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I didn’t wake up until al stretched out on his bed The fire was still going, and he’d brought more wood up He’d positioned tooden chairs close to the fire

There wasn’t a sound to be heard: no traffic, no birds, no people Through theabove my head, I could see the bare branches of an oak tree lass It arood The ice would coo fish?" I asked Tolliver, afteraround a little to let him knoake

"I don’t know if you’re supposed to go fishing in the winter," he said He hadn’t had a bubba upbringing; no hunting and fishing for Tolliver His dad had been e the law, and then in getting high with the sa his sons out in the woods for so time Tolliver and his brother, Mark, had had to learn other skills to prove themselves at school

"Good, because I have no idea how to clean ’ee of ood" I moved it a little "And ive him room and he stretched out beside es on the phone at the apart one about a job in eastern Pennsylvania"

"How long a drive frouess about seven hours"

"Not too bad What’s the job?"

"A cehter wasn’t murdered The coroner said the death was an accident He said the girl slipped down some steps and fell The parents heard from some friends that, instead, her boyfriend hit her on the head with a beer bottle The friends are all too scared of the young man to tell the cops"

"Stupid," I said But we encountered stupid people all the time, people who just could not seem to see that elaborate plots almost never worked, that honesty usually was the best policy, and that most people who supposedly died by accident actually had died by accident If the boyfriend was so frightening that a group of young people were too scared to talk about hiirl’s "fall" was an exception

"Maybe we’ll get away from here in time to take it up," I said "They mention any time constraints?"

"The boy’s about to leave town - he’s joined the aruilty before he goes to basic"

"They understand, right? That I can’t tell theirl was hit on the head, but I won’t knoho did it"

"I spoke to the parents briefly They feel that if she was hit on the head, they’ll knoas the suspect who did it And they don’t want hiain I said we’d let theht hours"

I hated not being able to tell people yes or no right away, but you have to keep the law happy until their deood in court, right? So it’s very irkso town They don’t even believe in o

"Damned if you do, damned if you don’t," Ithat: it was one of the few memories I had of her I reh she hadn’t been one of those sweet cuddly grandmas you see in TV ads She’d never baked a cookie or knitted a sweater, and as far as dispensing wisdo was about as profound as she’d gotten She’d vanished as thoroughly as she could whenhabit Of course, dodging her needy and dishonest daughter meant she also lost contact with us; but maybe it hadn’t been an easy choice

"You ever hear frorandmother?" I asked Tolliver He didn’t follow , but he didn’t look startled

"Yeah, every now and then she calls," he said "I try to talk to her once a ht?"

"Yeah, est, so they were pretty old when she died It just took the life out of them, my dad said They both passed away about five years after my mother"

"We don’t have a lot of relatives" The McGraw-Cotton fah she’d re all country club with her accession to money Twyla had said Archie Cotton’s adult children were okay with the e

"Nope" Tolliver didn’t seeood hand to pat hiht," I said, with an overly hearty cheer, and he laughed a little

"Listen, we need to go into town a little early"

"Why?"

"Well, the co, and they wanted to check your bill again"

"Youthe total?"

"I paid it, but they wanted to be sure there weren’t any later charges on it So they asked me to drop by"

"Okay"

"You due any medicine?"

We checked, and I took a pill I decided to take the pain medicine with me in my purse I was able to use the bathroom by myself, but Tolliver had to helpmy hair, too It was very aard to attee a little

Tolliver went down the steps first, and I caust of relatively waretting dark fast

"And there’s cold air co down from the north?" I asked

"Yeah, late toh part of tomorrow We need to listen to the news on our way into town"

We did, and the weather prediction was discouraging Teh to the hot and the cold air would collide with the strong chance of a resultant ice stor one other time, in my childhood, but I still remembered the trees down across the road in our trailer park, the bitter cold, and the lack of electricity It had been a long thirty hours before our power came back on then I wondered if we could drive out of the area likely to be affected before the storirl on duty at the business as busy closing out her paperwork She wasn’t too happy to see us, though she was polite She glanced at a yellow Post-it Note stuck toin some nuing up, she said, "Mr Simpson, the administrator, asked to be notified when you came by He’ll be here in just a s and stared at the azines on the low Formica table in front of us Battered copies of Field and Strea, and Better Homes and Gardens were not likely to tempt us, and I closed my eyes and slu about Christolden decorations, green ones with red flocked cardinals stuck on the branches, trees covered with big Italian glass orna with tinsel It was a shock to open s covered in a dark suiting material Barney Simpson dropped into a chair opposite us His hair looked even rougher than it had when he’d come to my hospital room I wondered if he’d ever tried cream rinse on it, to an, "I put a flag on your statement so Britta would call me when you came in"