She reached for his hand. He interlaced his fingers with hers. I’m going to have to be the one, she thought. When the time comes, I’m going to have to be the one to break it off. She squeezed his hand, and he tightened his fingers in return. Lord God, give me strength.

“C’mon,” he said. “Time to get you into bed.”

She laughed. He paused, not getting it for a second, and then groaned. She opened the door, leaving the keys in for him. He held out his hand, and she went around the side of the car and caught it, interlacing her fingers in his again.

“Look at that moon,” he said.

She looked to where it was riding, halfway to the horizon.

“We had dinner,” he said, “but we never danced.”

“Nobody danced. The bandstand blew up and the instruments melted.”

He tugged her off the driveway and onto the front lawn. The frost on the grass was pure silver in the moonlight. She could feel it, chilling her feet.

“Dance with me,” he said.

“You’re moonstruck,” she said.

He placed one hand at the small of her back and took the other in a proper dancing position. “No, I’m not. I’m alive, and you’re alive, and we don’t know where we’ll be twenty-four hours from now. So let’s dance while we can.”

He began singing a melancholy, wordless tune. “Dum-da-dum, da-dee-da-dumdum, dum-da-dum, da-dee-da-dumdum.” His free hand nudged her back, and the next thing she knew, they were waltzing, her skirts swishing through the frost, his feet crunching the frozen grass. She recognized the melody suddenly. “Ashokan Farewell,” from the Civil War documentary.

She chimed in, her alto humming above his baritone, the sleeves of his dinner jacket falling over her hands, and they danced, beneath the November moon, to sad, sweet music they made themselves.

Julia Spencer-Fleming