It’s precisely because of this unshakable habit that I’ll never forget the morning of my seventy-first birthday. I woke around seven in the morning, enveloped in an eerie silence. The side of the bed where Stefano usually slept was level and cold. At first, I thought he’d simply come downstairs to make me coffee, as he always did on special occasions, but the absence of the usual household noises sent a shiver down my spine.
The bitter fading of a daily certainty
The secret of the wedding ring: a forty-seven-year-long mystery.
I began calling out to him as I hurried down the hallway: “Stefano? Are you there?” No answer echoed through the walls of our country house. When I crossed the threshold into the kitchen, the first thing I noticed were his house keys, carefully placed in the center of the solid wood table.
