“I feel as if I’m standing all alone in the middle of a fucking explosion, everything flying all around me. And I’m just standing here. You ruined me. You fucking ruined me, Benton.”

“Now who’s saying ‘fuck’?”

She wipes her eyes. “Now you’ve made me cry.”

He moves closer to her, touches her. They sit on the couch and gaze out at the twin bell towers of Trinita dei Monti, at the Villa Medici on the edge of the Pincian Hill, and far beyond, Vatican City. She turns to him and is struck again by the clean lines of his face, his silver hair, and his long, lean elegance that is so incongruous with what he does.

“How is it now?” she asks him. “The way you feel, compared to back then? In the beginning.”

“Different.”

“Different sounds ominous.”

“Different because we’ve been through so much for so long. By now it’s hard for me to remember not knowing you. It’s hard for me to remember I was married before I met you. That was someone else, some FBI guy who played by the rules, had no passion, no life, until that morning I walked into your conference room, the important so-called profiler, called in to help out with homicides terrorizing your modest city. And there you were in your lab coat, setting down a huge stack of case files, shaking my hand. I thought you were the most remarkable woman I’d ever met, couldn’t take my eyes off of you. Still can’t.”

“Different.” She reminds him of what he said.

“What goes on between two people is different every day.”

“That’s okay as long as they feel the same way.”

“Do you?” he says. “Do you still feel the same way? Because if…”

“Because if what?”

“Would you?”

“Would I what? Want to do something about it?”

“Yes. For good.” He gets up and finds his jacket, reaches into a pocket, and comes back to the couch.

“For good, as opposed to for bad,” she says, distracted by what’s in his hand.

“I’m not being funny. I mean it.”

“So you don’t lose me to some foolish flirt?” She pulls him against her and holds him tight. She pushes her fingers through his hair.

“Maybe,” he says. “Take this, please.”

He opens his hand, and in his palm is a folded piece of paper.

“We’re passing notes in school,” she says, and she’s afraid to open it.

“Go on, go on. Don’t be a chicken.”

She opens it, and inside is a note that says, Will you? and then a ring. It’s an antique, a thin platinum band of diamonds.

“My great-grandmother’s,” he says, and he slides it over her finger, and it fits.

They kiss.

“If it’s because you’re jealous, that’s a terrible reason,” she says.

“I just happened to have it with me after it’s been in a safe for fifty years? I’m really asking you,” he says. “Please say you will.”

“And how do we manage? After all your talk about our separate lives?”