Two Roses

To Daniel Bouchard, the word love is synonymous with loss. He experiences early hardships that rob him of the people he most cherishes and leaves him bewildered and lost in a world he doesn’t understand. His childhood and youth are solemn, and he buries his emotions deeply in order to hide his broken heart. After high school, Daniel is accepted at a prestigious university in New York, and so he leaves what remains of his family behind in Paris to begin a new life. But grief reaches him even there. As he struggles with existential questions about love and sorrow, he meets a young woman named Greta who changes everything. Daniel finds comfort in her presence and joy in her smile, and for a brief instant in time, he is gloriously happy. Then Greta leaves him, without a word of explanation, and Daniel is once more struck with confusion and loss. For more than two decades, he searches for reasons for what has happened—only to discover, through a series of astonishing coincidences, that he has come full circle with a new perspective.