“No. We didn’t get much sleep the night before, either.”

The house was small but surprisingly cozy, considering no one had lived in it for almost a year. There was a rustic feel to the place. The large braided rug on the floor looked homemade. So did the curtains. A massive planter decorated with an abstract zigzag design sat on the floor next to the couch. It was empty.

“Mom painted the planter,” Olivia said.

He nodded and continued his survey. The furniture was old, the coverings faded and worn, but the sofa and reading chairs had been built to last—built for a family. The coffee table and the dining table bore the patina that could only come from years of use in a household. Earlier he had lit the fire that Harmony had laid on the hearth. The aroma of the homemade cheddar-and-broccoli soup warming on the stove and the spicy polenta cakes in the oven filled the kitchen.

He could live in a house like this, he thought, just as he could live in Olivia’s apartment. But neither was home for him. He was a guest, and not a particularly welcome one.

He thought he had learned to be at peace with the knowledge that he was doomed to be a traveler in life. After meeting Olivia he knew that was not true.

Great. Now he was making himself moody. Time to compartmentalize. Time to focus.

He shoved the emotions into a mental filing cabinet labeled Not Useful and considered the painting that hung over the sofa. Time to focus.

“This is the painting you told me about,” he said. “The one that illustrates the camera.”

Olivia came to stand beside him. “Mom painted it when I was thirteen. I was just coming into my aura-reading talent.”

The image was that of a girl on the cusp of womanhood gazing into a full-length mirror as if trying to see her future, trying to visualize the person she would become. The edges of the mirror were an intense blue, the same color as the dress Olivia had worn for the speed date event. The center of the mirror reflected the young Olivia and a portion of the room behind her. In the painting there was a massive vibrantly green fern cascading out of the planter.

The mirror also reflected the vintage camera. It was positioned on the floor in front of the planter.

“Are you sure you don’t remember seeing the actual camera?” Harlan said.

“Positive.” Olivia drank some wine and lowered the glass. Her eyes were drenched in shadows. “It wasn’t part of the original composition. She added it later. She said she did it from memory. I asked her why. She told me it was a family heirloom from my grandmother and that I should think of her whenever I looked at the painting.”