Instead, I move quickly out of the kitchen, opening every drawer I pass—the ones in the living room bookcase and then the foyer. Furniture, built-ins. Anything with a knob I can tug on.

“What are you looking for?” Jasper asks, following behind me. I can tell that he wants to know only so that he can help.

“For something else she shouldn’t have,” I say.

Like maybe something in a box shoved at the way bottom of her T-shirt drawer. I turn for the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Jasper shouts as I race up.

“She has this weird box in her drawer,” I call back when Jasper finally catches up to me in Rachel’s bedroom. I yank open her bureau and feel around underneath her clothes.

My hands tremble as I pull the box out. Even more so when I lift the lid.

Inside is a ring. A plain silver band like so many others. But when I peer closer, I can see words etched inside, part of a longer Yeats poem about love that I recognize. Because the whole poem is a piece of history. My history. My parents’ history. The first half—I would ride with you upon the wind—is engraved in my father’s wedding ring. The second half—And dance upon the mountains like a flame—is in my mother’s ring.

And that’s the ring sitting here now in Rachel’s drawer.

20

IT TAKES US A WHILE TO GET TO HARVARD’S SPRAWLING CAMPUS, AND EVEN longer to find the information center. It is a little past eight p.m. when we finally get inside. We luck out on the woman behind the desk, a friendly grandmotherly type who seems not the least bit concerned that two random people want to know where any crew team members might hang out on campus during summer. Instead, she points us in the direction of the MAC, the Malkin Athletic Center, where some of the crew team apparently sometimes works out, even during the off-season. (The woman behind the desk does not approve of such a strenuous, year-round schedule—that much is clear.) We just have to hope that Leo is one of those summer holdovers.

We walk in silence across the dark, quiet campus, headed—at least we hope—in the direction of the MAC. Twice I stop to ask where it is, and both times we discover that we have gotten off course. Not terribly, but enough that it feels like a bad sign. Like maybe we will walk on and on in circles and never actually get anywhere.