Jake didn’t apologize. She had been afraid that he might. Instead he waited a moment and then reached into his pocket, taking out a scrap of paper and a pen. “I’m flying back home tonight,” he said as he leaned the paper against the glass, and Leora saw that he was writing his name and address on it. “When are you going back to New York?”

“The day after tomorrow,” she answered. He continued scribbling. But as she watched him scratching against the glass, she decided: no. She didn’t want it to happen that way, with silly phone calls and then some stupid coffee date, followed by lunch, followed by dinner, followed by heartache. But was there another way to do it? She glanced back at the dollhouse, where, in one corner of a study, she saw a pile of yellowing pamphlets, gathering dust. Attention, attention! she thought. And suddenly, she knew what to do.

“I’m not going to give you my address,” she said.

Jake’s hand, until then scribbling furiously, stopped short. He looked up at her as if she had stabbed him in the chest. “Why not?”

“Because I’ve thought of a better idea,” she answered. “Look, there aren’t very many Leoras in the world, or at least not in journalism anyway. And I’ll tell you about an article I wrote, for an extra easy clue. You could go to your library and look it up if you really wanted to track me down. But if you want to see me again, I’ve got a puzzle for you.”

Jake’s expression slowly changed to a smile. “Puzzle?”

“Okay, here it is,” she said, working out the details in her mind before speaking. “A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for my magazine about bones—about the skull of some guy who lived thousands and thousands of years ago. He’s supposed to be the missing link or whatever, and he just turned up in this weird gift shop in New York, as if he’d risen from the dead or something.”

As she spoke, Jake’s eyes seemed to light up, as if he somehow knew exactly what she was talking about. He seemed about to speak. But when she paused for him to say something, all he said was, “Like in Ezekiel. You know, dry bones?”

Leora looked at him blankly. Jake searched her face for something, some level of recognition. She had none to offer him, but she was too embarrassed to admit it. They stood in silence until he continued.