Definitive

On the first day, we didn’t really pay attention to the sign. We were just surprised to find the door closed and only looked at the dates. She told us she wasn’t taking any vacation this year, maybe she eventually did. When our daughter told us that it was more than that, we couldn’t believe her. You must have misread the note. It’s only when we came back and stood before the door, when we read and reread the words written by our bookseller — definitive closure — that we discovered what was there for several days, displayed a few steps from our apartment: the clue that something bad happened. Terrible news to begin what already resembled a particularly uncertain year.