There were tables and chairs under the trees and a dour concessionaire who sold coffee and croissants from a cart. Traffic was light. Lucia bought stationery at the shop on the corner and settled herself at one of the tables with her coffee and croissant, a sheet of blank white paper before her. She wrote nothing for the longest time, watching pedestrians in the square while she organized her thoughts. The day was overcast but warm for October. Lucia was lulled by the quiet and the orderliness of the square. She smiled as an elderly couple passed in front of her, the man thickset from what appeared to be a lifetime of good living, the woman slender with an athletic spring to her step. Lucia tried to think of herself and Nikolas in forty years, living comfortably in Zurich or some other European city, still companionable, still in love. She found herself unable to peer far into the future. She could not imagine what they would look like, gray hair, a slower step certainly. She had seen an artist's projection of John F.
