I felt only a wide, quiet peace, like a field after weather.

Behind me the screen door opened.

Ivo had stayed the week; he came out with two glasses of iced tea and set one on the little table by my chair and leaned against the rail, looking out at the green.

“He won’t be back,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

I settled Rina higher against me and put my chin to her soft head and breathed her in — clean skin and warm milk and the faint lavender of her lotion — and I thought about Niko, who was gone, and who was also somehow entirely here, in this house his hands had built, in this yard, in the dark watching eyes of the girl asleep on my chest.