“I used to do the same thing with your picture,” I confessed. “I had my own ritual. I imitated him.”

“And he would have loved it,” she said. She took my hand and slipped the stone into it. “He believed in magic. So do I.”

“I’m not sure I do,” I told her.

She slipped from the bed and moved to the window, and she stood for a moment gazing out of it. Then she looked back at me. “What do you think magic is?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “Something we can’t explain, maybe.”

“I think it’s making things happen that we’re afraid of,” she replied gently. Then, after a moment, she said, “Bobo, I want to tell Peter about us.”

She lifted her hands, with her palms toward me, to stop my words.

“I thought about it driving up,” she said in a rush. “I could hear myself saying it. I could hear the words, Bobo. I said to him, There’s a man that I’ve loved for a very long time, and I thought I had lost him, but I found him and if he leaves, I’ll never see him again.’ ” She looked at me with pleading. “I could hear myself. It was so easy to say. I could imagine sitting at the table with him, telling him. I could see the whole thing, like it was a scene from a play and I was high above it, in a balcony, looking down, watching my lips move, listening to the words.” She paused and stepped toward me. Her voice became calm. “Do you know what was funny about it? My mother was in the balcony beside me. I could sense her, sitting there, and maybe that’s why it was easy. It’s what my mother did, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t easy for your mother,” I reminded her.

“But she did it,” Amy argued. “She did it. Can’t we do that, too, Bobo?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

She did not speak for a moment and then she asked, softly, “Do you want to do it?”

I did not answer.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I am,” I admitted.

“Is it our age, Bobo? Do you think we’re too old, that we’ve waited too long?”

I shook my head again. “I don’t know.”