Sophia built her first shrine when she was six years old. She took a fragment of a fallen bird’s nest, decorated it with dandelions and acorn shells, and surrounded it with a circle of stones on the surface of a tree stump in her backyard. The tree had come down very recently, and she’d been staring out the window at the place where it used to be. No one had taught her to build this shrine; she had no word for what she was doing. The idea, and the compulsion, were hers alone.

As soon as her parents had allowed it, Sophia took to disappearing outside and roaming around whenever she chose. She began with the backyard, then moved on to the surrounding woods and the less populated side streets of her neighborhood. She always stopped to gather things of interest to her: stones, sticks, leaves, pine cones, also crushed cans, empty bottles, and even cigarette butts before she realized how filthy they were. Once she was rewarded by finding the strewn body parts of a fallen doll in the tall grass behind the liquor store. Another time, she came upon a large key, as long as her hand, which must have belonged to a lock that no longer existed.

She would gather these objects until she felt she had enough, and then, when she came to a place that felt significant to her (a broken fence, a large rock, a deserted shed), she would set to building. With rocks and stones, she generally made a tower or a pyramid; sticks and twigs she’d stack in layers or weave into a nest. She’d place all her other findings in the various nooks and crevices her shrine presented. If one was damaged, she would fix it when she next came to visit it. If she heard footsteps while she was building, she would abandon her work and return to it later.

When she believed she was not being watched, she’d kneel down beside one of her shrines, close her eyes, and spend a long time engaged in something that resembled prayer. This was perhaps the most important part of her life.

Soon the various corners, alcoves and closets of her home seemed to deserve shrines as well. To her horror, Sophia started to attract the attention of her parents, for they were apt either to come upon her when she was at work or to dismantle her shrines when they discovered them. Because she had developed this practice alone, she believed it was crucial that it remain private. She learned to be secretive and inconspicuous, making small shrines (out of paper clips, string, crumpled paper) that only she noticed. In doing so, she learned to keep this part of her life completely separate from her dealings with people. Her friends – and she came to have many – knew nothing of this habit of hers.

By the time Sophia was in her twenties, she felt distant from her parents and, as soon as she was out of college and had the opportunity, she moved to a small town three hours from where she’d grown up. She took an administrative position at the town’s survival center and was able to afford to rent a small house on a thickly wooded street a short drive from town. Though the houses were spread out and separated by clusters of trees, the neighborhood was tightly knit, and the people were kind, respectful and unintrusive. They liked Sophia and she got to know them well. Here, in this town with its many forest paths, she had the freedom to build shrines outdoors and inside her home, to sit in prayer unobserved and uninterrupted, to a degree she had not yet experienced. She never wanted to leave.

The house across the street from her was abandoned, had always been so, had been left in such poor condition – its roof beams rotting, its windows broken – that it seemed no one would ever buy it and that, over time, it would be allowed to crumble to the ground. It was unclear who owned this house. There was no indication that it was for sale. So, everyone in the neighborhood was surprised when it was announced late one winter that the lot had been purchased. The buyer must have been rich to have taken on a project of this scale, but this person did not make an appearance. The neighbors watched for most of the spring and summer as the house was radically restored. Walls came down and were replaced by new ones, the outlines of rooms began to take shape. The trees that lined the edge of the yard were all cleared away. Every day there were workers in hardhats who talked loudly and blasted music from a small boom box.

Sophia watched this happen with resentment, for she had, over the past few years, developed a close relationship with this house. The doors were always unlocked, and no one was ever looking, so she’d made a habit of going inside. Many of the planks were still strong enough for her to stand on, though she had always moved with caution. The cobwebs, the musky smell, the gaps in the floor and the skeleton of the upper stories – all of these things had drawn her more deeply into this place. She had built shrines in the corners and crannies that had struck her as significant, and knelt by them, eyes closed. She had roamed the accessible rooms and tried to imagine the lives of those who had once lived there. In doing so, she had conceived, dimly, that she was helping the house to die, however long that took. Always, she had returned home with a sense of purpose and peace. So she could not see the house transform without yielding to bitterness. Had she known her task would be interrupted, she would have taken the time to say goodbye.

