Part Two: The Ten Years

I met Luca Aldarossi when I was twenty-one and he was twenty-five, at a wedding where I was a bridesmaid and he was somebody’s cousin who had been put at the wrong table.

He was funny.

I need to say that first, because otherwise none of the rest of it makes sense, and because for years afterward people would look at me with a particular expression that meant how did you not see it, and the answer is that for a long time there was nothing to see.

He was funny and he was warm and he was the first person I ever met who asked follow-up questions.