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said.
    But he wasn’t talking to her.
    Suddenly Lana realized: Eli wasn’t alone. He was with a woman. He was sleeping with her. A knot of irrational fear gripped
     her stomach. She couldn’t have predicted
this
. Things had moved along more quickly than she would have thought, much more quickly than with any of the others. What if
     this time, he’d found the One? And Lana couldn’t even remember her name.
    “Sorry about that,” he said, talking to her once again.
    “I should let you go,” she said. She wanted him to contradict her, but he did not.
    All at once, she was tired. Tired down to her bones. She could sleep right here, standing on her feet in the front yard, the
     sound of Eli’s voice weaving and looping through her consciousness like ribbons drawn through water.
    Kelly.
The woman’s name was Kelly.
    “Good night,” she said, and she hung up the phone. She carried it upstairs, put it on her nightstand, and willed herself to
     find safer, gentler dreams.
    June 20
    Eli put his heel against the edge of the shovel and leaned to puncture the hard-packed dirt. The Kansas sky was a brilliant
     blue and the temperature of the afternoon had cooperated with him, mild and fair. He could see for miles. In the distance
     to the south, the Wintermutes’ little white farmhouse sat motionless as a ship on the ocean’s horizon. He remembered an article
     he’d read once, about the efforts of some colleagues to determine if Kansas was actually flatter than a pancake. Even without
     the financing, Eli could have reached the same conclusion: Yes, it certainly was.
    He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his canvas glove and kept digging. A few minutes ago his wheeled metal
     detector—Excalibur—had given a loud, aggravated whine. Whatever was down there, it was solid.
    This was Eli’s favorite part. The anticipation. The hope.
    He’d thought, ages ago, that he’d wanted to be a scientist. He’d pictured himself looking distinguished in a long white coat
     and carrying a clipboard. Unfortunately when he was done with his very expensive geology degree, he realized that he just
     didn’t have the heart to work in a lab. And so he decided to teach. And when the grant money was good, he headed for the fields
     to hunt for buried treasure. After his first big find, he was hooked.
    He leaned on the handle of the shovel, tired. The fields were quiet as an afternoon nap. In the distance, a hawk spiraled
     slowly against the empty sky.
    Lana would love this
, he thought. One of these days he hoped she would be able to leave the Barn long enough to go on an expedition with him.
     After all, she’d been there for that moment in his life when he’d decided to study the skies.
    In their first year of college, they used to sneak out of their dorms in the middle of the night. Lana hadn’t been very good
     at sleeping—she still wasn’t—and so from time to time, they fled their stuffy, cellblock-style dorm rooms to walk the dark
     low-lying golf courses just beyond the athletic fields.
    They were both such nerds—just slightly outside what was considered normal. Eli had been fifteen pounds underweight, worn
     his hair so his bangs flopped over one eye, and had terrible allergies that made his nose constantly run. Lana, on the other
     hand, had been beautiful in broomstick skirts and flowery blouses. She might have passed for popular, except that she hung
     out with people like him.
    That night, they were lying in the grass looking up at the stars, talking and not talking as the mood suited them. Then, all
     at once, a blaze of light ripped through the clear sky. It wasn’t lightning; there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. But the streaking
     fire was as shocking as the sun, as if daylight had been smeared across the darkest opacity of night.
    Lana had screamed. Later, she confessed that she’d thought it was a bomb. But Eli had known what it was—that soundless, startling
     brilliance. He’d never