The renovation was finished by late July. The workers departed and the house stood altered in condition rather than structure. Now it sported a fresh coat of light blue paint and sturdy walls. The shingles, shutters and windows were, for once, firmly in place. The lawn was trimmed. Before long a few moving trucks arrived, and the next day a black car was parked in the driveway. Whoever it was had moved in.

In that first week, Sophia made no effort to learn about this person, or people (the house was too large for one person, she thought, but she only saw one car), and she avoided the house with her gaze. She didn’t think the new house was ugly, only unsettling – but she hoped she would be used to it soon. Furthermore, her street was so small, and she was so close with her neighbors, that she knew she could not stay away from this person, or people, for very long. They would, in their own time, come to her.

It happened more quickly than she could have anticipated. Someone knocked on her door Monday night of the following week as she was washing the dishes. She dried her hands and went to open it.

A short, balding man stood on her doorstep. He was stout but not unattractive, with a round face that radiated goodwill. His white button-down shirt fitted him tightly, his posture was near perfect. He reminded her of a penguin.

He smiled and raised a hand to greet her.

“I’m Alan, your new neighbor.”

He gestured to the house across the street.

Sophia was immediately alarmed by his rich, resonant voice – it seemed too large for a place as small as her doorstep. She wanted to close the door, but instead she smiled back and welcomed him to town. He beamed at her with gratitude, though his eyes betrayed a certain anxiety.

“I was hoping to get to know everyone in the neighborhood, but it seems many people are on vacation this month. Could I interest you in dinner at my place this Friday?”

Sophia accepted the invitation. They shook hands and said goodbye for the night. She closed the door as soon as he turned away.

She returned to washing the dishes, much more anxious than when she’d begun. She would have much preferred to meet him at a large dinner party where there were many other people to talk to. She was unused to being called on alone.

On Friday, she spent longer than she wanted trying to decide what to wear. She settled on a dress that was modest and light blue, like the house’s new coat of paint, then walked across the street and rang the newly installed doorbell. It echoed melodically throughout the building.

Alan opened the door so fast he must have been standing by it and ushered her in. He too had decided on light blue for his shirt, though this was not a coincidence either one of them commented on.

The house smelled richly of the dinner he’d prepared. The floorboards no longer creaked beneath her feet. Sophia stood in the foyer and looked around.

The dimensions and layout of the ground floor were unchanged. The staircase stood straight ahead with a room to either side of it. A hall led past the staircase to rooms she could not see. The ceilings were smooth and white. Everything was so clean it almost glittered.

Alan watched her quietly as she took in his newly renovated home. She saw that his hands were clasped very tightly at his waist, though his face was calm. There was something so firm about his stillness that she could not look around in peace, so she nodded to him, and he led her through the threshold to her right, into the dining room.

In this narrow room there was now a long dinner table, upon which sat a roasted chicken on a silver platter, a steaming bowl of Spanish rice, and a colorful salad in a carved wooden bowl – all in much larger portions than two people needed. Sophia tried to conceal her embarrassment. Did he prepare a feast like this for every new guest?

They sat down at opposite ends of the table and began to eat.

Alan revealed quickly, with pride, that he was both a high school choral conductor and an Interfaith minister. He’d been hired to teach at a nearby private school and had purchased this house with the intention of finally settling down. She decided that he must have been born into wealth, for how could a teacher’s salary have paid for a renovation of this scale? He did not, however, talk extensively about his professions. Instead, he was eager to ask her questions, about the town, about the neighborhood, about her life. He did so rapidly, relentlessly – his eyes scarcely left her. His deep, resonant voice echoed off the walls as though the house were not yet accustomed to his presence.

When she did speak of herself, his face lit up, and he smiled so earnestly she couldn’t meet his gaze without discomfort. Her eyes kept wandering to the pattern of interlocking spirals on the tablecloth. She would then force herself to watch him as he spoke.

“He is kind,” Sophia told herself firmly. “He will be happy here.”

After dinner, they had a glass of wine in the living room and he showed her a family photo album. In most of the pictures of him as a child, he was either alone or surrounded by adults. When the sun had set, she told him that she’d better be going home. They made their way to the door.

On the way out, he paused and asked her a favor. If she was comfortable, he said, would she pray with him at the doorway. It was just something that he liked to do, a nice way of honoring one’s time with someone before they departed. She had never prayed with anyone before – it felt indecent to her. But she saw that he was sincere and didn’t feel she could say no, so she accepted, and they knelt for a moment in silence at the front door. She found her thoughts drifting from images of the house in its previous state to an awareness of his breathing so close to hers. Soon they were on their feet, they said a quick goodbye, and she returned to her house.

