Summary

Aaron had not heard from Helen in two days. “Logic said she might just have retreated to work on the papers all by her prickly English self,” but he did not believe this; “something was wrong: she wasn’t well, she’d fallen, she needed help” (538). Aaron has still not replied to Marisa’s e-mail, which he received four days ago. “His deadening failure, his inability to even approach the subject without an obliterating panic rising in his chest – was the measure of the man he would always be” (539).

He arrives at the rare manuscripts room to find it temporarily closed for a bookcase installation. Wilton arrives and Aaron thinks he “would be the hands-down winner of the all-England charming historian competition” (539). Aaron wishes he could “see Wilton’s face when Aaron and Helen published their article” (540). Wilton recalls a time in which he...