...which reminds me, in turn...

[randomness]

And thinking of that parting reminds me of the journey continuing through a warm Italian evening. A two-minute stop in Bologna. Bologna, where I'd visited Jim and met Nancy. Pulling into the station seemed like visiting a scene from a former life: Jim and all the others had left, long ago. If I got off the train now I'd hear echoes of that autumn.

As the train started up, I saw the memorial to the victims of the bombing. Jim had said it was subtle and he'd had to search for it before he'd found it. I'd gone looking for it myself, after he'd told me that, and never found it. But as the train gathered speed, there it was, right in front of me: a jagged crack in the wall, glassed over, with a marker.