The tears seemed stuck behind her eyes. She could not cry and she wondered, the way mothers always do, where she had gone wrong. This room contained Felix’s entire life up until the time he’d left the château at the age of twenty-three. His clothes were still hanging in the closet with his shoes arranged in rows beneath. He was always a neat boy and he’d grown into a fanatically neat man. His room had a military spareness about it that, when he was seventeen, had prompted Rafaella to suggest the army as a career for him. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” he’d said, with that contemptuous little line about his lips that had always worried her. “Of course I’m not going in the army. I’m going to run the winery.” And Felix would have run it well, Rafaella thought now, leaning tiredly against his door. Of course he would have alienated everybody, that was the way Felix was, but he would have produced good Marten wine efficiently enough. Finally, she gathered her courage and opened the door.
