Everyone else had some kind of special asparagus appetizer, and fish, but Ned stayed with steak and frites, a chocolate mousse after, and was happy enough. His shoulder hurt but he’d known it would. His father did actually offer him half a beer but Ned passed. He didn’t much like beer.

His new cellphone rang as they were walking back to the car.

“Damn,” said Greg. “Damn! I knew it was a hot date. How does he get chicks to call him so fast?”

“Better swim trunks,” Melanie said.

“Right. And how would she know that?”

“Women know these things,” Melanie said. It was dark in the parking lot, but Ned was pretty sure she winked at him.

The stars were out by then, winking themselves in a blue-black sky, and the moon, nearly full, had risen while they were inside. He walked away from the others, his sandals crunching on gravel, and answered the phone.

A woman. Not Kate Wenger.

“Hello, is this Ned? Ned Marriner?”

Not a voice he’d ever heard. Speaking English, slight British accent.

“It’s me. Who is this, please?”

“It is you. I’m so glad. Ned, listen carefully. Did anyone hear you ask that question? You need to pretend you’re talking to someone you know.”

“Why do I need to do that?”

It was curious, he really had never heard this voice, but there was something about it, nonetheless. A variant, a riff.

“I’ll answer later, I promise. Can you make an excuse to go out for a bit when you get home from dinner? Running, maybe? I’ll meet you.”

“How do you know I run?”

“I promise answers. Trust me.”

“And how do you know this number?”

“The woman at the house gave it to me. I called there first. Ned, please? We need to meet, somewhere without people.”

“That’s a bad movie line.”

She chuckled at that; it made her sound younger. “It is, isn’t it? Meet me alone by the old oak tree?”

“Then why? Why with no one there?”

She hesitated.

He had, with every word she spoke, more of that sense of something almost recognized.

“Because I can keep track inwardly of anyone approaching,” she said.

“What? How do you…?”

“You know how I do that, Ned. Since yesterday.”

That silenced him pretty fast. He walked a bit farther away.

His father called. “Ned! You’re keeping people waiting. Bad manners. Phone her back from the villa.”

He lifted a hand in agreement. “I have to get back to the others. And you still haven’t said who you are.”

“I know I haven’t.” He heard her draw a breath. “I’m nervous. I didn’t want to do it this way.” Another silence. “I’m your aunt, Ned. Meghan’s older sister. The one who went away.”

Ned felt his heart thud. He gripped the phone tightly. “My…her…? You’re my Aunt Kim?”

“I am, dear. Oh, Ned, where do we meet?”

HE WAS WALKING in the night under that nearly full moon. They’d dropped him at the bottom of the hill where their road wound through trees to the villa. He’d said he wanted to take a walk, it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. His mother probably wouldn’t have let him, his father was easier that way. He’d reminded them he had the cellphone.

He couldn’t jog, he wasn’t wearing running shoes, which gave him more time to think. He listened for a car behind him. He’d given her the best directions he could. She’d said she’d find it. She might be ahead of him, too: he had no idea where she’d been when she called.

He was still in shock, he decided, whatever that actually meant.

He had believed her, on the phone.

Reckless, maybe, but there was no real way not to believe someone saying she was your aunt, the one you’d never met. And it fit with things he’d known all his life—adult talk overheard before sleep, from another room. It also made sense of that feeling he’d had that the voice—accent and all—wasn’t as unknown as it should have been.

It was close to his mother’s, he’d realized, after hanging up.

Things like that could make you believe someone.

The road went up for a pretty fair distance, actually, when you weren’t running. He finally came to the car barrier again. There was a red Peugeot with a rental licence parked there. No one in it. Ned walked around the barrier, came up to the wooden sign again, under stars this time, and turned left towards the tower.

After a few minutes he saw it, looming darkly at the end of the path. He hadn’t been able to think of any other place. It wasn’t as if he knew his way around here. She’d said she wanted to be where no one could sneak up on them.

No crowds here, that was for sure. He was alone on the path. Or he assumed he was. It occurred to him that it would have been smart to bring a flashlight—and in the same moment he saw a beam of light beside the tower. It flicked on and off, on and off.

His heart was beating fast as he walked towards it. Impulsively, feeling a bit stupid, he tried to reach inside himself, to whatever had let him sense the man in the cloister yesterday and again in the café this afternoon.

He stopped dead in his tracks. He swallowed hard.

The awareness of a presence ahead of him was so strong it was frightening. Once he’d looked for it, there was this glow in his mind where she was: green-gold, like leaves at the beginning of spring.

“That’s me, dear,” he heard her call out. Same voice, same very slight British accent. “Interesting you found me. I think it must be a family thing. I’m going to screen myself now. I don’t want them to know I’m here yet.”

“Why? And who? Whom?”

The man in the café had talked about that screening thing too. Ned started walking, towards the flashlight, and to where he could sense the glow of her. Not a shining so as to illuminate the night, but within him, placing her in the landscape like some kind of sonar. Then, a moment later, the green-gold went out.

“It’s ‘whom,’ I think,” she said. “Your mother was always better at that sort of thing. Hello, Ned Marriner. Nephew. May I please hug you? Is that unfair?”

She’d been sitting on a boulder beside the low barrier ringing the tower. Now she stood up and came towards him, and in the moonlight Ned saw his aunt for the first time in his life.

He wasn’t sure, actually, how he felt about being hugged, but she opened her arms so he did the same, and he felt her draw him to her, and hold on.

He became aware, after a moment, that she was crying. She let him go and stepped back, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand. She was slim, not too tall, a lot like his mother.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. This is so uncool, I do know that.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, aunts aren’t usually cool.”

He saw her smile. “I thought I’d try to be,” she said.

She looked at him. For some reason Ned found himself standing as straight as he could. Stupid, really.

“You look wonderful,” she said. “I haven’t seen any pictures since your gran died two years ago.”

Ned blinked. “Gran sent you pictures? Of me?”

“Of course she did, silly. She was so proud of you. So am I.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ned said. “You never even knew me. To be proud or anything.”

She said nothing for a moment, then turned and went back to the boulder and sat on it again. He followed a few steps. He wished there was more light so he could see her better. Her hair was very pale, could be blond but he was guessing grey. She was older than his mom, six or seven years.

She said, “A lot of things in families don’t make sense, dear. A lot of things in life.”

“Right,” Ned said. “I get that. It’s kind of in my face now.”

“I know. That’s why I came. To tell you it’s all right.”

“How do you know?”

Choosing her words, she said, “Yesterday you entered a space I’ve been in for some time. When it happened I became aware of it, of you, from where I was. The family thing, I guess.”