Chapter 22: The Porch Rail

On the twentieth morning in Lisbon, a bank teller slid a deposit slip across the counter and asked Livia to sign.

She picked up the pen and stopped.

For three years her hand had made a different name on every form.

She wrote it slowly, one letter at a time.

Livia Carrano.

The teller read it upside down and smiled.

"Obrigada, Senhora Carrano."

It was the fourth time that day someone had said it, and she was still not used to how it felt.

She carried the receipt out into the sun and read the name on it twice.

Mirella's flat stood at the top of a hill, with tiled walls and a kitchen window that looked down on the tram line.

Mirella had turned the sitting room into a studio.

Canvases leaned face-in against every wall.

Livia had slept eleven hours the first night.

Since then she had learned to make coffee in a dented pot.

She walked to the river and back without her phone.

She said no to a plate of food she didn't want.

Today Mirella was painting with her hair tied up in a scarf, and she did not look round.

"The old lady called," she said. "Four times. I told her you were at the bank."

"What does she want?"

"She wants you at the screen at noon, which is seven in the morning in Honesdale, so I assume something has happened."

At noon Livia propped her laptop on the kitchen table.

Zia Nella's face appeared very close, with her glasses on the end of her nose.

"Why is it so dark?" Zia said. "Am I in a cellar?"

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