Richard Dyson's housekeeper positively beamed when the young lady took a second helping at supper.

"I see you have your appetite back," Dyson rumbled warmly.

Lily dimpled prettily. "He brought it with him," she said, gesturing across the table to her husband.

The three of them sat at one end of a magnificent, 30-foot long dining table.

"Well, good. Perhaps you'll stop wandering my halls at night, too."

"And perhaps I'll be making endless raids to the pantry."

Richard shrugged, turned to Andrew. "You'll be staying a while, I trust?"

"A week or so, if you don't mind," Andrew answered. "To be sure I wasn't tailed."

"Stay as long as you like." Dyson took another bite, chewed slowly. "You know, it can be difficult, traveling in the third trimester. You could stay here until the baby arrives."

"Won't be any easier traveling with a newborn," Lily countered gently.

"You don't have to travel with a newborn, either," Dyson answered. "Stay 'til she's a little bigger. Maybe, hmm, school-aged. Or until she heads off to college."

Lily grinned indulgently. She glanced across at Andrew, who shook his head. "I appreciate the offer, Richard, but we can't. For one thing, I promised Simms – Control – that we'd settle in the northern hemisphere. Within his sphere of influence."

Dyson shrugged off his disappointment. "A sensible precaution, I suppose."

Andrew looked across the table at his wife. Her face seemed less thin already, though he knew that was an illusion; she was less weary, perhaps. The stresses of the past months came off little by little, hour by hour. Part pregnancy, part happiness, she was becoming luminous.

She caught his gaze and blushed.

"Your home is very lovely," he told Dyson, still studying Lily. "But I promised her a home of her own. And she's waited long enough. It's time we found it and made it ours."

Richard snorted, shook his head. "You got it bad, old man."

"Yes."

"Do you have somewhere in mind?"

Andrew shrugged. "Anywhere with a beach."

Dyson looked to Lily for more specifics. "Lots of beaches in the world."

The woman shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Maybe Bahamas, Bermuda."

Andrew flinched. Richard laughed out loud. "You'll never get him to live in Bermuda. He hates Bermuda."

"Why?" Lily asked.

Dyson just laughed. "You never told her?"

"It was a long time ago," Andrew said uncomfortably. "Zara Leros is dead. I'm sure it doesn't matter any more."

"What happened in Bermuda?" Lily insisted.

"Tell her," Dyson urged.

"Maybe later," Andrew mumbled. "Bermuda would be okay. You tell me, Lily. I don't really care, as long as you're there."

She shrugged. They had not talked about their final destination, had not made a decision, because it kept them from giving it away if either of them was caught. "I've spent all my time in Central Europe. I need to look at an atlas, I guess."

"I'll get you one after dinner," Dyson promised. He gestured, and the housekeeper took away their plates, brought in dessert. He looked at Andrew again. "Hard to imagine you in the tropics, though."

Andrew shrugged, uncomfortable again.

"Why?" Lily asked again.

This time Richard didn't rescue him. In the expectant silence, Andrew shrugged again. "I like snow. Once in a while. I like seasons that change. I don't really like … humidity."

His wife stared at him. "Why didn't you ever say so?"

"I like snow. You love the beach. All you've ever asked from me was a home on the beach. It doesn't matter to me where I live, as long as you're there."

"But …"

"Lily, forget it. We'll live on the beach. If I want snow, we'll travel to snow. That's all."

"But …"

"Lily, it doesn't matter."

"I love the ocean," Lily finally managed to say. "The water. I never said it had to be a tropical beach."

Andrew simply stared at her. "What?"

"If you want snow, we'll go where it snows. If it's on the ocean – any ocean – that's all I want."

He continued to stare. "What?"

Dyson began to chuckle. "Should I step out for a moment?"

Andrew shot a glare at him. "Lily, in all the years I've known you, you never said …" Then he sat back and laughed. Hard.

"He's having a fit," Richard observed mildly.

"He does that sometimes," Lily answered.

Andrew managed to stop laughing enough to get words out. "Ten years," he gasped to Dyson.

"Yes?" Richard inquired.

"Ten years I have been sleeping with this woman. Ten years. And I still don't know a damn thing about her."

"She's a woman," Dyson answered. "What did you expect?"

Susan had said to him, one sleepy afternoon in Spain, that she would never marry a man she had not traveled with. 'You don't really know a man until you've been on the road with him. You haven't seen him at his worst.'

