Leora listened with her eyes down, looking at the veins on the back of her own hand. They stood out like little raised ridges on a topographical map, not yet civilized by age into highways and roads. She thought of Bill Landsmann with his veiny hands, an explorer in a new world. “Your mother really recorded your whole life for you,” she said.

“That’s what I thought too, at first,” Jake said, covering her hand with his own, which was already charted with the beginnings of the earliest beaten tracks. “But then I started thinking about all the things that have happened to me since she died, important things, and I realized I don’t have any record like that anymore. For a while, I tried to make lists myself, but I couldn’t do it. It just felt so pointless.”

He coughed, and Leora could hear that it was a fake cough, a noise to hide something he would never say in daylight. “But things don’t really disappear, I don’t think,” he continued. “Maybe you and your own children might forget about something, but if that happens, then someone else’s children will find them eventually. I feel that way when I’m doing research—I mean, here I am reading some guy’s letters, and maybe his great-grandchildren haven’t even heard of him, but I have, and his letters are important to me. I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a historian—to find those lost things.”

Leora noticed the earnest expression that had settled on his face. It reminded her of the movies she used to watch with her parents, which invariably reached moments like this—moments when you sometimes squirmed in your seat, too embarrassed to take them seriously, yet secretly wishing you could. It had been years since she had seen that expression on anyone, outside of old movies. “So have you found anything yet?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, suddenly grinning at Leora, “I think I found more things like that in one afternoon at Random Accessories than I ever did at the library. You’ll never believe this, but a week before I met you, I had already read your article about that skull.”

Leora sat all the way up on the bed. “Really?”

Jake laughed, pushing her back down against the pillows. “This is never going to work, Leora. I was supposed to come here to help you fall asleep!”

She smiled. “It’s too late for that, Jake,” she said, but as she leaned against the pillows propped up against the wall, she felt, for the first time that night, something like fatigue.