Years later, when she was out—when the hydrangeas finally bloomed, though she no longer lived there—she found a letter slipped under her apartment door. No return address. Just a pressed orange blossom and a single line:

The man came on a Tuesday. He wore a gray coat and carried a paper bag of oranges. "From the market," he said, though the market was forty kilometers away, and he had no car. Lucia understood: he had walked. For her. That was the first sting.

"Sweet," he said.