The death of his father came right on the heels of his mother’s, but that loss had not hollowed out the world in the same way. Coriolanus still kept his mother’s compact in a drawer in his nightstand. In difficult times, when he had trouble falling asleep, he would click it open and inhale the rose scent of the silken cake of powder within. It never failed to calm him with the memory of how it had felt to be loved like that.