As she sat next to one of her shrines before bed, she wondered if she would ever see the inside of that house again. She tried to clear her mind, but she kept thinking of his disquieting warmth, his odd manner, his beguiling voice. She pictured the house as she had first known it, imagined it sinking into the earth, and gave it the farewell she felt it deserved. She trusted she would never return and went to sleep in search of some peace.

She was surprised to receive a paper invitation from Alan in her mailbox only three days after their first dinner, asking her to join him again the following week. The note specified Thursday this time – maybe he assumed she’d have plans on a Friday.

Sophia accepted the invitation, much of her wanting to say no, but unwilling to refuse a new neighbor so quickly. She returned the RSVP slip to his mailbox and hurried back to her side of the street. She had never returned an RSVP slip by hand – she might never have received  an RSVP slip in her entire adult life – everyone on her street had one another’s phone numbers. She wondered why he was given to formal gestures like these.

The following Thursday she lingered by one of the shrines she kept in her backyard (a pyramid of stones crowned with a piece of driftwood) before going through her wardrobe to choose something to wear. She thought it would be impolite not to change her clothes. Alan had waved to her from his car as she was working in the garden. He had not rolled down his window to make conversation, but he had seen what she was wearing, and if she came to dinner in the same clothes, it would come across as disrespectful. She couldn’t stand to appear careless, no matter the situation. She chose a white dress with a floral print and walked across the street, five minutes late.

Alan wore a purple paisley shirt, just short of extravagant. He led her through the newly restored kitchen, with its shining steel and granite surfaces, to the deck out back, where he’d set up a long table and a few tiki torches. A roasted duck, a bowl of wild rice and a plate of sesame carrots waited on a lavender tablecloth. A glass of white wine stood at each of their plates, at opposite ends of the table.

The back of the house had not been safe to walk through when the place was abandoned and decaying. The deck had only existed to her as an empty frame, one she’d observed while standing in the tall grass out back. It was hard to accept as a fully formed structure, one of rich red wood that she thought might be cedar. As they sat down, Alan told her with pride that it was made of “recycled wood.” She tried to imagine the building this wood had come from. Were the termites now making a feast of its remains?

With the brambles cleared away and the grass neatly trimmed, the backyard looked eerily empty. Sophia saw that it was much larger than she had ever realized, and the woods seemed very far from the house. She could not decide if this space was depressing or full of possibility.

Alan, as it turned out, had many plans, which he recounted with great animation and enthusiasm. His ideas included concerts, potlucks, the installation of a hot tub – she didn’t care to listen too closely. As he spoke, he leaned as far forward as his perfect posture permitted. He got so carried away by what he was saying that he kept forgetting to eat.

 Sophia looked out at the lawn and saw that there was room enough for everything he envisioned. She smiled and told him it would be very nice for everyone on this street to have such a warm and generous neighbor. He brightened visibly at this comment.

The sun was setting and the night came alive with the conversation of birds and insects. The lawn gradually disappeared and, as this happened, Alan’s monologue lost steam until he fell silent and stared into the dark. For a while, he said nothing.

Sophia had nearly finished her first helping and was eating the remnants as slowly as she could. She did not want an empty plate. The sight of him beaming as she stood to carve herself more duck, or the gentle dismay which might appear on his face if she didn’t ask for more, were both uncomfortable possibilities. She did her best to seem calm. She was idly stirring her rice in circles on her plate when his focus broke away from the woods and he turned to look at her.

“You know, I think it’s really wonderful,” he began, then paused midthought with his mouth open, as though waiting for the perfect words to emerge of their own accord.

She scooped up some rice with her fork but did not raise it to her mouth.

“What is?”

“I think it’s wonderful,” he repeated, seeming not to have heard her question. “The way that you are so clearly in touch with something sacred.”

His mouth clamped shut, and he stared at her so intensely she had to work hard not to laugh. She set her fork down and adjusted her dress, even though there was nothing wrong with it.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t pretend to be confused.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Well, for instance,” he moved forward in his chair. “When I see someone kneeling down at the foot of a sycamore, like the one next to your house, with their eyes closed, and with such a peaceful expression on their face, I know what is happening for them.”

