She made sure to bring his favorite music, but he declines when she offers to put it on, saying he would prefer to keep listening to her voice. He must have used that on a hundred different girls before he first said it to her, she thinks, and wonders if it worked this well on them.

"What do you see?" he urges, pulling her out of her introspection.

"Um, okay. It's getting darker. This street is mostly residential, but—oh, we're coming up on a little stone church, it's so pretty…"

He perks up, turning toward the window as if he sees it too. "Can we stop?"

She blinks. "Sure. You need an extra shot of religion?"

"The choir is rehearsing."

So that's how you locate a church when your eyes don't work but your ears are doing overtime. Karen can't hear any singing even after they're out of the car, but she takes it on faith that he's right. The gravel of the parking lot crumbles underfoot as he leads the way to the heavy wooden door and places his hand flat against it. "It's bigger than it probably looks from outside. Aside from the nave it's not that old, though. There must have been a few additions over the years since they first built it, maybe around two hundred years ago when the Episcopal Church had just separated from the Church of England. It's open, do you want to go in?"

The sign on the wall welcomes them to St. Mark's Episcopal Church, established 1814. Karen doesn't bother to read it out loud.

Inside she hears a hush before she hears the creak of the floor, but when they pause in the aisle she finally hears the choir as well. It's ghostly at first, a wordless chant coming from somewhere beneath them, but then there's a wry solitary voice followed by many joined in laughter. Matt chuckles along and politely attempts to relay the conductor's joke until she excuses him, suggesting it might not be as funny in the retelling.

Moments like these make her feel like a stranger in a strange land, following a guide she should be leading. While Matt sits listening to the next haunting serenade from heaven below, she explores the church's interior, and she knows he knows exactly where she's standing, which way she's headed, what she's doing at all times. He won't talk about it readily, but it needles him that he can't help invading her privacy, and she resents that she can't resent it.

Remembering that some areas of a church are traditionally off-limits to the laity, she passes by the altar and finds herself facing a display of several dozen votive candles, lit and unlit, with a plaque inviting passersby to dedicate one to the beloved dead. Unable to narrow it down, she uses the long matchstick to bring a hiss of flame first to one wick, then another and then another. Matt must know about this ritual; the rustle of her dollar bills going into the slot in the adjacent donation box won't confuse him.

After following the stations of the cross in a full circuit around the nave, she slides into the pew that Matt has chosen. He holds out his hand, palm up, and she takes it in hers and wonders if she's comforting him, or vice versa. Without her own footfall to drown it out, she can hear the choir again, and it's hard to keep herself from straining to make out the lyrics instead of enjoying the melodious murmur for its own sake.

"You okay?" asks Matt, and his voice is soft but it still startles her.

"Fine," she tells him, and then, hazarding a guess at why he asked, "Is my heartbeat doing something weird?"

"No. But you're breathing slowly. Letting it go each time like a sigh."

Experimentally she tries to resume the same rhythm she was keeping before he spoke. Not surprisingly, she can't glean anything about her own mood by studying it. "I was just trying to be quiet," she explains. "Didn't want to interrupt you."

He gives her hand a squeeze. "I wasn't praying. Just listening."

"To the choir?"

"The choir. You. The road. Some kind of wildlife in the trees out back." He gestures with his free hand, indicating the entire expanse of the church's interior. "This space. You were looking at it, and I was…"

"...Seeing it your own way," she supplies.

He nods and looks in her direction, two things he can do to communicate with the sighted that they can't do for him. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

For a moment she's about to slip back into her running commentary on everything she sees, then she realizes it's time to turn the tables. "How is it beautiful? Your way, I mean."

He pauses, considering. "I like the vaulted ceilings. The air keeps spiralling around them, it's like a dance. But down at our level it's completely different; all solid marble and wooden pews, things that never move. And the organ...every pipe catches every vibration, every sound we make. Perpetual music."

If it rains tonight, and the weekend weather report gives her hope that it will, she wants to stand outside with him so he can listen to each drop landing on her skin. She'll have him tell her about the impression he gets of her outline, and she'll close her eyes and imagine she can see him the same way. She wants to hear the rain from inside, too, pattering on the roof in the rock-a-bye rhythm she remembers from her childhood. She wants the song and the dance within silence that Matt finds everywhere.

Rain doesn't sound the same from inside an apartment complex.

"Perpetual music must be nice," she says, and she can't help it if her voice is a little wistful.

"Sometimes," he agrees. "Ready to go?"