You don’t really have idea about any of that olden-days stuff, do you?” He’s sure he can feel her smiling against his shoulder. “Busted,” she says. “Ah, it’s some nice talk, though, Sol. You make it all sound real nice.” “That’s the beauty of it. Just dreaming thoughts on once-was things. Animals and helping people and one place you could always call home.” “ is my home,” he says, and it strikes him for the first time how much that is true. A sudden keen longing for its shapes and spaces goes through him, and he hugs Sol to him tighter. “You are my home,” she says, real sudden. So sudden he’s sure she’s about to take it back any second—or at least wants to. But no taking back comes. He clings to the words so tightly he doesn’t think she could take them back even if she tried. , he thinks. Not now that he realizes isn’t his home at all. That he thinks like her. That she is his home, too.