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I last a few strokes past that. Not many. Her name is in my mouth and I put it somewhere she can hear it.

After, I stay where I am longer than I’ve earned. She lets me. Her heel is still hooked behind my thigh.

The house does nothing.

I roll off and pull her over with me and she follows without being asked. That’s twice tonight she’s gone where I put her, and I’ve known this woman since a doorway where she didn’t look at me, and she’s never done that.

“What was that.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Astrid.”

“Go to sleep, Colt.”

She says it into my chest with her hand over my heart.

I get up, deal with it, and come back, and she hasn’t moved except to take the side I left.

When I get in she puts a leg over mine the way she never has, and she’s still wet against my thigh, and neither of us is going to do anything about that tonight.

It goes warm, and then it goes cool, and she sleeps straight through both. Her leg gets heavier. I don’t move.

The alarm’s going to come early. My shoulder is going to be a problem in the morning and I don’t care even slightly. Somewhere under the window the pillow I sleep against is on the floor, where it’s been since before any of this started.

Her breathing goes long and even. Her hand stays where she put it.

I’ll ask her tomorrow.

I already know she won’t tell me.

Chapter thirty-nine

Astrid

“Was Dad ever like Colt?”

I keep the plate beneath the water before I turn off the faucet.

Tova is at the island with her mathematics book open in front of her, one knee tucked beneath her on the stool, and a pencil balanced across the page.

Colt is at the arena. The pregame is on in the other room with the sound off, because Tova says the announcers are wrong about everything. His mug is still beside the sink. He left late and blamed the traffic before he was in the car.

I put the plate in the rack.

“In what way?”

“You always say that.”

“Because the question has several answers.”

“I mean when he was here.”

I face her. She has gone back to the equation she has not touched since she asked.

“I remember him,” she says. “Just not enough.”

I take the stool across from her.