And for the first time in a very long time, she was not reading to escape grief or to process loss. She was reading because she wanted to know what happened next.
The title felt like a curse. After You . There was no “after you,” she thought. There was only a hollow space where Miguel’s laugh used to be, a void where his hand had rested on the small of her back.
To herself.
Clara lit a candle. She sat in the chair. She opened Depois De Você to page one. Livro Depois De Voce Pdf
The final chapter was called “The Book After You.”
Clara read that line seven times.
She couldn’t read it. Not yet.
On page 62, Mariana burned Tomás’s favorite sweater. Clara stopped reading. She walked to the closet. Miguel’s side still held his flannel shirts. She touched the sleeve of the blue one. She did not burn it. She folded it neatly and placed it in a donation bag.
Clara mirrored her. She went to the grocery store and bought only her favorite yogurt, not Miguel’s. She moved the reading chair to face the window instead of the wall. She played Fado music without crying.
In the corner, by the window that faced the gray Lisbon sky, stood a single bookshelf. Not the large one in the living room, but a small, floating shelf Miguel had installed on the wall above her reading chair. On it lay only one book: Depois De Você , a novel she had bought on a whim the day before his funeral. And for the first time in a very
The next morning, Clara took the small floating shelf off the wall. She filled the holes with spackle. She painted over them. The shelf—along with Depois De Você —she placed on the regular bookshelf in the living room, between a cookbook and a history of Portuguese explorers.
By page 47, Clara was crying. Not the violent sobs of the first weeks, but a quiet, steady weeping—like a leak in a roof she thought had been repaired.
Clara slammed the book shut. “No,” she said aloud. “That’s not how it works. Miguel is not coming back.” After You
She didn’t read for three days. She was angry at the book, at the author, at the universe for giving Mariana a hope that Clara would never have.