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I don't know when I put my hand on his tie. It's the same navy silk with its tiny blue star. I wind it once around my fingers and I hear his breath catch. He lets me pull him down.

His hands come to my waist, and I brace out of old habit, waiting for the apologetic hold men have always given me. The one that lets them touch without really touching. It doesn't come. They settle on me like he's found something he hasn't been given permission to keep.

Full weight of his palms on the curve of my hips. When I kiss him I feel him exhale into my mouth like a man coming up from underwater.

He tastes like chicken and rice and coffee. He tastes like a nineteen-year-old at a kitchen table. His mouth is soft and then not.

The second my lips part under his he makes a low sound I feel in my knees.

I come up on my toes with his tie wrapped around my fist and my other hand flat against his chest where I held him off this morning. His heart is slamming under my palm.

The cold is gone. The dock, the lot, the car with my sleeping daughter in it, they've all gone out.

I'm the one who stops. I put my forehead against his collarbone, breathing hard. My heart a stranger in my chest.

"This is a terrible idea," I say.

"Probably."

"I'm serious."

"So am I." His mouth moves against my hair. "Rosey."

"Don't."

"I'm only saying your name."

"That's the problem." I make myself let go of the tie. Smooth it flat against his shirt, the way I did in the dye house. He catches my hand and holds it there, over his heart, for one more second. I take it back. "Good night, Roman."

"Tell me when you're home."

"I'm not giving you my number."

"It's on the staff contact sheet. Taped to the break room refrigerator."

"Of course it is."

I get into the car with my knees shaking. Start the engine and the headlights swing across the dock, catching him standing at the edge with his hands in his pockets and his hair a mess from my fingers. Not moving. Watching me go. I take Main to Linden with the window cracked for the cold. The Green is dark except for the lanterns, strung and unlit, swaying a little in the wind. At the light at Linden I sit through the red with my fingertips pressed against my mouth.

In the driveway, under the porch light, my phone buzzes in the cup holder. The number's unfamiliar and I know it anyway.

Safe?

I type Yes, and delete it. Type Home, and send it. The answer comes before I've even put the phone down.

Thank you. Sleep.

I do neither.

Chapter 4 — Roman

By five-thirty I've rebuilt the entire model twice, memorized a floor plan drawn in ballpoint pen on the back of a purchase order, and read a single word on my phone so many times it's started to look like a foreign language. Home.

I walked back to Applewood along the river with the taste of her still in my mouth, and my brain, which in thirty-six years has never once declined to work, wasn't working.

Room 4 has a claw-foot tub, a patchwork quilt, and a radiator that clanks like someone knocking to be let in.

I sat cross-legged on the bed with the laptop and the order form unfolded on the pillow beside me, and I did the only thing I know how to do with a feeling I can't solve, which is build a spreadsheet around it.