But right now, his stubborn, sated brain wouldn’t give over to thinking about it. Instead, he watched her wave her hand, saw her make a small noise of self-deprecating dismissal while the flush in her cheeks deepened. His mind prodded him with one compliment after another. You look pretty in this light. I could listen to you talk about making sauce all night. Your voice carries like a song out here.

He picked up the lid for the container, pressed it back on with more vigor than was necessary. Quiet, he thought, as if he was lidding his own brain. Once he had it on, he set it down and shifted to mimic her posture—facing the water, knees up, elbows resting on top of them. Between them, the jacket-tablecloth had wrinkled up, a dozing chaperone.

He was trying to concentrate on being responsible, practical, when Nora’s laugh broke the silence—a bright, lilting thing, the grown-up version of the laugh he’d heard all those years ago. It was hard to feel responsible in the face of that.

He looked over, glad he wasn’t two floors beneath her. “What?”

She was still looking toward the water, big smile broadcast in its direction. “It’s . . . this is so neat, that there’s this whole beach here!”

He smiled, shaking his head. Sometimes, when he was around Nora, he could sense—even though he’d never met her—the way her grandmother must have shaped her. She said words like neat with total sincerity. When someone cut her off in traffic on the way here, her only exclamation had been a quiet, surprised “Well!” The night he stayed with her, he noticed all kinds of funny contradictions about her space—the sleek, top-of-the-line laptop set beside an old corded phone on the heavy, ornate console table in her living room. The complicated chrome coffee machine sitting in crowded formation on the countertop next to an almond-colored toaster oven that looked like it’d seen better days. Her fluffy, bright white comforter and pillows, and the flat, frayed quilt that she had folded over an old rocking chair in the corner of her bedroom.

“Wait,” he said, a thought striking him. “Have you . . . never been to the beach here? In Chicago?”

She looked down at her knees, gently digging her heels into the sand, her bare toes wriggling with the effort. “I haven’t. I’m sure that sounds silly.”