Marco returned to the city on a Monday, for work. Elena stayed at the beach with her family for another week: she would return on Sunday evening, on the 7:10 PM train.

The fridge was empty, the suitcase still half-unpacked in the hallway. And the house, without her, had a silence Marco didn't recognize: the kind found in rooms where a voice is missing.

On Thursday evening, on the sofa, he was scrolling through Instagram without really looking at anything, until his thumb stopped on a Deluxy reel: a bouquet of pink and cream-colored roses resting on a white pedestal, a heart-shaped cake, and, tucked into a black envelope, a Polaroid of a couple on vacation. Above it, the words "Sweet Returns." Something tightened in his chest. He thought about their photos, still all locked away in his phone: ten days of happiness that no one had pulled out yet. He went to the website and found the Sweet Returns collection, which this year is all about vacation memories.

The longest part was choosing which ones. They had taken four hundred in ten days, and at every photo Marco would stop, smile to himself, and go back. In the end, he discarded the ones that turned out well and kept the two that mattered: Elena laughing with ice cream dripping down her wrist, and the crooked, half-blurred one that the man at the kiosk had taken on their last night, when neither of them wanted to leave.

Among the gifts in the collection, he chose the Summer Memories Hat Box with Polaroid: cream-colored roses and dahlias in sunset tones, with their two photos. On the card, handwritten, he had them put just one line, the one that had been in his head for days: "You choose the next vacation."

On Sunday at six, the valet rang the bell, in white gloves. Marco placed the hat box on the entryway table, right where Elena always puts her keys, and waited with his heart in his throat, like before a first date.

She walked in dragging her suitcase, still talking about the delay in Bologna, and stopped mid-sentence. She looked at the photos first, then the flowers. Then him. Her eyes were shiny, and for a moment neither of them said anything: it wasn't necessary.

But the real return is Monday morning, and Marco knew it. That's why at eight they rang again: it was the Sweet Return Breakfast for two, with pain au chocolat, omelet, chocolate-covered strawberries, and a heart-shaped balloon that went straight up to the ceiling. Attached to the ribbon was a third Polaroid, the one he had taken of her secretly while she was sleeping on the ferry. Elena looked at it for a long time, then burst out laughing: the same laugh as in the ice cream photo.

The photos are now on the fridge, held by a magnet, and every morning, standing there in front of them, summer starts all over again for a second. The balloon lasted until Thursday.

Elena says it was the most beautiful return she can remember, and that next year it's her turn to surprise him.

And to the Deluxy team, Marco just wanted to say thank you, from the heart: they had thought of every detail. The best part was left to him—choosing the photos.