Sophia did indeed have a sycamore tree next to her house. She had built a shrine on the side facing her backyard and had knelt there earlier in the day. She had always assumed that she was not visible when she did so since the tree was large enough to shield her from the road. Maybe one of his windows gave him a much better view than she’d realized. She shut her mouth tight and turned her eyes away. Alan did not notice.

“It means so much to me,” he went on. “To see that this is possible for someone else.”

He fell silent, his gaze fixed directly on her, clearly expecting her to speak. She leaned forward and scooped herself another mouthful of rice.

“Everyone agrees with me, by the way,” he went on, when it was clear she wasn’t going to talk.

“About what?”

“They agree that you are a wonderful person, though they might not put it the same way I do.”

“Who’s everybody?”

He listed them – friends, coworkers, acquaintances – those who had remained in town for August. He had done his research. She shifted in her seat and tried to smile.

“I didn’t realize people thought so much about me.”

“These are all good things.”

“I know.”

“You should be proud.”

“I’m sure.”

“Everyone has told me that I am lucky to have you as a neighbor and I am inclined to agree.”

He waited for her response. She desperately searched her mind for a way to distract him, smiled weakly and asked if he would sing her something for her.

The question caught him off guard, but he rose hesitantly to his feet.

“Is there a specific song you’d like to hear?”

“Just sing one of your favorites.”

He took a deep breath, his arms fell to his sides, and he focused on a spot in the distance above her head. Somehow his spine became even straighter, and she imagined him levitating and floating away like a balloon. His nostrils flared, his cheeks quivered, and he began to sing.

He chose a song she did not know in a language she did not understand and sang it with passion. His singing voice was even more beautiful than his speaking voice, just as rich and sweet but not so refined and restrained. He made strong and forceful gestures, his eyebrows were wild and animated. He gazed out into the night as though he could see something vivid and dramatic in the darkness. She sat in her chair and listened politely.

When he was done, he smiled gratefully at her and asked if she’d like to hear another. She told him yes, not knowing what else to say. He started another song in a different language, a sadder song, a song whose sadness seemed to take hold of him completely. After that, he asked if she’d like to hear two more short ones that he thought would provide a healthy sense of conclusion. She accepted. These songs were in Italian, which she did recognize, and they were much more cheerful. His eyes grew wider as he sang, his face brighter – he looked ridiculous, but something about his performance was hard to resist. He finished the last song breathlessly and then stared back at her in wonder, as though he’d traveled a great distance to find her sitting where she was. She applauded quietly, he bowed and sat back down.

Everything was dark now except for the porch. An owl hooted, a few cars zoomed by far away. She finished her rice.

He showed her the rest of the house, which was impressively furnished with bookshelves, a wine selection, a treadmill, a TV cabinet, and a pool table, all fixtures of an affluent home. Each room had plenty of space and was so clean it seemed it would never get dusty.  An open door revealed a staircase that led to the attic, but they didn’t go there. She made sure to comment on everything, all the while remembering the house as it used to be. She saw the cobwebs and rotting planks with greater precision than she would have thought possible, and the memory of them moved her more than she wanted it to.

They prayed once again at the door, and, though he did not reference his comment about the sycamore, the act was much more tense for her than it had been after their first dinner. When they were done, he handed her a packet of pansy seeds he’d picked up at the greenhouse – he’d seen her gardening and had thought of her. He pressed it into her hand as though entrusting her with something precious. She thanked him and said goodnight.

Sophia spent a long time settling herself before she could go to sleep. She washed her dishes, she cleaned her counter, she tried to read, then to watch TV, but she could neither focus nor relax. The packet of pansy seeds sat like an ill omen on the kitchen table – it was far too late in the season to plant them, and she doubted that he was thinking ahead to next year. Regardless of his intentions, this small, useless gift sitting on her kitchen table felt like a spy sent to her household on his behalf. She threw them in the trash, then took them out, and shoved the packet into a box where she kept loose change.

