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"Good."

"Yeah?"

"I like her." A long, shuddering breath. "She did the voices wrong. But she's nice."

"She is. She's very nice."

"Can she make fox pancakes?"

"I think she'd say yes if you asked her nicely."

"Mm." The word is already mostly asleep. He stands, with her held against his shoulder, and carries her back down the hall. I hear a bedspring and the rustle of covers and his low voice murmuring something I can't make out, and then nothing at all.

I sit down on the bottom stair.

I'm not sure what happens to me. There's no reason for it. I have known this man for twenty-eight hours, give or take. I have counted them. I know that, and I know I wasn't looking for any of this, and I know I'm leaving on Monday.

But my throat has closed and my eyes have gone hot, and I'm sitting on a stranger's staircase with my arms around my knees, listening to a seven-year-old say good.

What I think, with perfect calm, is: Oh, no.

I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. When I look up, he's standing at the top of the stairs.

He comes down slowly. He sits on the step above mine, close enough that his knee touches my shoulder. For a while he says nothing. His hair is rumpled, his T-shirt is on inside out, and in the dimness his face looks younger than it did across the kitchen table.

"She has nightmares sometimes. Not often. Usually after a day like today."

"Does she remember them?"

"Some." He rubs his face with both hands. "Carolina, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For leaving you like that."

"You went to your daughter. I'd have been appalled if you hadn't."

He's quiet for a moment. When he speaks, it comes out slowly, as if each word costs him something.

"I told you I don't call. I told you I leave early. I told you it was one night, and I meant every word, and I said it to a woman who made me laugh in a cider line. I didn't know I'd be sitting on a staircase at eleven at night not wanting you to go."

My heart is doing something it has no business doing.

"I don't think this is casual anymore. I don't know what it is. But I don't think it's that."

"No." My voice comes out steady. "I don't think it is either."

He lifts a hand and tucks my hair behind my ear. His fingers are warm. He lets them rest against my jaw. I turn my face into his palm and close my eyes. For a moment neither of us moves.

"Come on," he says eventually, very gently. "It's late. I'm going to walk you to your room and I'm going to say good night, and I'm going to do it like a gentleman."

"You're terrible at that."

"I'm learning."

He stands and holds out his hand. I take it. He pulls me up. The stairs creak under both of us. I think of Nell's house and its third stair, and how it told on us both this morning, and how this house hasn't told a single thing tonight.

At the guest room door, he stops. The hall is dark, with the light from the bathroom pooled on the floor. My hand is still in his. I look at his mouth. He looks at mine.