In the wavering light, their excavations continue. Asia appears to have left much of her research here. Edwin finds drawers of Father’s playbills and even some letters and journals. He picks up one of these and realizes that what it advertises is the first time Father and Edmund Kean appeared on the same stage. Decades ago and miles away. He can so clearly imagine the curtain call, the audience in thunderous applause and all of them, every person in every seat, now dead. In his mind, he watches as they go, one by one, winking out of existence. The last left is a pale woman with rouged cheeks and a feathered hat clapping heartily as she ages before his eyes.

Adam and Edwin sit on the floor together, flicking the ash from their cigars into the basin with the candle, passing their discoveries hand to hand, exclaiming over every find. They’d bought sandwiches on the road, but have forgotten to eat them. Suddenly Edwin is too tired for food, his exhilaration turning in a moment into exhaustion. He takes his watch from his pocket, reads it, and then claps his hand over its face. “Guess the time.”

“Ten,” says Adam, his round face swimming in candlelight, but it is half past two.

Time for bed. They carry the candles up the stairs and find an old mattress in John’s room. The antlers still hang on the wall, empty now of their armory. Edwin opens the window and the breeze is cool and smells of cedar and ash. He finds some moldering bits of costumes in a closet. He gives Adam Macbeth’s cloak, keeps Lear’s for himself. They blow out the candles and lie together. Edwin is nervous and unsure so he keeps on talking.

“One time,” Edwin tells Adam, “one time in Boston, I was resting in the room, when my father came running in, dropped to the floor, and rolled under the bed. ‘I’ve gone out!’ he told me. Seconds later there was a knock on the door. I went to get it and the sculptor Tom Gould was standing outside. Gould had once done a bust of Father and adored him, but Father found Gould tedious. ‘Father’s out,’ I said, but he walked in past me, sat on my bed to wait for his return. I took a seat above Father. Now I was the one stuck with making conversation and I’ve never been good at that. Soon enough I’d run dry. It made for a long silence, which Father misunderstood. I heard his voice, singing out from under the bed. ‘Is that old bore gone?’ he asked.”

“Marvelous,” Adam says softly. He yawns, a great, cracking yawn that makes Edwin yawn, too. Adam shifts to his side, his back to Edwin. Edwin is looking up through the moonlit forest of antler tines.