She went upstairs, sat by the shrine next to her bed (a nest of twigs and rocks, filled with bottle caps and a few pieces of sea glass) and tried to reason with herself. There was nothing wrong. He was only trying to be friendly, perhaps too eagerly, but then making friends can be very hard. It was she who had been in plain sight without realizing it. How was he supposed to avoid noticing her when this was the case? She would need to walk around her yard sometime when she knew that he was away and try to gauge where she could be seen and where she was safe from view. Yet the sycamore was large – she would have thought its trunk and branches would conceal her. Was it really possible for someone to see her if they were not looking deliberately?

She decided to ask some of her neighbors what they thought of him when they got back from vacation – this might give her distance from whatever it was she was feeling. Maybe she should call some of the friends he’d spoken to. She stayed by her shrine for a long time, then closed the curtains and got ready for bed.

She tried not to remember the sound of his singing as she waited for sleep.

Alan called her landline a week and a half later. His voice was kind, calm, a little sorry sounding. He apologized that he hadn’t gotten in touch sooner – he had been so busy making lesson plans and visiting his family – he did not want her to think that he had forgotten her. He asked if she’d be open to dinner the following Wednesday.

Sophia considered refusing this invitation. In a sense, she had an excuse. She took a sign language class every other Wednesday night. Though she did have this Wednesday off, she could easily have lied if she’d given herself a moment to collect her thoughts. But when she heard his voice so close to her ear – that deep, earnest voice – it did not feel to her like the voice of someone she could lie to. She thanked him and accepted.

That evening, she simply wore black jeans and a black blouse. She called a few of her friends in town to see if anyone was available to come with her. No one was. In spite of everything, she couldn’t stand to be impolite, and she realized she hadn't given him a housewarming present. There was no time to purchase one, but she knew the feeling would gnaw at her as soon as she stepped out the door, just as she knew also that a different feeling would seize her as soon as she saw him receive her gift. Yet he was generous and had cooked her such lavish, opulent dinners – she couldn’t give him nothing in return. A voice told her that something from her shrines (a tiny bottle, a fallen antler, a brass ring she’d found on the street) would be the most true, pure gift she could give, but she couldn’t stomach the idea of doing it, could not think of a single person she would want to give these things to. Finally, she decided on a fruit basket she’d brought home from a party at work and took it with her across the street.

Alan accepted it with solemnity at the front door and almost dropped it. He apologized, cradling the fruit basket as though it were fragile, and set it with care on a small table by the staircase. He ushered her in and chastely complimented her on what she was wearing. He too was dressed all in black.

With a gentle wave of his arm, he beckoned her to the staircase. They climbed to the upper stories and he led her to the one place they hadn’t been before: the attic. They went through the door, ascended a narrow set of stairs with a low ceiling, and entered a room that was spacious and air-conditioned, with dark, clean wood and oriental carpets on the floor. Alan had set up a table by the window, with four unlit candles.

Two flutes of champagne stood at opposite ends of the table. Yet another roasted bird (she thought it might be a pheasant) sat on a gold-tinted platter surrounded by bits of walnut and sliced pear. There was also a large bowl of rice and mushrooms, and a cutting board with roasted asparagus. She didn’t like the picture of him carrying all this food, let alone the table and chairs, up the narrow staircase.

Alan took out a box of matches to light the candles. Sophia noticed that his hands were shaking as he struck the match. He welcomed her to the table and explained that he wanted to try a few different rooms in the house so as not to become “complacent.” They sat down to eat.

Sophia did not know if the house had ever contained an attic before now. The upper stories had decayed to such an extent that it had been impossible to tell. There had always been birds roosting up high in the exposed corners. Sophia looked out the window and saw a few hopping along the shingles of the roof in the dusky light, possibly in search of their old home. She sipped her drink and admitted to herself that the room was pleasant and that there was a little thrill to having dinner so high above the ground.

The champagne went to her head quickly. In spite of herself, she talked, and once she started she did not stop. She told him about her job at the survival center, all the things she liked and all the things she hated, all the people who had come and gone. She talked about how she’d always wished she could either sing or play a musical instrument but she couldn’t because she was tone deaf. She described a recurring nightmare in which a group of tiny people had climbed into her mouth and made a home inside of her, spreading out their belongings within the walls of her internal organs. At this point, she caught herself. She’d said more than she intended, she hadn’t meant to say anything at all. She burst out laughing and covered her mouth.

He sat still, watching her attentively.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t need to stop talking.”

“I drank too fast.”

“This is the most you’ve ever said to me.”