It had been a passing comment, but one that stayed with the man who had been Control. It came back to him on the clear evening when he left Richard Dyson's secure compound with his pregnant wife at his side. He had known Lily for a decade, but he had never traveled with her. He knew that she traveled well; she was one of those rare people who could step off a twelve-hour flight more rested than when she'd boarded. But that was before the pregnancy. He didn't know what to expect now.

They had talked briefly about taking Dyson up on his offer to stay there. If Andrew had pushed the issue, Lily would have gone along with it. Their minds were slipping into the easy synchronization they'd had before; their desires ran in the same vein. If there had been the slightest hint of risk to the baby, they would have settled there for the duration. But their daughter continued to grow and thrive. Cleared by the doctor, armed with Lily's medical records, a great deal of cash and very little else, they set out to find a real home.

They moved mainly north, in short, carefully-planned stages, mostly by car. They traveled by air occasionally, but Andrew limited their flights to no more than three hours. This was, he reasoned, healthier for Lily and the baby; it also cut down on the number of questions the airlines asked about a woman in her condition traveling by air. They rode on trains, and sometimes by bus. A few times they traveled separately along parallel routes for a brief time. They rented cars when it was practical. They changed identities every few days. Everywhere they went, they watched for tails, for signs that they had been discovered.

There were none.

Lily, Andrew was happy to discover, still traveled magnificently.

He watched her fiercely at first, alert for the least sign of discomfort. There were some – back aches, sour stomach, leg cramps, all mild and all enough to satisfy him that she wasn't hiding them from him. There were two days, a week apart, when she simply said, "I'm tired. Let's stay here today." The first day alarmed him badly. He swiftly planned a route to the nearest hospital. Lily ate a hearty breakfast and went back to bed. She woke in time for a similarly healthy lunch and took a long afternoon nap. Andrew fretted the whole day, waiting for the next symptom of trouble to manifest itself, but it never did. She needed to sleep, nothing more. After dinner, she announced that she felt better, and they caught a night flight north. The second time it happened, he worried much less. The baby was having a growth spurt, they decided between them, and sapping her mother's energy for anything else.

But aside from those minor things, Lily traveled as well as she ever had. She was highly proficient at interpreting schedules and timetables, at seeing alternatives in case of trouble. She bought food as they went along, stuffing her shoulder bag or backpack so that they never had to stop for meals unless it was convenient. They kept the cash, the medical records, and their underwear with them; everything else they changed every few days, shopping at thrift stores as they went. Money was no object for them, but it was critical that they look ordinary, that the things they wore and carried not look brand new.

They moved north steadily, through all of South America, through all of Central America. They flew across much of Mexico, then rented a car and drove across the border back into the United States. That was the most nerve-wracking portion of the trip, but the border guard barely looked at them. Tourists on a day trip, drivers' licenses but not passports, nothing to declare, just one car in a line of fifty.

Andrew booked a sleeper car, and they took a train north for two days.

They traveled, they watched, and they talked. Andrew had been worried – way behind many other more pressing concerns, but worried nonetheless – that they would run out of things to talk about. When they met in Budapest, they had spent just over six days together, much of that time taken up with positively debauched sex. They had managed five days at the cabin following her miscarriage, all of that time taken up with grief. Aside from those times, they had never spent more than three consecutive days together. The prospect of spending all the rest of his life with Lily at his side was wondrous, but also a tiny bit daunting.

But it seemed as if they would never run out of things to talk about. They decided on the kind of house they wanted, in what kind of town. They decided on a name for their daughter. They decided – roughly – how many children they would try to have, what kind of schooling the kids should have, what kind of discipline. They bought guidebooks and studied them together, and they began to narrow their ultimate destination.

They crossed into Canada and headed east. It had been their very first decision, intuitive and nearly undiscussed, that it would be the Atlantic Ocean they settled on.

Nova Scotia had been their first choice, but they both took an instant dislike to it. "Too touristy," Andrew pronounced before they had been there an hour.

"Way, way," Lily agreed.

They reached the Atlantic seaboard, and they turned north again.

Andrew left the hotel and strode briskly across the street to the drug store. He bought both local newspapers and picked up three free real estate magazines. He also bought a quart of orange juice, a quart of milk, and a box of ginger snaps.

As he left the store, he threw an apparently casual glance across at the hotel. There was no one around that alerted his suspicions. He walked to the small deli next door and picked up the breakfast order he had phoned in.

