“It’s beautiful.”

“I was supposed to sell it with the rest, but I couldn’t. I wanted to have something of hers.”

“It’s a work of art.”

“Like a little, smooth earth. Nice, huh?” He let her admire the pot for a second more, then blew out the lamp flame and stepped back across the room.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to throw you a pot.”

“I can’t see.”

“I can’t see you, either. This could be interesting.”

“I can’t—”

“Catch!”

Joe tossed the pot lightly, underhand. It rolled from his fingertips into the dark. A last, faint nimbus of moonlight clung to the open window. He watched the pot tumble past the dim glow and disappear into the darkness on the other side. He waited for an explosion of clay. There was a sharp intake of breath from the other side, no other sound.

He stepped gently across the floor, reached into the dark and found her hands. She had caught the pot by her ear and still held it there tightly, off-balance. When he had first gone to the crate, he hadn’t known what he was going to do. An impulse was there, the start of an arc, the opportunity to risk all.

Anna was shaking. “That was crazy.”

“Maybe. But we proved you’re here.” He moved his hand from hers, down to her necklace and shirt and the weight and heat of her breast, where he felt the accelerated rhythm of her heart. “And alive.”

The nimbus at the window became brighter and harder. For a moment Joe thought perhaps the moon had turned back, pulled by the pot’s dark flight, a vying gravity. If he could raise the dead, he could raise the mountains and affect celestial bodies. The nimbus became a beam of light gently probing the dim outlines of lamp, table, chair rail, then a white shaft that poured through the window and filled the room. A car engine idled outside. It must have rolled in neutral on its own momentum all the way from the road behind the Reyeses’ yard.

“Who is it?” she asked.

He set the pot on the table and opened the door a crack to look out, but the headlights were too bright and whoever was in the car wasn’t getting out. “Can’t see,” he said.