He continued. “And now here you are and I can’t find any of those words . . .” He closed his eyes. “Here you are, and all I want to do is touch that space below your throat.” He opened his eyes and gazed at her neck—heat flared with the memory of his touch.

Her fingers landed gently on the hollow dent between her collarbones. His hand reached to cover hers.

“There. The place your silver cross used to lie, move every time you breathed.”

“I lost it,” Amy whispered.

“Lost what?” He gripped her hand.

“That cross. . .you.”

He moaned, bowed his head in what Amy thought might be prayer or defeat.

And all this time Amy had thought her life as neatly tucked and smooth as the vintage linen sheets on her bed; but wrinkles and folds hid beneath the surface.

The flaws of her life were covered like the thick white paint over the dirt-brown color the previous owner had painted her historic home, in the drowsy southern town where she lived with her husband and children. She’d applied another coat, and then another, until she was unknowingly suffocating in the layers of pretense.

Then Nick touched her. Then she lost the moon and crawled on her hands and knees to find it again.

Nick Lowry entered Amy Reynolds’ life again on a day seductive in its ordinariness, lazy in its soft family comfort.

Late-autumn sun washed the parked sport-utility vehicles, motor homes and Coleman grills in a honeyed afternoon light. The pungent smell of barbecue and grill smoke mingled with the earth-warm aroma of crushed leaves. Every few minutes a stray leaf fell in the stagnant air, released of its own volition, not forced by any breeze from an atmosphere so still and full Amy felt as if she bathed in it rather than moved through it.

Through the afternoon Amy’s limbs felt weighted and luxurious. Days like these—tepid fall days at Saxton University—brought to her heart the same impression every year: a longing—an odd misplaced sense of loss, yet also of promise. So it was a universal setup, her heart already languid and expectant.

Amy stood with her husband, Phil, on the same tailgating patch of grass they had for twenty-three years of home football games: a tradition of cheeseburgers, cold beer, potato salad, Chardonnay and old friends. Today was the day they would meet their son Jack’s first serious girlfriend. Jack spoke little of this girlfriend and yet he talked much more of her than of anyone he’d dated. Amy only knew her first name—Lisbeth—and she thought the name presumptuous, uppity, as if the girl had named herself at birth.