The house that evening was filled with Caleum’s acquaintances from the city, who were all curious to ask questions about Caleum’s life before, for it seemed he had just showed up among them with no ties to any place before that one. Elissa at first did not want to hear about Stonehouses and Caleum’s family, and she herself was always careful not to wake the memory in him, but she was certain about their life together by then and let her curiosity draw her near to listen.

Rennton for his part was happy to answer what questions he could, but he was also curious to hear what had happened to Purchase’s son since he last knew him.

“Tell me how you ended up here?” he asked finally, when the two of them were alone, sharing a glass of port in Caleum’s study. “If I had a place like yours I would never venture forth from it, although your father did the same.”

“He was drawn out by love,” Caleum answered. “I left for duty and the war.”

“But you chose to stay here instead of returning?” Rennton asked.

“That is what happened,” Caleum said, for he could suddenly no longer remember his reason for staying. He looked across the room just then, and saw Elissa in the doorway, and knew again why he had remained so long. When he first came to her he was broken. Only he did not think he could tell Rennton such.

As Elissa watched him talking to his old friend, she saw both how much she did not know about him and that he was very far away in his thoughts. She went over to him and tried with her touch to bring his mind back to where it had been before.

Caleum felt like a stranger in the house that evening, and everything around him seemed foreign. Although he knew the rooms and the things in them to be his own, he could only think how they were not the rooms he had grown up in or shared with Libbie and their children. How he was not at Stonehouses. He longed profoundly in that moment to be there. When she stroked his arm, he reciprocated her touch, but only lightly on the hand.

When Elissa turned and left, to attend to their other guests, Caleum asked Rennton when he was sailing out and what port he was calling on next.

“I am leaving in the morning, but I’m headed eastward,” the old mariner said to him, “but there is a frigate, called the Enki, docked off Wall, sailing for southernmost waters at the end of the week. If you are set on going there, the captain is a friend of mine, and he will get you to your home port safely. He is a peculiar man, though, and you must be careful not to upset him.”

Rennton had once made the same offer to Caleum’s father, on an occasion when his wife had left him and he was despondent over it.

He could see the same sadness settled over Caleum now. It was not for him to say where a man belonged or not, but only in his power of friendship to help him get to where he wished to be.

They feasted throughout that night, and it felt to many like a wedding banquet, as it kept expanding until it encompassed the whole house, and the mood among the guests was merry. Elissa alone worried that it seemed like a good-bye feast.

She tried to block this from her thoughts, and when he came to her in bed that night she made no mention of her worries. He was as loving as he had ever been with her. Nor did he mention any other home, or a desire to go away — until she became calm again and no longer heeded her first fears.

He had determined to leave at the end of the week, however, and told himself that it would be best to spare her feelings, not wishing to draw out or increase her sadness. It was the best of noble reasons; however, as sometimes happens, the opposite is what occurred.

He harbored his intentions secret in his breast the entire week, going about as if all were normal. When the day of the ship’s sailing finally arrived, he woke up before sunrise, before Elissa had stirred, to leave from out the house undetected. He did not take anything of his life in that town with him, and nothing to remember her by or otherwise knot his memory. He carried instead the same little trunk he had hauled around with him for the last four years. Nor did he wear his fine clothes, but took from a corner in the bottom of the trunk his old coat with Libbie’s embroidery inside.

The picture was faded almost entirely and the coat looked even shabbier than he remembered, but it is what he covered himself with as he set out for the docks, leaving all else behind, no matter how precious. His sword he had not seen since he left the battlefield at Saratoga, nor did he miss it, but he carried its memory still, as it was carved deep. And this was all he had in the world, but what was at Stonehouses.

It was still dark when he arrived on the wharf, and fog covered the entire southern tip of the island. He had forgotten the ship’s berth and was forced to ask around for the Enki until he discovered her and made his way aboard.

“So you made it,” said the captain, when he saw him arrive.

Caleum, who had booked his passage earlier in the week, was the only one still missing from the passenger list, and the captain, having been so long in port, was anxious to sail. He had the second mate show Caleum to a tiny cabin and told his crew to be ready as soon as the fog lifted.

Caleum was guilty and heavy-hearted as he waited belowdecks for the ship to begin its journey. When it began to grow light out, he went up above to see why they had not yet sailed. The city was still shrouded in a ghost-white fog, and the captain, a very powerful-looking man with a face like a gigantic angry baby, refused to set out. He looked perturbed, and everyone hastened to get out of his way as he paced the deck.

Remembering what Rennton had told him, Caleum went to the other side of the ship, lest he raise the man’s ire. It was about six in the morning, and he knew Elissa would awaken soon and discover his absence.

He hoped the gift of the house would ease her hurt and make her feel less poorly used. Though he knew he had caused her pain, but it was never his intent. It was only that God, He had other plans for him.

At seven o’clock they still had not left port, and Caleum knew Elissa was awake and about by then. He knew as well she would think he had only gone out on errands, or else for a morning constitutional. Still, he feared she might somehow find him there and thwart his journey, and so hid himself below like a smuggler.

An hour later, as they continued to wait, he began to have second thoughts and wished profoundly that he could see Elissa one last time.

At eleven that morning the low cloud over the water finally burned away, and the captain weighed anchor. When they finally set out, all the passengers crowded to the railing, and looked either backward toward Manhattan — and what they were leaving behind — or else forward toward the open sea and the place they was going. Caleum looked first to one and then the other. Toward Elissa, who had loved him so dearly, and then to the destination he had been trying to reach for so long.

Elissa awoke with a start and sensed immediately that Caleum was not in bed where he was supposed to be. Although the emptiness of their room was the first thing she noticed, she did not make much of it. Instead, she dressed, then went down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, thinking he had been called out early on business and was certain to have an appetite when he returned.

When he did not show up, she left his breakfast warming for him in the stove until about eleven o’clock, after which she threw it out behind the house for the stray dog that sometimes wandered in the alley back there. She knew it bothered Caleum that she sometimes fed it, but even a stray dog deserved not to starve in the streets.

When he was not back for the midday meal, she began looking around to see if he had left any sign to tell her where he had gone. By evening she was worried enough that she swallowed her pride and went to her sister’s house, not knowing where else to turn.