The call came on a Thursday evening at seven forty-three, which I noted because Lucia De Luca called in the early afternoon when she called at all, and because a woman who organized time as deliberately as Lucia did not call at seven forty-three without reason.
I was in the kitchen when my phone showed her name, and I stood still for a moment in the way I had learned to stand still when significant things arrived, giving the first three seconds to assessment rather than reaction. Then I answered.
“Seraphina,” she said. Her voice had the same quality it always had, precise and unhurried, the voice of a woman who had been in control of her own register for eight decades and had not misplaced it. But underneath the precision was something I had not heard from her before. Something with weig
