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Now, she rose slowly from her chair, dreading his weary look and his rapid departure to the study.
    Sophia walked down the steps to the kitchen, where she found Shadrack unpacking a canvas shopping bag at the kitchen table. “You’re home,” she said, putting her arms around him.
    â€œI’m finally home, Soph,” he replied, embracing her wearily in return. “You needn’t have waited for me. You must be hungry.”
    â€œOh, I don’t mind waiting.” Sophia took up unpacking the food while Shadrack sat down exhaustedly. She heard in her own voice the resentment, the opposite meaning, pleading to be heard:
I do mind. I mind waiting. Every night.
It surprised her. She could hear it now, in the same way that she could see the great expanse of sadness. Could Shadrack hear it?
    â€œWell,
I’m
hungry,” Shadrack said, throwing himself back in his chair. “So hungry that I just took things off the shelves at Morton’s without really thinking. I’m glad Mrs. Clay has the chance to escape us on her night off, but our stomachs always suffer when she does.”
    He could not hear it.
    Sophia turned to the bag and stared at it, overcome by the realization. Slowly and steadily, she pushed the discovery aside. She forced herself to look at the contents of the bag. “Pickles,cold pork, cheddar cheese, a loaf of rye bread, and four tomatoes,” she said woodenly. “I’ll get plates.” It was suddenly apparent to her that this happened every night: she said things she did not mean because she wanted them to be true.
    â€œAnother impossible day,” Shadrack sighed. He rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. “Raiders in the Indian Territories, as usual. Or ‘settlers,’ as they call themselves. They simply won’t see sense. To them, any piece of land without a fence around it is land for the taking. Most of them are simply scoundrels, but some of them are Nihilismian, and they insist on pushing west, because that’s what happened in the ‘Age of Verity.’” He rolled his eyes. “They seem incapable of understanding that we inhabit this world around us, not a different one.”
    Sophia looked at him.
Now is the moment to tell him about the archive,
she thought.
He will be upset. Then I’ll explain, and he’ll understand.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the words would not come.
    Shadrack shook his head and moved on. “But enough about the ministry—I have more immediate news. Good news and bad news.”
    Sophia sank down into her chair. “What is it?”
    â€œI received a letter from Miles today. The man they had gone to find near the Eerie Sea who supposedly knew about Ausentinia is, very recently it seems, deceased.” He stared down at his plate before looking up to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry, Soph.”
    She had hoped for better news. “They didn’t learn anything?”
    â€œMiles only said that the man was dead. Most of his letterwas about an attack they witnessed. Well, they witnessed the aftermath. Settlers from Connecticut on an Indian town near the border.” Shadrack ran a hand through his hair. “Prime Minister Bligh and I spent three hours today finding absolutely
nothing
by way of solution.”
    Ever since the previous summer, when parliament had adopted an uncompromising posture toward foreigners, closing the borders and deporting people of foreign birth, New Occident had changed. To Sophia it was most apparent in the empty storefronts, the neighbors from the Indies who had moved away, the trolley drivers she no longer saw, and the undefinable sense of
sameness
of Boston’s inhabitants. There were no more vendors from the Baldlands selling turquoise or palm readers from the Indies offering to tell one’s fortune. Even people from the Indian Territories and the state of New Akan, who had every right to be in Boston, had