Nora snorted a laugh. “No, no. It was never one thing. Sometimes it was a cold, or a stomach bug. Two summers in a row I got a bad flu, the worst fevers I ever had.”

“Surprised you have so many good memories here, if that was the pattern.”

She smoothed the comforter, suddenly feeling cautious. Talking about this—it felt like a risk, given how their conversation on poetry night had gone. But he was as good as asking, wasn’t he? It’s what he’d been like on that first morning. Curious about her. Interested in her.

“I never got sick during the school year, not ever,” she said, leaning into that interest, settling into it like it was another cozy bed to climb into. “I got perfect attendance from second grade on. In first grade I broke my arm during a field trip, so I missed half a day for that.”

“You only got half a day for a broken arm?”

She shrugged. “I liked school. But also, my parents were really into their work.” She took a sidelong glance at him. The darkness around them was already changing, or her eyes were already accommodating it, because she could see that he’d tipped his head toward her.

“Yeah? What’d they do?”

“They’re professors. Both in archaeology.”

“Shit, really? Like Indiana Jones?”

She laughed quietly, the sound somehow so intimate. What else could it be, really, to laugh with someone in your bed? It felt like the most secret, private, special thing. It felt like a fever dream. She gave up on thinking there was anything normal or casual about it.

“More boring than Indiana Jones. Anyway, that’s how they met, in graduate school. They work a lot during the school year, teaching their classes, but also writing all these papers and stuff. They’re actually pretty famous.”

“Not Indiana Jones famous.”

“No. Like . . . nerd famous. PBS documentaries famous.”

“Huh,” he said, then paused. “So they didn’t get summers off, or . . . ?”

“They do their field work in the summer. Digs all over the place. They’re on one now, actually.” As they got older, it bothered Nora more, but she didn’t suppose that mattered much. Once her dad had told her he hoped he was lucky enough to die on a dig. Doing what I love, he’d said, and Nora—who’d been twelve at the time—had felt almost breathless with hurt.

“They never took you along?”

She shook her head. “It would’ve gotten in the way with their work, I think.”

Now that—that was straight out of her mom’s script. Nora, it’s simply not practical for me to come to Nonna’s with you this year. Nora, it wouldn’t be worth it for you to travel all the way to Greece, not with the schedule your father and I have planned.

“And anyway, I liked coming here. There were always people around.”