I’ll still study the past to try to understand why man is what he is. Now, having known you, I’ll always have hope for what he can become.

Be happy. I want to know you are. Don’t forget me. I wanted to put a sprig of rosemary in the capsule, but I was afraid it would only turn to dust. Find some, and think of me. “Pray, love, remember.”

Libby.

“Libby?” Cal leaned against the shovel, watching her.

“Yes?”

“Where were you?”

“Oh, not very far away.” Glancing down, she lifted a brow. “Well, I knew a big strong man like you could dig a hole.”

“I think I have a blister.”

“Aw.” She rose to kiss the tender skin between his thumb and forefinger. “Let’s put it in. Then you can watch while I cover it up.”

“Good idea.” The moment the box was in, he handed her the shovel. Libby eyed it, then the pile of dirt that had to be replaced.

“Four women presidents?”

He stretched his tired back. “Might have been five.”

With a nod, Libby began to shovel. “Cal?”

“Hmm?” He was giving serious consideration to a nice, lazy nap.

“The questions I asked before, those were the big ones, the sweeping ones. I wondered if I could ask you something more personal.”

“Probably.”

“Would you tell me about your family?”

“What would you like to know?”

“Who they are, what they’re like.” She tossed dirt into the hole in a steady rhythm that Cal enjoyed. “I’d like to imagine I knew them a little.”

“My father’s a research and development technician. Lab work, all indoors and confining. He’s very dedicated, dependable. At home he likes to garden, plants flowers from seed and works them all by hand.”

As he drew in the scent of the freshly turned earth that Libby worked, Cal could almost see his father cultivating his garden.

“Sometimes he paints. Really, really bad landscapes and still lifes. He even knows they’re bad, but he claims art doesn’t have to be good to be art. He’s always threatening to hang one of them in the house. He’s . . . I don’t know, steady. I doubt I’ve heard him raise his voice more than a dozen times in my life. But you listen to him. He’s like the adhesive that kept the family centered.”

He stretched out on the grass to watch the sky as he continued. “My mother is . . . what was that term you used once? Wired? She’s packed with energy and a blazing intellect that’s almost scary. She intimidates a lot of people. She’s always amused by that. I guess because inside she’s soft as butter. She raised her voice plenty, but she always felt guilty about it. Jacob and I gave her a hell of a time.