But he didn’t need to say it, he never had. She knew it, felt it, tasted it.

He grabbed her hand and held another large flashlight out in front of him and led her through the back hall into the wide, deep dining room. He moved the flashlight slowly around the room—pausing whenever she exclaimed with joy or astonishment at a particular molding or architectural detail. He ran his finger around her palm as she talked and walked. Her words danced in rhythm with the motions of his fingers and hand on hers.

They moved from room to room, entering some alternate world where she was permitted to see everything she had ever wanted in a house, in a restoration project—everything she taught about and loved—and Nick was part of everything she loved. She ran his hand over the rare papier-mâché wallpaper—gilded in some places—in the dining room, over the carved marble mantle in the parlor, over the rocaille scrolls on a mahogany staircase.

She took pictures with the camera and flash Nick provided. After every other room in the house had been photographed, touched and commented on, she entered the living room with a low, guttural sound of joy.

Nick released her hand and she grabbed for it. “Wait,” he said. “I want you to see this room with more light.” He opened a back window and kicked out the board. The sun sifted through the bubbled floor-to-ceiling glass windows like wavering pieces of scattered flame.

He threw his bundle on the floor, unrolled two down sleeping bags, shook them out as he dropped them to the floor.

“What’re you doing?”

“Thought we might need something to sit on.” He plopped down on the floor.

She pointed the flashlight where thick dirt covered the wide hand-planed heart-of-pine floors, crisscrossed with the small tracks of unknown animals she dared not think about. Dust motes rose and danced in shafts of lengthening light. She wandered around the room, touching, feeling and explaining the architecture as if her class stood with them.

She turned to Nick. He sat on a blue sleeping bag, gazing at her.

“Stop staring at me . . .” A rush of heat filled her body.

He reached his hand out for her and she took it; he pulled her down to the covered floor.

“I want to hear something . . . I want you to tell me what you’ve been thinking all these weeks since you read the telegrams.” He lifted her chin so she faced him. His touch was still gentle, the same whispered caress it had always been. “Do you wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how this could’ve happened to us—how we could have been separated like that? Do you try to get through the day, and it seems a million years long?”