A scrawny, disheveled little boy, sullen-looking, dark blue eyes, alert. A little girl with blond pigtails, high-pitched voice. Tan and Rosa are eleven years old when they first meet at the Quercetana. In that enchanting place in the Tuscan countryside, he is the adopted son of the owners, she the janitors' daughter. Tan, who has arrived from Moldova, uses anger and violence to defend himself from memories of which he bears the marks. Only Rosa has access to his realm, and together, between games and puzzles, they build a precious intimacy. She is the only one who can understand him, and protect him: the two of them, accomplices. But one day the time comes for them to part. Years later, Rosa is an established ophthalmic surgeon and there is no room in her life for anything else, least of all love. Tan has tried various paths and traveled the world, searching for herself, her uprooted history. Meeting again at the Quercetana at mid-August is magic, gazes sparkling. With a glowing lightness to whose call it is impossible not to respond, here is the past reappearing in new guise. Happiness and the shocking surprise of a whole new encounter, before having to decide whether to stay or go. Lisa Ginzburg, in this luminous story about time and the seasons of life, with a writing capable of emotion tells us about two families, two friends, two lovers, and their chiaroscuro. With Rosa and Tan we return home, to those places of the soul where memory resurfaces along with its demons and its sweetnesses. Where every encounter marks forever, never to be forgotten.