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It's the same room, with the iron bed and the slanted ceiling and the quilt of small interlocking rings, and the window onto the dark orchard. The lamp with the fringed shade is on. The photograph is gone from the dresser. There's an empty space where it stood. She turns to face me in the lamplight and puts her palms flat on my chest.

I undress her slowly. I don't need to be told. I take the green sweater off over her head and lay it over the chair, and unhook her bra. She stands with her arms at her sides and lets me look. I kiss her collarbone, and the freckles on her shoulder, and the soft hollow at the base of her throat. She works my buttons loose one at a time, and pushes the flannel off my shoulders, and runs both hands over the left one, pressing her thumbs into the place that used to ache.

"Better."

"I've been told I have a good therapist."

"She's very strict."

"I'm counting on that, too."

We lie down together on the quilt. The bed groans a long iron complaint. She laughs against my mouth. I settle over her with my weight on my forearms. She draws her knees up on either side of my hips and wraps her legs around me. The whole warm softness of her gives under me, her breasts against my chest, her thighs gripping my sides. Her eyes are open. I look down into them in the lamplight and see green and gold, and the dimple coming and going at the corner of her mouth.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi."

"You're staring."

"I'm allowed."

I push into her slowly. She draws a breath and lets it out, her fingers sinking into my shoulders. Neither of us looks away. It's not like the first night, or like the swing, or like the square of sunlight on my gray quilt. It's quiet and close and unhurried, my forehead against hers, both of us breathing in time. She moves with me in long, slow rolls of her hips. I feel everything: her heartbeat against my ribs, the heat of her skin, the way her hands slide up into my hair. She says my name. I say hers.

"Stay with me," she whispers.

"I'm here."

"Say it again."

"I love you." Against her mouth. "I love you, Carolina."

She comes with her eyes open, on a long, low breath, her whole body drawing tight around mine and then letting go. I follow her over with my face in her neck and her name on my lips and her arms locked around my back. We hold on afterward for a long time. The lamp burns on. The old house settles around us, board by board. The cold wind turns the branches against the window.

Later, when she's lying with her head on my right shoulder and her hand spread over my heart, she says drowsily, "She'll want to bring the fox."

"To the barn?"

"To supervise."

"Then the fox gets a vote."

"The fox gets a very strong vote." Her fingers move on my chest. "Will you tell her tonight? What we said?"

"I'll tell her tomorrow, after school, in the orchard. With you there." I turn my head and kiss her hair. "I want her to hear it from both of us."

"That's the right speech."

"My mother wrote it."

She laughs into my shoulder, and falls asleep in the middle of it.

I wake at ten past five to the sound of the house ticking. The window is still black. For a second I lie there not knowing where I am. Then I know exactly. I turn my head on the pillow and she's there, curled on her side with one hand under her cheek and her hair spread across the white quilt. The lamp's glow finds her shoulder, I watch her for a while.

On the nightstand is the pad with Nell's name printed across the top, and the pen. I pick it up. I write my number in the square anyway, in the delicate handwriting I use on reports, in case she'd rather have it on paper. Under it, Back at 4. With Faith. And a notebook.

I tear off the sheet and set it on the pillow next to her hand. Then I dress in the half dark. When I bend to kiss her shoulder she stirs.

"Ethan?"