She saw him, and she stopped a few feet from the stairs.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to startle you."

The woman in the dull black overcoat didn't blink and didn't move. "What do you want?"

He'd prepared a speech, but he couldn't remember it. "To talk. To you. I want to talk to you."

Briar Wilkes closed her eyes hard. When she opened them again, she asked, "Is it about Zeke? What's he done now?"

"No, no, it's not about him," he insisted. "Ma'am, I was hoping we could talk about your father."

Her shoulders lost their stiff, defensive right angles, and she shook her head. "That figures. I swear to God, all the men in my life, they . . ." She stopped herself. And then she said, "My father was a tyrant, and everyone he loved was afraid of him. Is that what you want to hear?"

He held his position while she climbed the eleven crooked stairs that led the way to her roam, and to him. When she reached the narrow porch he asked, "Is it true?"

"More true than not."

She stood before him with her fingers wrapped around a ring of keys. The top of her head was level with his chin. Her keys were aimed at his waist, he thought, until he realized he was standing in front of the door. He shuffled out of her way.

"How long have you been waiting for me?" she asked.

He strongly considered lying, but she pinned him to the wall with her stare. "Several hours. I wanted to be here when you got home."

The door clacked, clicked, and scooted inward. "I took an extra shift at the 'works. You could've come back later."

"Please, ma'am. May I come inside?"

She shrugged, but she didn't say now, and she didn't close him out in the cold, so he followed behind her, shutting the door and standing beside it while Briar found a lamp and lit it.

She carried the lamp to the fireplace, where the logs had burned down cold. Beside the mantle there was a poker and set a bellows, and a flat iron basket with a chance of split logs. She jabbed the poker against the charred lumps and found a few live coals lingering at the bottom.

With gentle encouragement, a handful of kindling, and two more lengths of wood, a slow flame caught and held.