How do you grieve someone who is still sitting beside you?
The Woman with the Newspaper
Every Wednesday at half past ten, Rosa Benedetti came into La Pagina che Fa le Fusa and bought the same thing: the regional newspaper, folded twice, and nothing else. She had done it for eleven years. She paid with exact change, said “Buongiorno, Moira” and “Grazie, Moira” in exactly the same tone, and was out of the door again in under two minutes.
So when, on a Wednesday in late November, she came in, paid for the newspaper, and then stood very still in the middle of the shop holding it, Moira Hopes put down the parcel she was wrapping.
“Rosa?”
“Franco always did the crossword,” Rosa said. She was seventy-four, small and straight-backed, with white hair cut short and a camel coat she had owned for as long as Moira had known her. “Forty-six years. Every Wednesday. He would sit at the kitchen table and I would read him the clues, because his eyes were bad, and he would answer them before I had finished the sentence. He was so annoying about it.” She looked down at the paper. “This morning I read him the first clue and he looked at me and asked who I was.”
Ashwaganda, the fifteen-pound ginger tabby, had been asleep on the travel guides. He lifted his head, considered the situation, and climbed down from the shelf with the gravity of a small orange bishop descending from a pulpit.
“Sit down, Rosa,” said Moira. “Please. Just for a cup.”
Subscribe to continue reading
Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.
