“When it’s done,” she offered kindly.

We fell into some very natural talk. I discovered that she is half-Italian, half-American. She grew up there, not here. The American father is dead, the Italian mother, she said, is “very much alive.”

An American father, but an Italian last name? “After my father died,” she said, “my mother changed my last name to hers. A bit peculiar, until you know the story.”

It may have been the voice, with its slight softening old-world accent. Those sparkling green eyes. The slightly stiff way she carried herself. That intriguing reserve. It was hard for me to take my own eyes off her.

These pages disconcerted Costanza. She could think of many reasons why. Discovering that she had been observed—studied—like this was unsettling. Then there was hearing Morton’s voice again, which made him seem so alive. And the way the diary allowed her to go back in time, yet bring with her everything she knew that followed. She could think of no other circumstance in her life where she’d been able to do that. Maybe in dreams. Only in dreams.