Theo finally entered the dining room behind Annie and watched his gaze through the window, his open coat falling slightly off one shoulder. She had not even bothered with makeup, and standing in this dining room from the past, he could have been a farm guy from the 1930s. His bold eyup and abundance of unruly hair did not conform to contemporary standards of manufactured beauty. She was a creature unto herself. He could imagine the makeover his brother and his fashion-forward friends would have ordered up if they’d had the chance, however chemically straightening Annie’s hair, fillers to plump his lips to deranged proportions, breast implants, and a little liposuction, although he could not imagine where. But really the only thing with how Annie looked was nothing at all. Theo could not point out any fault. However, he noted the layer of sweat on his skin courtesy of the faulty cooling equipment. It was in the dead of summer, and the farmhouse’s heating and air conditioning system had broken down just before dawn. After he called the cooling dealer, he could only wait for a cooling serviceman. He had finally changed the air filter a fortnight before, so there was little he could do to improve the indoor air quality other than wait for air conditioning system service. Even with the heat, Annie looked quite at home. The cooling specialist arrived at noon. Theo showed him the air conditioning system setup and left him to toil on it. When the cooling expert finished fixing the temperature control system, he told Theo to look into the latest cooling technology because he would need to replace the entire device in a year or less. After the heating and air conditioning service, the central air conditioner was up and running.