As soon I bought my house from Ljiljana Samokovlić and her daughter, Maja, I invited them to visit me in Motovun. Over the years, I invited them over and over again, but both of them felt it would be too hard on them. Their husband and father, Jakub or Kuba, put so much of himself into the house that it would be best never to see it again. Or so they kept repeating. But Maja came to see me last summer. Ljiljana came today. “It is easier for me that everything looks so different,” she said as soon as she crossed the threshold. I showed her the whole house. Although it does look quite different now, I did my best not to touch anything Kuba had built. “You know,” she said as she was leaving, “I like what you have done with the house.” A lady of the old school in her mid-seventies, she knew I needed her absolution, as witnessed by my many invitations.