“Maybe we should do our best to stay out of context, then.” It’s a joke that, to anyone else, would sound, well, out of context. One of those sad smiles, the kind an author might describe as wan or wistful, settles into my jaw. Because sometimes it feels like you are living a nostalgic moment even while it is happening, like it is too fake or perfect or distant to be truly experienced, and this is one of them.

We move to the Victorian room, with its reading chairs covered in lace, fringed lamps, and ornate blush-pink bookcases. The light fixture is a chandelier dripping with pearls, and music well suited for an Austen heroine’s monologue streams softly through speakers. Nolan is scanning the shelves, one finger dragging along spines until he finds what he’s after.

“Have you read this?”

I can’t make out the title, but the cover portrays a woman in a long gown, on horseback, and the book is almost as thick as a dictionary.

“No?” I say with uncertainty. Nolan drops it definitively into the handled basket at his feet, which already holds two books from the history room.

He’s like a bee buzzing from flower to flower, darting around a room loosely organized by the emotions the books provoke. He is about to head to the next room when I spot a familiar royal blue cover with a Scottish word as the title. It makes my chest feel a bit hollow, Jenna’s promise to bring me a kilted Highlander coming back to me.

“Have you read this one?” I ask, pushing past the ache.

Nolan lifts an eyebrow. “No. Should I?”

I’m about to explain that the plot is complicated and awesome and involves time travel, Scottish rebellions, and folklore, but I stop myself. I will sound like a crazed fan if I try to do the story justice, but also I don’t want to cry about Jenna.

“You should,” I say. “I think you’d like it.”

Nolan tosses it into the basket. “Did you want to pick anything? Grab whatever you’d like; we’ll take them all down to the lake.”

I don’t comment that he is taking both our hurts—water and books—and combining them into a golden afternoon.

It’s so luxurious and extravagant. I shouldn’t use Mark’s card for such a frivolous purchase, but it’s too alluring to resist, and he wouldn’t mind. He’d probably be thrilled. I pick a couple of books from the mystery room and one from the adventure room and put them alongside the others.

When we go downstairs to pay, Nolan doesn’t bother to ask Valerie to come over from the piano. He goes behind the counter himself and scans each book, stacking them neatly to the side and paying with his card.

“I can pay for mine,” I protest.