The Sketchbook
The package arrived on a Tuesday, wedged between a stack of catalogs and a bill from the electric company, as though it had every right to sit there among the ordinary debris of Noemi's life. She almost missed it. She would carry that thought with her for weeks afterward — how close she had come to setting it aside unopened, to letting it slide beneath a pile of mail destined for the recycling bin, and how different everything might have stayed if she had.
But her name was on it, spelled the way only one country ever spelled it, without the accent Americans insisted on adding, without the softening. *Noemi Bellandi.* No middle initial, no apartment number, just her name and the address of the brownstone she shared with Adam, written in blue ink that had bled slightly at the edges, as if the pen had lingered before is moved on. The postmark read Firenze. Florence.
She stood in the hallway with her coat still on, snow melting off her boots onto the hardwood, and stared at those two words until the cold radiating from the open door reminded her to close it.
Adam's voice drifted from the kitchen, warm and unaware. "Anything good?"
"Just bills," she called back, and was surprised…
