He laughed. "Then you're in for an adventure. Hold on a second." He disappearedupstairs for a moment, then returned with a navy blue button‐down shirt. He held itopen for her.

"Here, put this on. I don't want you to stain your dress."

Allie put it on and smelled the fragrance that lingered in the shirt‐‐his smell,distinctive, natural.

"Don't worry," he said, seeing her expression, "it's clean."

She laughed. "I know. It just reminds me of our first real date. You gave me yourjacket that night, remember?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I remember. Fin and Sarah were with us. Fin kept elbowing me thewhole way back to your parents' house, trying to get me to hold your hand." "Youdidn't, though."

"No," he answered, shaking his head.

"Why not?"

"Shy, maybe, or afraid. I don't know. It just didn't seem like the right thing to doat the time."

"Come to think of it, you were kind of shy, weren't you."

"I prefer the words 'quiet confidence,'" he answered with a wink, and she smiled.

The vegetables and crabs were ready about the same time.

"Be careful, they're hot," he said as he handed them to her, and they sat across fromeach other at the small wooden table. Then, realizing the tea was Still on the counter,Allie stood and brought it over. After putting some vegetables and bread on theirplates, Noah added a crab, and Allie sat for a moment, staring at it.

"It looks like a bug."

"A good bug, though," he said. "Here, let me show you how it's done."

He demonstrated quickly, making it look easy, removing the meat and putting it onher plate.

Allie crushed the legs too hard the first time and the time after that, and had to useher fingers to get the shells away from the meat. She felt clumsy at first, worryingthat he saw every mistake, but then she realized her own insecurity. He didn't careabout things like that. He never had.

"So, whatever happened to Fin?" she asked. It took a second for him to answer.

"Fin died in the war. His destroyer was torpedoed in forty‐three."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know he was a good friend of yours." Hisvoice changed, a little deeper now.

"He was. I think of him a lot these days. I especially remember the last time I sawhim. I'd come home to say good‐bye before I enlisted, and we ran into each otheragain. He was a banker here, like his daddy was, and he and I spent a lot of timetogether over the next week. Sometimes I think I talked him into joining. I don'tthink he would have, except that I was going to."

"That's not fair," she said, sorry she'd brought up the subject.

"You're right. I just miss him, is all." "I liked him, too. He made me laugh." "He wasalways good at that."

She looked at him slyly. "He had a crush on me, you know."

"I know. He told me about it."

"He did? What did he say?"

Noah shrugged. "The usual for him. That he had to fight you off with a stick. That youchased him constantly, that sort of thing."

She laughed quietly. "Did you believe him?" "Of course," he answered, "why wouldn'tI?"

"You men always stick together," she said as she reached across the table, pokinghis arm with her finger. She went on. "So, tell me everything you've been up tosince I saw you last."

They started to talk then, making up for lost time. Noah talked about leaving NewBern, about working in the shipyard and at the scrap yard in New Jersey. He spokefondly of Morris Goldman and touched on the war a little, avoiding most of thedetails, and told her about his father and how much he missed him. Allie talked aboutgoing to college, painting, and her hours spent volunteering at the hospital. Shetalked about her family and friends and the charities she was involved with. Neitherof them brought up anybody they had dated since they'd last seen each other.

Even Lon was ignored, and though both of them noticed the omission, neithermentioned it. Afterward Allie tried to remember the last time she and Lon had talkedthis way.

Although he listened well and they seldom argued, he was not the type of man to talklike this. Like her father, he wasn't comfortable sharing his thoughts and feelings.

She'd tried to explain that she needed to be closer to him, but it had never seemedto make a difference.

But sitting here now, she realized what she'd been missing. The sky grew darker andthe moon rose higher as the evening wore on. And without either of them beingconscious of it, they began to regain the intimacy, the bond of familiarity, they hadonce shared.

They finished dinner, both pleased with the meal, neither talking much now. Noahlooked at his watch and saw that it was getting late. The stars were out in full, thecrickets a little quieter. He had enjoyed talking to Allie and wondered if he'd talkedtoo much, wondered what she'd thought about his life, hoping it would somehowmake a difference, if it could.

Noah got up and refilled the teapot. They both brought the dishes to the sink andcleaned up the table, and he poured two more cups of hot water, adding teabags toboth.

"How about the porch again?" he asked, handing her the cup, and she agreed, leadingthe way. He grabbed a quilt for her in case she got cold, and soon they had taken theirplaces again, the quilt over her legs, rockers moving. Noah watched her from thecorner of his eye. God, she's beautiful, he thought. And inside, he ached. Forsomething had happened during dinner. Quite simply, he had fallen in love again. Heknew that now as they sat next to one another.

Fallen in love with a new Allie, not just her memory. But then, he had never reallystopped, and this, he realized, was his destiny. "It's been quite a night," he said, hisvoice softer now.

"Yes, it has," she said, "a wonderful night." Noah turned to the stars, their twinklinglights reminding him that she would be leaving soon, and he felt almost empty inside.

This was a night he wanted never to end. How should he tell her? What could he saythat would make her stay?

He didn't know. And thus the decision was made to say nothing. And he realized thenthat he had failed.

The rockers moved in quiet rhythm. Bats again, over the river. Moths kissing theporch light. Somewhere, he knew, there were people making love.

"Talk to me," she finally said, her voice sensual. Or was his mind playing tricks? "Whatshould I say?"

"Talk like you did to me under the oak tree." And he did, reciting distant passages,toasting the night. Whitman and Thomas, because he loved the images. Tennysonand Browning, because their themes felt so familiar. She rested her head againstthe back of the rocker, closing her eyes, growing just a bit warmer by the time he'dfinished. It wasn't just the poems or his voice that did it. It was all of it, the wholegreater than the sum of the parts. She didn't try to break it down, didn't want to,because it wasn't meant to be listened to that way. Poetry, she thought, wasn'twritten to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch withoutunderstanding.

Because of him, she'd gone to a few poetry readings offered by the Englishdepartment while in college. She'd sat and listened to different people, differentpoems, but had stopped soon after, discouraged that no one inspired her or seemedas inspired as true lovers of poetry should be.

They rocked for a while, drinking tea, sitting quietly, drifting in their thoughts. Thecompulsion that had driven her here was gone now‐‐she was glad for this‐‐but sheworried about the feelings that had taken its place, the stirrings that had begun tosift and swirl in her pores like gold dust in river pans. She'd tried to deny them, hidefrom them, but now she realized that she didn't want them to stop. It had beenyears since she'd felt this way.

Lon could not evoke these feelings in her. He never had and probably never would.

Maybe that was why she had never been to bed with him. He had tried before, manytimes, using everything from flowers to guilt, and she had always used the excusethat she wanted to wait until marriage. He took it well, usually, and she sometimeswondered how hurt he would be if he ever found out about Noah.

But there was something else that made her want to wait, and it had to do with Lonhimself. He was driven in his work, and it always commanded most of his attention.

Work came first, and for him there was no time for poems and wasted evenings androcking on porches. She knew this was why he was successful, and part of herrespected him for that. But she also sensed it wasn't enough. She wanted somethingelse, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybequiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not beingsecond.