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“Atonement, mother? Are you planning on laying bricks at Dragons?”

Candace’s scoff was all disgust.

“I am getting married in three weeks, Magdalene. Don’t be ridiculous. I will come see you after the honeymoon. And I mean a ‘moon’, dear. We are going to Europe for a month. My wardrobe needs to be updated.”

Well, this was news to Magdalene.

“Am I even invited to the wedding?”

An embarrassed sort of silence was her answer. She laughed out loud and kept laughing, as her mother tried to make her stop.

“Magdalene! You have to understand, I can’t pretend to be fifty when my child is forty-six, even if you don’t look a year older than forty. And I have not told him how old I am! Let me enjoy this, and I will start on that atonement thing after everything is finalized and we’re back home. Plus, you hate my weddings and declined to come to the last three, anyway.”

That much was true.

“Mother, why are you doing this?”

“Sue me, Magdalene. I love weddings and being the center of attention. And I look amazing in ivory.”

Well, Candace would be Candace, no matter what, and Magdalene knew better than to blame the sun for shining. It was precisely what it was there for. At least she was absolutely self-aware, and unrepentantly so.

Days later,the phone call still made her laugh. Amidst the thoughts of her mother, the silence of the skeletal Dragons suddenly broke under a pair of Ferragamo loafers. Magdalene would know those steps anywhere. The careful-not-to-get-my-expensive-shoes-dirty ones.

For a moment, she considered remaining motionless so he wouldn’t find her in the dusk and the rubble.

She must have conjured him up, remembering the conversation with her mother and how she’d compared Magdalene’s new relationship with her marriage. It was very much reminiscent of the first day of school months ago and of how these things seemed to come to her in twos.

“There’s no way George told you where to find me, Timothy.”

The surprised jerking of his shoulders—clearly he had not expected her to be leaning against the wall in the deserted Aula Magna—gave her a small amount of satisfaction.

“She didn’t. I think she’d just as soon send me jumping off the cliff rather than be helpful. I thought I’d find you somewhere around here, is all. Sam actually mentioned…”

He trailed off, rubbing his neck. Ah, so he had the decency to be uncomfortable at ratting out Sam. It was Magdalene’s turn to be surprised. At both, the fact that Sam knew about her sunset wanderings over the carcass of the school, and that she would share this information with Timothy.

“It’s fine. You’re free to talk to her, you know.”

He came closer, and in the dying light of dusk she could see apprehension on his face, mixed with regret. She almost sighed. So this would be that kind of conversation yet again.

“Timothy…”

Her shoulders hunched as she tried to shield herself from his demagoguery as much as possible.

“No, no.” He raised his hands, palms facing her, defeated. “I won’t start. I know everything you are going to reply.”

“I will say what I have been saying for years. There is no other way for me to end this more than this is already over.”

His answering smile was self-deprecating.

“I am not here for that. I just wanted to see for myself that you are alright, and since Alden is here, I planned on speaking to him as well. Insurance issues.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he chuckled.

“Fine, and I did want to see Sam, too. Maybe to finally understand what you see in her, and what it is that made you run into a burning building to save her. I suspect you’d not have poured a glass of water on me, had I been on fire.”

The lack of resentment in his voice was the only reason she entertained the idea of explaining herself.

“Remember how you threw in my face that I was unknowable?”