As he waited to cross back to the hotel, he surveyed the area again. It was as much habit as precaution. If they had followed him here, they wouldn't use the front door. They would come in the back, up the service elevator. They would wait for him in his room, with Lily bound and at gunpoint, or already dead on the floor …

Andrew shook his head. Too much imagination. They had not been followed.

Yet he raced up the hotel steps, too impatient to wait for the elevator.

He rapped sharply on the door. "It's me," he said quietly. He heard the chain slide, and then Lily opened the door and let him in.

She was still in her nightgown, and she seemed rounder than she had the night before. He dropped the bags on the bedside table, grabbed her and kissed her.

Lily grinned. "What was that for?"

"For not being dead." She frowned, questioning, but he shook his head. "Never mind. Breakfast."

Lily got a glass from the bathroom. "Damn it, I meant to ask you to get some more …"

"…ginger snaps," Andrew completed easily, bringing out the box. He took the glass and poured it full of milk. "Drink your milk," he said, handing it back. "I brought papers."

"Hmmm." She took her milk and cookies and curled up at the head of the bed.

Andrew got a glass of juice and a carry-out container and sat at the small table with the papers. He glanced at the front page, then skipped to the real estate section. Lily, he knew, would eat her breakfast in a few minutes, after the ginger cookies had settled her stomach.

Three pages of listings in the first paper, and none of the houses looked even remotely suitable. He tossed the paper aside and reached for the second one without much hope. The listings would be mostly identical.

He glanced at Lily. She was reading an area guidebook, a magazine the hotel had supplied, full of pictures but very little text. Exasperated, he said, "I think I'm a lot more concerned about finding a home than you are."

She shrugged without looking up. "My home is where you are, kedves."

"I am not keen on bringing our baby home to a hotel room."

"If it weren't for hotel rooms, this baby wouldn't be here at all." She looked up then and smiled. "Besides, Mr. Rowan, I found it."

Andrew frowned quizzically. Rowan was their name now, the one they'd adopted with their Canadian citizenship, properly documented thanks to a talented cobbler in Quebec who owed Dyson a favor. It was, hopefully, the last name they would ever have. "Found what?"

"Our house."

He went and sat on the bed next to her. "Show me."

She handed him the magazine. It was open to a full-page picture of a modern lighthouse. In the corner was a smaller, older photo of smaller stone lighthouse, and behind it a massive two-story stone house. Neither was square; four sides of each were visible in the pictures. "Rowan Light," she announced.

"You want to live in a lighthouse?"

"No, in the Octagon House. Read the last paragraph."

Dutifully, he read aloud, "The original octagon lighthouse was damaged during a storm in 1975, and a modern lighthouse was built at a nearby site. The last lightkeeper continued to live in the Octagon House until his death in 1984. The house has since been abandoned." He looked at Lily again. "It doesn't say anything about it being for sale."

"It's for sale," she said with certainty.

Andrew shook his head. "Where is it?"

They got out their well-worn map and looked. The town of Broken Harbor was forty klicks north of where they were. "Nice name," he said dryly. "I suppose we could take a drive up there."

Lily lumbered to her feet. "I'll shower."

"You'll eat breakfast, too," her husband said sternly. "Should we make the seafood call?"

She chuckled. "I suppose we'd better."

They had developed a simple but thus far accurate measure of the tourism level of a community: If there was more than one seafood restaurant per three thousand permanent residents, the town had too many tourists. Andrew picked up the phone and got the number for the Broken Harbor Chamber of Commerce. The receptionist there answered on the first ring. "Chamber," she chirped.

"Ah, yeah," Andrew said, with just a hint of a drawl. "Listen, I hope you can help me. My buddy was up there last week, said he had dinner at this great seafood restaurant. My wife, now, she's got a craving for seafood and I'd like to bring her up there for dinner, but I can't remember the name of the place."

"Oh, that would be Dylan's," the woman answered cheerfully.

"No, I don't think that was it."

"Only seafood restaurant we have, I'm afraid."

"Oh. Okay. Do you have the number handy?"

"I sure do." She gave him the number. "Anything else I can help you with?"

"No, that's fine. Oh, hey, what's your year-round population up there? We were thinking about five thousand, bigger than Elk Ridge, right?"

"A little bigger," she confirmed proudly. "Five thousand five hundred thirty-two. And a half a dozen or so on the way."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks for much." Andrew hung up the phone, scratched at his beard in satisfaction. "One seafood restaurant, population over five thousand."

"Excellent," Lily answered, and headed for the shower.