"I don't want any food."

Ornella doesn't speak for a moment. She switches off the stove. Crushed, she hurries into the living room. She stands motionless, watching the front door, behind which stands her eldest son, laughing into his cellphone.

He comes back inside, still smiling at the exchange that concluded his phone call. "Where's Massi? We should get going."

"I tried to make him eat something. I see what you mean-it's impossible."

Dario is puzzled. "We can't stop him eating."

The boy hobbles out of the kitchen, wearing only one sneaker and engrossed in his video game.

"Turn that off," his father says. The boy does not, stumbling out the front door, too engaged to say goodbye.

"Goodbye," Ornella says nonetheless.

"I meant to tell you who I saw," Dario says, nipping into the kitchen to collect his son's abandoned Nike. "Kathleen Solson." This is his former girlfriend, whom Dario met in 1987 when they were both interns at the paper. "She's back now, back from Washington."

"And how is she?"

"The same. Older."

"I don't want to know anything more."

"This has nothing to do with current events."

"It has to do with the paper. I don't want to know."

"Do you want tomorrow's or not?"

"I'm worried about tomorrow," she says, her voice dropping. "You don't remember, do you."

"Remember what?"

"Marta isn't back until Tuesday."

"And you can't wait till Tuesday to fire her?"

"You misunderstand."

She stands at the bottom of the stepladder, holding it for him. She wants to stop fretting. It's just another date-it's not as if the paper will contain an account of her own life on that day.

He climbs up and looks around the storage space. "It's not here."

"Yes, it is."

He continues searching. "It really isn't. You want to come up and look? It's missing, I promise you."

"I've collected them all," she insists. "I've never missed an edition."

"Well, you'll have to miss one now, I'm afraid. Do you want April 25, 1994? That's here."

"No, I don't. I'm not there yet."

He comes down the ladder and, leaping from the third rung, swoops beside her and kisses her fast on the cheek.

Unprepared, she smiles bashfully, then bats him aside and, catching herself, gets angry. "You could have knocked me over. It's not funny."

The paper's headquarters on Corso Vittorio are a taxi ride from Ornella's home in Parioli. She has never visited, has always been wary of that office, which contains all the world yet is itself contained in a single grubby building. But she has no choice-her storage space does not contain tomorrow, and she must find a copy.

"Che piano?" asks a man with a strong Anglophone accent.

"Not sure what floor," she answers in English. "I'm trying to find the headquarters of the paper."

"Follow me." He closes the elevator gate after them and nudges the third-floor button with his knuckle. The elevator rises.

"You work there?" she asks.

"I do."

"What's your name?"

"Arthur Gopal."

"Ah yes, I've read your obituaries. You did one on Nixon the other day."

"Nixon died ages ago," he says, confused. "Anyway, I don't do obits anymore. I'm the culture editor."

"A bit too one-sided, I thought. Nixon did some good things, too."

She asks to see Kathleen Solson, and Arthur enters the newsroom to convey the request. Ornella is tempted to follow him in, to view the workings of this place herself. But, no: if you want to keep enjoying sausages, don't visit the sausage factory.

After a few minutes, Kathleen appears. "I'm seeing all the Monterecchis lately. I bumped into your son a few weeks back."

"Yes, he told me." Haltingly, Ornella leans in to hug Kathleen, regretting it the instant she has committed herself. She embraces the younger woman rigidly and fast.

They are silent in the elevator down. Ornella keeps wishing she hadn't hugged Kathleen. It was embarrassing. Was it disloyal to Dario somehow?

"Which way?"

"I can't venture too far," Kathleen says.

They walk along Corso Vittorio, the roadway a blur of buses, taxis, and droning motor scooters. Ornella must speak up to be heard. "I still read the paper religiously, you'll be glad to hear."

"What year are you up to?"

"1994. Which, as it happens, is when we saw each other last."

"Yes-when I left."

"I even remember the date we last met-it was at the hospital when Cosimo got sick, April 24, 1994."

Kathleen's BlackBerry rings. It is Menzies. She issues a few orders and hangs up.

"You were rude to that person," Ornella says.

"No time for politeness at my job, I'm afraid."

"That can't be true." After a pause, she adds, "You know, I sometimes wonder whether I might not have liked to work in journalism. In my next life, shall we say?"

"Did you ever try?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"You could have."

"I tried to get Dario to go into it, but he didn't take to newspapers."

"I know-we did that internship together."

"Where would I have been, had I done something brave like you?" She glances fast at Kathleen, then away. "I'm old now. Fifty-eight. That's the age when a person is at the height of their career, isn't it?"

"Can be."

"You and I are alike," Ornella says. "Don't look so horrified. We're very different in some ways. But in others-" She stops. Ostensibly, she came here to obtain a back issue of the paper and, secondarily, to catch up with a former acquaintance. But she finds herself tempted toward another course: she wants to say something. To talk-to confess, even. To tell this woman about tomorrow, a day in which Kathleen had a walk-on part. "Do you remember my husband at all?"

"I certainly do. I was sorry, by the way, to hear that he had passed-"

Ornella interrupts. "Terribly handsome, wasn't he."

"He was."

"And a baron, you know, though he didn't use the title. I remember when he and I met, Cosimo was so distinguished. I myself was rather a pretty young thing back then-you can see in the old photos, if you don't believe me."

"You were famous for your looks."

"I was," she says, as if only now learning the fact.

"I should get back," Kathleen says, glancing at a message on her BlackBerry. "I didn't bring a jacket."

"In a minute." She takes a corner of Kathleen's shirtsleeve and leads her across the intersection at Piazza Sant'Andrea della Valle, mindless of the red light, sidestepping honking cars. "So you remember when Cosimo was hospitalized in 1994?"

"Of course-it was such a shock."

"Not really a shock. His problems started weeks before I took him in."

"I didn't realize that."

"Oh yes," Ornella says. "The first clue, I think, was when we were supposed to go on vacation and he just canceled at the last minute. I made the best of it, saying we could enjoy doing things here in the city. But he got furious. I didn't know why. Well, he was drinking, and I suppose that had something to do with it. He actually pushed me into the refrigerator!" She laughs. "The fridge door was open-I'd been getting the pitcher of ice water-and I hit into the shelves. It was strange-he kept shoving me like he was trying to stuff me in there. I knocked over all sorts of things. A jar of capers smashed. I thought, Glass inside the fridge. The cleaner will never find it all. Someone will swallow it by mistake. Such a stupid thought. Anyway, he just walked out, left. I was terrified someone would find out that he'd gone. But since we were supposed to be on vacation no one even noticed-I just stayed inside. Had lots of time to clean up the glass in the fridge."

"What a ghastly story. I'm so sorry to hear this," Kathleen says, pausing on the sidewalk. "And I'm impressed that you can share this stuff about Cosimo. But-and please don't take this the wrong way-was there a particular reason you stopped by today? Not that you need a reason. Just that I really should get back."