“I don’t know; the Hamiltons are pretty hale and hearty for people in their seventies.”

“I think we can give them a run for their money,” Tolliver said.

We started right away, and with pauses to throw some more wood on the fire and lock the door, we managed to make a good effort. I don’t know how the Hamiltons’ afternoon went, but ours went just fine. And we did eventually get the nap.

That night we made more hot chocolate and ate more peanut butter. We also had some apples. I like to think we would have talked to each other just as much if the electricity had been working, but maybe we wouldn’t have. There’s an intimacy to being alone together in the near darkness, and every time we made love I felt surer of him, and our new relationship became more solid. Neither of us would have taken the step off the edge of the cliff if we hadn’t been after more than yet another one-night stand.

“That last waitress in Sarne,” I said. I gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “That was the one I really minded, and for a couple of weeks I couldn’t figure out why.”

“Well, two things. I was hoping you’d come in on us, clobber the woman, and throw her out and tell me I was your one and only; and barring that, I was horny,” Tolliver said. “Plus, she offered. Okay, that’s three things.”

“I was tempted,” I admitted. “But I never felt I could risk it. I kept thinking, What if I ask him not to, and he asks me why not? What can I say back to him? No, don’t do it, I love you? And you would say, Ohmigod, I can’t travel with you anymore.”

“I was thinking you’d say the same thing,” he said. “You’d say that you couldn’t be with someone who wanted to go to bed with you all the time, you had to have a clear head to do your job, and you didn’t want to fog it up with dealing with lust. After all, you picked fewer bed partners than me.”

“I’m a woman,” I said. “I’m not gonna go around sleeping with whoever wants to sleep with me. I need a little bit more than that to go on.”

“Not all women are like that,” he said.

“Yeah, well, lots of them are.”

“Do you hold it against me? Those random women?”

“Not as long as you’re disease free. And I know you are.” He got tested as regularly as he could, and he always used a condom.

“So,” he said, “we’re together now.”

He was asking a question. “Yes,” I said. “We’re together.”

“You’re not gonna go with anyone else.”

“I’m not. You?”

“I’m not. You’re it.”

“Okay. Good.”

And just like that, we were a couple.