“She was. He had recently announced the first of his really big discoveries—arc lighting in the first of the Moore tubes, although in the end Geissler beat him out there—and she applied for the job because she’d read about it. Her family was livid that she’d run off to Columbus and gotten a job, since she was the last of her siblings left unmarried and they had all pretty much decided she was going to be the eccentric spinster aunt who took care of her parents and her nieces and nephews, but she went off anyway, because she figured, if she couldn’t be a scientist herself, she could at least help one.”

As he told the tale he’d heard a hundred times, the usual warmth bloomed in his chest, the feeling of love and happiness that always accompanied thoughts of his parents’ marriage. His mother was quicksilver, funny and brilliant; his father was like the Mississippi River, slow and deep and powerful. They couldn’t have been more different, or more perfect together. They were two sides of the same story.

That’s what he’d been waiting for, he realized. The other side of his story.

And now he very much thought he might have found her. The sudden epiphany threw him off-balance, and he forgot what he’d been saying.

“She worked for him for three months,” he said, slowly, letting himself fall back into the familiar recitation. He was moving too fast again—a habit, with her. He needed to slow down, to think. “Taking his dictation and writing his letters and picking up his laundry, and on Christmas Eve he came back to the laboratory unexpectedly and found her sketching an improvement to the gas discharge tube. She assumed he’d be furious, and was bracing herself to be let go, but all he did was pick up the sketch and look at it for, according to her, the longest five minutes of her life. After, he put it down, nodded, and told her they’d take it to the glassblowers as soon as they opened up after Christmas. He said she was fired as his secretary, of course, and that they’d have to expand the laboratory so she could have her own space. And finally, he said he was damned glad he’d discovered this, because now that she was his partner instead of his employee, he could ask her to dinner without feeling like he was abusing his position.”

Alva’s smile was reluctant. “It’s a sweet story,” she said.

“They were married the next month. And they’ve been madly in love for the last thirty-five years, every child they’ve raised and every discovery they’ve made together a promise and a testament to that love. Just like this carving. Love isn’t naïve, Alva. It’s hope, and it’s faith, and it can outlast buildings and wars and empires.”