Leaving the truck from either side, we meet halfway to the door. He unlocks it, sticks in his head and sniffs, then moves aside to let me enter first. He’s right; it smells clean enough. The light is dim, but dim works. I’m vaguely aware of blue and white, of a double bed, a nightstand, an armchair and a dresser, not to mention air that hasn’t moved in days, but my urgency outstrips it all.

When I reach for the zipper at the back of my dress, Jack’s arms circle me, hands displacing mine at the tab. Before he pulls, though, he pauses.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and for a split second, the rest of the world is there.

But I don’t want the rest of the world right now. I don’t want any part of the rest of the world right now. For the first time in thirteen years, I don’t even want to think of my daughter, though I can’t quite say that aloud.

Rather than speak, I rub the creases between his eyes with the pad of my thumb, run that thumb down his blade of a nose, then press my face to the spot on his neck just under the scruff of his beard. His skin is musky and damp. Two seconds, and I’m lost in it, but only until my zipper rasps and I feel a freedom on my back where there wasn’t seconds before. Drawing away, I reach for his belt. My fingers have barely begun to fiddle with its buckle, when he pushes them aside.

Practiced in unbuckling, he doesn’t have to look. His eyes hold mine, and I swear they’ve gone molten. Molten should be dangerous where footing is concerned, but Jack is my safe place. The danger for me is back at the cemetery, back at the house, back at wherever Paul Schuster has lived all these years during which he didn’t bother to identify himself as my father. Jack Sabathian may have changed in the twenty years I’ve been away, but the heart of him has not. Lifting a hand, I touch his mouth, then the bristle of mustache above it.

“Do you need help?” he whispers and shoots a heated glance at my dress.

With deliberate motions, I kick my shoes aside and shrug the dress off. Bending at the waist, I free my hair, which Margo had neatly knotted that morning, but with which the humidity at the cemetery has wreaked havoc anyway. I remove pins and an elastic, then, straightening, toss my hair back. I’m reaching for the clasp of my bra when I realize that, although Jack’s belt hangs undone, his hands are still.