He kept his voice calm, though his heart kicked up a few beats when he heard the muted blare of the train’s horn in the distance.

Astrid was coming.

It was ridiculous how Kennet’s nerves crackled at her imminent arrival. After all, she was nobody to him. They’d never met. She lived on the other side of the earth. What he knew was from stories Marta told, bits Marta read from Astrid’s regular letters, and two photographs displayed in the sitting room. For ten years, Kennet had been walking past those photographs, often for no other reason than to note how Astrid’s eyes followed him.

One picture was Astrid at age twelve, sitting in a chair, composed and serene, a faint smile touching one corner of her closed lips as her gaze broke the fourth wall of the frame. The other photograph showed Astrid, dazzling at eighteen, turned almost entirely away from the camera and looking back over her shoulder. A wide, toothy smile this time. Infectious, anticipatory joy in her eyes, as if the picture were taken moments before she entered a ballroom. Like her younger image, her gaze broke through the flat plane of the picture frame and laid a hand on the viewer.

I know you, she seemed to say.

Sometimes Kennet came to look at her with intentions. When he was befuddled with a problem, smarting with rejected affection, feeling like a chump or raw with the grief of missing his mother, he stood before young Astrid and stared into her calm, compassionate gaze until he felt better. When he successfully sorted a problem, or his ardor was reciprocated and he felt accomplished, confident and pleased with himself, he took his deeds to the young woman and basked in her praise. Sometimes, if his mood was especially proud, and he was sure no one could see, he put his back to the picture, then looked over his shoulder, mirroring Astrid’s pose.

He’d ask silently: And what do you think of that?

He liked to imagine that Astrid’s eyes crinkled just the tiniest bit, along with her nose.

I knew you could do it, she said to him. I know you.

It was silly, but he rather liked knowing that wherever he went, whatever he did and however he felt, Astrid was watching. Astrid’s back was against his and every now and then they’d look over shoulders at each other, smiling with a shared secret.

Now, after ten years of such covert and stupid games, Astrid was coming. She was an actual, honest-to-God person and she was actually, honest-to-God coming to Clayton. Kennet was finally going to meet her. See her. Talk to her.

He felt exhilarated, as if standing on a precipice with a panoramic view of the world. His life lay spread out before him, but one step toward it could result in a screaming spiral down to death.