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between them.
    But
both last night and this morning had both proved one thing to Lucy.
    She’d
never been important enough to him to even recognize how he’d hurt her.
    It
was fine. It was too many years in the past now. She just needed to put up with
Philip for a week or two, and then he’d be out of her life forever.
    So
she cleared her mind of everything except her task on this island. “Have you
found any evidence for what kind of ceremonial practices were performed here?”
    ***
    She spent the morning
following Philip around, taking notes and listening to his explanations about
the different archeological features of the island and its Neolithic history.
    In
the afternoon, she conferenced with Dana and Sawyer to discuss how best to proceed
with the shooting—what to focus on, what to film, and the most effective
approach to making the location engaging, exciting, and informative.
    Despite
her conflicted feelings for Philip, Lucy was excited about the site and the
episode. It had been a long time since she’d found a location that was so rich
with potential and so unknown to the wider world.
    After
they’d put together a general plan for the episode, she made calls for a couple
of hours, filling in the experts Dana had lined up with what she needed from
them and then trying to talk Michael McPherson into leaving his reclusion and
ferrying over to the island for an afternoon to film some segments on Orkney
lore.
    She’d
gotten a tentative “yes” when she finally hung up.
    She
was tired and kind of restless. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, so
she should probably rest some now. She would need to work late that night,
making final decisions with Sawyer about what and where to do the filming.
    But
she couldn’t relax, so she left the trailer and glanced around to see what
everyone else was doing. She couldn’t see Dana and Sawyer, so she assumed they
were in their room “resting,” which was what they usually did in the late
afternoons. The grad students were gathered around a fold-up table near the
trailers, evidently working on cleaning and cataloging the artifacts they’d dug
up that morning.
    She
was about to go over and join them—figuring she might be able to get some good
information from them on the site and maybe about Philip—when she saw him on
the far edge of the dig by himself.
    He
was on his knees, hunched over and busy working on something, so she walked
over toward him instead.
    When
she reached him, she saw he was brushing at something in the dirt.
    She
squatted down next to him, genuinely interested. She saw a glimpse of polished
black in the dark dirt.
    Philip
slanted her a look but didn’t say anything. He was brushing very carefully
around the polished black object.
    “What
is it?” she asked at last, her curiosity overcoming her reluctance to begin the
conversation herself.
    “A
jet bead bracelet, I believe.” His eyes never left his task, and she couldn’t
help but admire his intense focus and the precision of his brushing.
    She
was silent for a minute, trying to recollect any knowledge at all about
Neolithic jewelry. Finally, she gave up and asked, “Are they common?”
    He
gave a half-shrug. “They’re common in the Bronze Age and later Neolithic. This
is the first one we’ve found here on Erland.”
    “Oh.
That’s cool.”
    “I’m
surprised to find one in such an early layer.”
    She
read between the lines of his quiet words and his intensely focused appearance.
He was excited about the find. About what it might mean. “So you sent away all
the grad students so they wouldn’t mess it up.”
    A
flicker of a smile on Philip’s fine lips warmed something in Lucy’s chest—as if
her humor had spoken to his, despite his distraction. “Of course.”
    She
watched in silence as he carefully cleared the dirt away from the black bead
bracelet. For some reason, she couldn’t help but remember him as he’d been during
her freshman year—intense, serious,