My dearest Capri, it read. They tell me I am a fool to keep writing. They tell me you are a myth, a face on a screen. But I saw you that night at the Riviera, and I know you are real. You looked at me. You saw me. I will wait on the balcony of the Grand Hotel until the day you come down to the sea.
Mrs. Halder, who had refused to cross the threshold, nodded grimly from the doorway. “Hundreds of suitors. Men, women. She never answered a single one. Kept every last one, though.”
Mrs. Halder cleared her throat. “Well, Mr. Cole? Shall we list it as a ‘primary suite with panoramic views’?”
And walked into a preserved dream.