Chapter 13
The broken vase returned to my attention unexpectedly.
A restoration specialist called.
One of the staff had apparently sent photographs months earlier before I stopped the process.
He said the porcelain could be repaired.
Not perfectly.
Cracks would remain.
I almost declined.
Then I thought of Sofia.
She hated pristine restoration.
“Make it useful,” she once told me after I broke a ceramic bowl.
So I changed the request.
Not a vase.
A bowl.
The specialist looked confused.
I sent the pieces anyway.
Months later, it returned as a shallow mosaic bowl.
White porcelain fragments.
Gold-toned seams.
No hidden base.
No secret compartment.
Open.
Visible.
Livia loved it.
“Broken vase?”
“Yes.”
“Now bowl?”
“Yes.”
She put wrapped candy inside.
Of course.
I placed it in the family kitchen.
Not the ballroom.
Not behind glass.
No shrine.
Camilla saw it once during a later visit and stopped.
“You repaired it.”
“Changed it.”
She looked at the open bowl.
Understood.
The object that once hid my father’s envelope now could not hide anything at all.
May you like
That symbolism was almost too perfect.
I kept it anyway.
