What She Chose To Keep
The report was delivered on the second of December, on time, in a black binder with the ministry's logo on the front and with two hundred and eleven pages of drawings, costings, historical analysis, and photography inside. Giulia hand-delivered it in Genoa because she had a small superstition about couriering final reports, and because she wanted, also, to have lunch with her mother, which she had not done properly in eight months.
Her mother took the news about Leo the way Giulia had known, since she was about fifteen, her mother would eventually take this kind of news. She set down her fork, she looked at Giulia for a long moment across the table, she said, "I am sorry he is going to be sad, because he does not deserve to be cruelly sad, he is a good enough man, but I am not sorry about the engagement, and I think you know why." And then she picked up her fork again and asked Giulia to pass the salt.
Giulia passed the salt.
The conversation with Leo itself had happened the previous week, in Florence, at the apartment on Via de' Bardi, and had been, in the end, shorter than she had been dreading. Leo had been surprised and then hurt and then — with the particular dignity he was actually rather good at — quiet. He had asked her whether there was someone else, and she had said, honestly, "There is someone I am learning to care about, and I don't know yet what that will be,