A Heart Bent Out of Shape (30 page)

Joel was right about another thing too.

One early May morning she opened her eyes and the very first thing that hit her was, purely and simply, the quality of light. It was that particular brightness she had grown so used to throughout the winter months. She went to the window and opened the blinds. Outside, the spring day was just beginning, spry blue, with great peals of sunshine, yet all of Lausanne was dusted with snow. It would be gone again by mid-morning, the last fall of the winter, surely, for she could already hear the drip, drip, drip from the rooftops. She pushed open her balcony door and stood looking out over her city. Soon she would be in the thick of it, trailing footprints in the white. Hadley turned from the view, and went in search of coffee and toast. She left the doors and windows wide open; the light streamed in, and against the walls the shadows started to shift.

Meanwhile, in a hotel by the shore
,
an ageless man sat writing. His fingers danced over the keys of his typewriter, his heart pulled in all the directions he’d forgotten, and others he’d never known at all.