He keeps his eyes on her slender hands. There couldn’t have been a less convenient time for him to find somebody he cared about. The thought of that is impossible, but he still can’t deny what he feels. He knows how foolish it is to even entertain the thought of wanting her, in this time and place, when he has made a complete mess of everything. But he also knows he has only this one life and now that he’s found someone he needs to hold on to her.

He leans in to kiss her. But just when he is close enough to feel her breath on his mouth, he pulls away. He stands and looks out into the night as rain begins to peck at the shadowy yard.

“Why did you do that?” she says from behind him.

He doesn’t know if she is asking why he started to kiss her or why he pulled away. He can’t figure which has upset her. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. When he turns he sees that her face has changed, squared by a new kind of pain.

“Ten years ago, I lost my little boy,” she says. “He was sick, for a long time. So every day he died a little bit more. But still, when he went, I wasn’t ready. They told me I’d have time to prepare myself. But there’s no way. So I shut myself down for years and years, after I lost him. I wanted to die. I kept thinking there might be some chance that I’d see him again if I did. But instead, I came here. And somehow I found Bell. You don’t know how similar you two are.”

He is sick to his stomach from the knowledge of what she has gone through. He doesn’t know how anyone gets over that. But this explains so much: all the times he can hear her crying on her side of the house, the sleepless nights she spends on the porch, the days when she disappears. But also, the way she launches into the world on her good days.

After a time he asks: “What do you mean, how similar we are?”

“More like how similar she is to your brother. She was running away, too. From loving somebody. From parents who would have rather seen her dead than with a woman.”

“I would’ve never thought—”