She arrived on a Saturday in May.
Aria went to the airport alone — had insisted on it, needed the drive there and back to be time that was just hers and her mother’s without the presence of anyone else, however welcome. Luca had understood without being told. He had handed her the keys to the car he’d bought her — a practical thing, navy blue, nothing ostentatious, exactly what she would have chosen for herself which was how she’d known he’d thought about it carefully — and said I’ll have dinner ready and gone back inside.
Diana Bennett was smaller than she remembered.
That was grief, she thought, watching her mother come through the arrivals door with a carry-on bag and the specific careful movement of someone whose body had become a thing to be managed rather than taken for granted. I
