During construction, Tomas volunteered on Saturdays to organize old photographs. He brought his aunt coffee and complained about the institute's naming conventions. Luz taught him to label the backs of prints in pencil, lightly, on proper archival sleeves rather than directly on the photographs.
“Every time I think I'm finished, somebody finds another box,” he told Selene.
“That's archives,” she said. “They have a personal objection to being finished.”
The project brought new work to the institute. Older residents told stories about jobs that no longer existed, dances held beneath leaky ceilings, children who grew up to become teachers and nurses and bus drivers. One woman brought a cassette recording of Elena Vega singing while she cooked. The tape hissed, and much of the song was lost, but Selene watched Tomas listen with his eyes shut.
“I'd forgotten how she sounded,” he said.
He repeated it in a whisper. “I thought I'd forgotten.”
Selene remembered her father's voice explaining words over the kitchen table. The desire to recover every vanished sound was impossible. But sometimes a person was given one minute back, and that minute could be enough to soften an entire afternoon.
As the renovation progressed, Dante continued resolving the consequences of his former business life. The court cases involving the Pier Nine trust had not vanished; the administrator still sent difficult reports. Carmine Orsini's criminal case proceeded under its own schedule, without a verdict invented to satisfy anyone. The freight employees continued to negotiate through their representatives. Dante sometimes returned from meetings angry and exhausted. He no longer expected Selene to erase those feelings for him.
One evening he came to her apartment and sat quietly on the floor beside a box of books she had not yet unpacked.
“Are you going to tell me what's wrong?” she asked.
“In a minute. I'd rather hear about your day first.”
She looked at him. “That sounds suspiciously healthy.”
“I've been practicing.”
She told him about Tomas and the cassette. He told her about a disputed insurance payment that would require another round of interviews. They cooked supper badly together. When the smoke alarm went off, they opened a window and ordered noodles. For once, nobody mistook an ordinary domestic failure for a crisis.
At the end of summer, Selene signed a lease with Dante on a modest house not far from the institute. They had chosen it together. The front porch sagged a little; the landlord promised to repair it before move-in, and Mara insisted they put the promise in writing. There were two small studies, a kitchen with battered cabinets, and a narrow hallway that could hold shelves on one side if the other remained clear.
Dante measured the hallway twice. “You could put six bookcases here.”
“Three,” Selene said. “The other wall needs room for people to walk.”
“You're negotiating with me again.”
“It's how I show affection.”
He kissed her, laughing.
Their financial arrangements were written down as carefully as the lease. They kept independent accounts and agreed on shared expenses without confusing money with permission. Dante did not insist on paying for everything. Selene did not refuse every kindness to prove she was free. They learned the harder art of accepting help without becoming smaller.
In October, months after Tomas had carried his grandfather's letter to a restaurant table, the Harbor Circle Room reopened. The plaster had been repaired, the stairs made safe, and the ground-floor space redesigned for accessibility. The housing renovation continued in phases. The day was sunny and cold, the sort of Chicago afternoon that made people complain about winter before it arrived.