“You’d include some simple equipment,” she suggested. “A thermometer, a hydrometer, premeasured yeast?”

“Something like that,” Leo said. He made a note on a bit of paper and folded it carefully into his pocket. “If it went well, we might even try a champagne, or a sparkling burgundy.”

“What does Didier think?” she asked.

“We haven’t talked to him about it yet,” he said. “It’s not quite what he had in mind. But certainly it would help our case if Charlie was interested.”

Dear Charlie, she thought. Of course he’d do it, if they asked. A way to help his family, and by extension to help some of the growers and drivers in town. He’d never leave, if he did that. Which meant Alice would never leave either, any more than she had herself. Charlie would do well at whatever he chose, but he had seemed so clearly meant for something else. If he went to her friend in Philadelphia, he might learn how to thread together a dinosaur’s vertebrae, how to excavate a skull broken into a hundred bits. He might travel to China, to Siberia, to South America or the Arctic; he might live in New York.

She had such faith in him that when she received another letter from Philadelphia a few months later, she still refused to question her assessment of Charlie’s gifts. I’m disappointed, of course, to hear that your young friend has chosen another path instead of joining us, Benjamin wrote. But since I never received further word from him, it seems clear that not only is he not as interested as you implied, but that he is in some way deceiving you. I have no interest in admitting such a person to our program, although I do wish him—and you, always—the best of luck. It was signed not “Benjamin” but “Benjamin N. Hardiman.”

She would file that single sheet away, unable to piece the puzzle together—but on the night of the open house, she was still imagining, as she weighed Jasper and Leo’s plans, that Benjamin had gotten Charlie’s letters. Still imagining, as their conversation was suddenly interrupted by what had caught the dogs’ interest, what Charlie might do in Pennsylvania.