Nora swallowed, uncertain. He didn’t like to talk about his parents; she knew that from the few times they’d come up. But all of a sudden, she had the feeling that if he didn’t talk about them, she’d never be able to tell him what she’d started this day so optimistic about.

She’d never be able to choose him.

“Well, I know, but . . . I don’t know. What everyone said, when they saw it.” Her voice tipped up at the end, an unintentional inflection. She wasn’t asking him any kind of question, not really. She was just . . . confused.

“They didn’t say anything wrong. They were young. They were in love. I shouldn’t have said what I did, about the memorial thing. They weren’t bad people.”

Nora pursed her lips, frustrated. Not so much at him as for him.

“I’m sure they weren’t,” she said, even though she actually wasn’t. “But they seem like they were pretty negligent. So I think it’s really fine if you’re still a little pissed about it.”

“I’m not, though,” he said, with such strained, insistent conviction. “I haven’t been, not for a long time. They were who they were, and I dealt with that years ago. I hardly thought of them, until . . .” He trailed off.

“Until Donny,” she finished for him, anger at her former neighbor flaring again. She couldn’t regret that Donny’s last wishes had brought Will back to this building and into her life, but she hated that the apartment he’d been left had made him feel all this pain.

“No,” he said, dropping his eyes to the counter. “Until you.”

She blinked in surprise, dread settling along the column of her spine. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He shook his bowed head, resting his hands on the counter, his arms spread wide. A familiar posture.

“You and me,” he said. “And what we’re doing here.”

“What are we doing here?”

A long, awful pause, another shake of his head. “I don’t know, Nora. Too much, I think.”

“Too much what?” The dread that had settled was transforming into something else—something harder and more defensive. No matter how things had changed between them, it was familiar to her, this stiffening. She’d spent weeks feuding with Will Sterling, with confronting him, and she’d do it again now, if it meant figuring this out.

She tapped a finger against the counter. “Look at me.”

When he raised his head, she had the feeling he was doing what he’d done with the photograph. His eyes were on her, but somehow not; somehow it seemed he’d unfocused his gaze.