“Did you think I thought you had called me for that?”

“Didn’t you?”

I looked back past the roses toward the long yard.

“I thought I loved you once,” she said. “I think now I was using you to love myself. Or maybe it was something else. I don’t know. Besides . . . you loved Arch first. So did I. We both know that’s not something we could ever get past.”

There was so much I wanted to say to her. Instead, I just smiled—that sad, sweet smile they say makes me such a comfort to the bereaved.

“I have one last favor to ask,” she said.

“Anything,” I said.

“The new owner has hired an architectural engineer. There’s structural damage in the walls. They’re going to keep the bones, but it won’t look the same. I want to be able to remember it the way it was.”

“I’m out of practice,” I said. “I’ve only just begun to try again.”

“You’re the only person I’d ever ask,” she said.

I returned a few days later with an easel and a stool and a box of oil paints in the trunk of my car. The house and grounds were still and silent. I walked down into the yard, found a spot in the shade of the red oaks, set up my easel and board, and prepared the pallet. The air was cool and redolent with the scent of the oils and the late blooms in the gardens and the coming of fall.