He was unusually quiet, his round face very solemn. For a moment, he reminded her of the moon as it is sometimes personified with facial features. He poured her a second glass of champagne without asking if she wanted it. She watched the clear flute fill with golden, bubbling liquid.

The sun had now set, and they were eating mostly by candlelight. Alan had said very little all evening. He stared out of the window, his mouth slightly open, as if he saw something out there in the dark. She ate the food she’d neglected while she was talking. The flames cast soft shadows on their faces. The food was delicious.

“Will you take a quick walk outside with me?” he asked her, when she was done eating. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

She nodded hesitantly. The feast on the table was far from gone – it felt strange to abandon all this food. She offered to help him bring the plates downstairs and he refused – he would get to them later. He rose, blew out the candles, covered the remaining plates, and led her downstairs.

They walked out of his house and into the backyard. Except for a few clouds, the sky was clear. Slowly, stars were starting to emerge. He went fast, heading straight for the woods without checking to see if she was following him. Because he was dressed in black, his round, white head looked like it was floating through the night on its own.

Sophia soon realized that they were traversing a path that she knew well. She hadn’t walked down it since before the house had been sold; she’d been waiting to return until she could do so without being observed.

It was a short path that led to a little clearing. It had taken her a while to find this place – she found it remarkable that it had eluded her so long. There was a tree at the edge of the clearing with a hollow at the base that she felt deserved a shrine. She had thought that, once Alan had settled in and she could be sure the woods were quiet, she would come back to build one.

There was now something else in the hollow of the tree. Alan went to stand beside it, turning towards her like a child anxious for praise.

In this cave-like, empty space, he had made his own shrine, or that was how it appeared to her. It was not an exact imitation of one of hers – he had relied more heavily on broken chunks of log than on sticks and stones, and there were some vines he’d woven around the thicker pieces. A necklace that might have been made of pearls (she could not judge their authenticity by starlight) was wrapped among the logs and stones like a snake that had come to sleep there. There were also some stones so white and smooth they could not have come from the wilderness – he must have purchased them. Clearly, he could not have made this had he not seen the shrines of her own making. She wondered how he’d managed that.

“I thought you might like to pray with me here,” he whispered. She had never before heard him speak so softly.

Sophia stalled. She found it equally impossible to go towards him or to move away, impossible to open her mouth and articulate her response to what she saw. She noticed that she was holding her arms rigidly to her body, also that her legs felt unsteady.

He came quietly over to her and took her by the arm. His fingers were so gentle it scarcely felt like they were touching her. She didn’t know how to shrink away from fingers that came to her with such consideration.

The two of them walked together across the clearing and knelt before his shrine.

They stayed there longer than she anticipated. His breathing was slow, peaceful and very loud – it made her feel like they were closer together than they were. There was nothing she wanted to think about. An ambulance screamed by in the distance, a bird she could not identify kept singing.

After a period of silence, she rose and started to leave. As though they’d made the decision together, he rose as well.

They walked through the woods and then across the street to her doorstep.

Sophia placed her hand on the doorknob and looked back at him. He stood at the foot of the porch steps, his hands clasped in front of him. He watched her intently as her hand tightened around the knob but did not turn it.

“Thank you for understanding.” He stared at her, perhaps for emphasis. She knew he meant what he said.

The doorknob was slippery beneath her sweaty hand.

“I’ll need to have you over to dinner some time,” she said.

He came up the steps and embraced her quickly, then went back across the street to his home. She waited until he was gone, then she stepped inside and closed the door.

She ran to the kitchen and washed her hands furiously with soap and water, then did the same to her face. She dried herself and then searched the ground floor for somewhere to recover. She went to her shrines, but none of them satisfied her: every time she knelt next to one, she felt that he was kneeling beside her and she wanted to scream. She wandered around, unable to settle in any one place, until she finally walked upstairs and sat on her bed.

Sophia tried to clear her mind, but already she was thinking of the engagements she’d need either to avoid or brace herself for, the excuses she’d need to make, of the ways she could possibly go to and from work without crossing his path. She imagined destroying his shrine, she imagined burning his house down. As her thoughts spun and multiplied, she realized that she hadn’t even bothered to close the curtains. She could see his house perfectly across the road. She’d left the window open, and the breeze wafted gently into her room. Not a single tree stood between them.