"Now, the bedding should be in here," Parker said, opening the cabinet below the sink. "Yep, right where Bethalynn said it would be." He pulled out a zippered plastic bag, plopped it on one of the beds. "Should be enough blankets in there. Sometimes we're out here in the spring and the nights are pretty cold. If you need to start a fire up, the wood is downstairs. You can go directly down to the boat room, now you're inside." He pointed to a trapdoor in the floor. "We used to keep the wood outside, but people just aren't as honest as they used to be. They'll take anything we don't lock up, and even then we get broken into every two, three years."

We all shook our heads over this evidence of modern slack morals.

Parker sighed from the toes of his boots, a gusty sound that was supposed to mask the grief that crossed his face. Carson silently patted his father's shoulder. "I'll see you two later at the church hall," he said. "Mom's got your cell phone number." And he was gone before we could see him cry. I guess it just got to him every now and then, and I wasn't surprised that was so. I wondered when they would get to bury what was left of their oldest son.

Tolliver opened the trapdoor and descended. "No windows down here!" he called. I heard a click and the rectangle in the floor illuminated. "I'm bringing up some firewood," he said, his voice muffled. While I slung my suitcase on the bed closest to the bathroom, I heard a series of thunks and thuds, and then Tolliver's head appeared, the rest of him following along, his arms loaded with split oak.

I hadn't had much truck with fireplaces. While Tolliver dumped the wood on the hearth, I crouched down and looked up to see if the flue was open. Nope. I found a handle that looked promising and twisted it awkwardly with my good hand. Voila! With a great creak the flue opened and I could see the gray sky. There was a basket of pinecones on the hearth that I'd assumed were for rustic decoration, but Tolliver said he thought they were to help start the fire. Since they were absolutely ordinary pinecones and there were a million more where they came from, I let him put some in the hearth like the former Boy Scout he was. Since neither of us had matches or a lighter, we were relieved to find matches in a Ziploc bag on the mantel, and we were even more relieved when the first one Tolliver struck flared with a tiny flame.

The pinecones caught with gratifying speed, and Tolliver carefully put a few of the logs in the fireplace, crisscrossing them to allow the passage of air, I assumed.

Fire tending seemed to make him feel manly, so I left him to it. I had some granola bars in my suitcase, luckily, and I ate one while he brought up the ice chest, still fairly full of sodas and bottled water.

"We better get some groceries when we go into town tonight," I said.

"Do you really want to go to the meeting at the church?"

"No, of course not, but if we're going to be here we might as well. I don't want the people here taking against us." I glanced at my watch. "We have at least three hours. I'm going to lie down. I'm worn out."

"You shouldn't have carried that bag upstairs."

"It was on my good shoulder. No problem." But I'd taken a pain pill while he was out rummaging in the car, and it was taking effect.

There was a knock on the door, and I jumped a mile. Tolliver jerked in surprise himself, which made me feel a little better. We glanced at each other. We hadn't noticed anyone following us out here, and we'd hoped to dodge the reporters altogether.

"Yes?" Tolliver asked. I moved to stand behind him, peering out from behind his shoulder. Our caller sure didn't look like any reporter I'd ever seen. He was a wizened old man wearing battered cold-weather gear and carrying a casserole dish.

"I'm Ted Hamilton from next door," the old man said, smiling. "Me and my wife saw Parker pull up with you-all, and she could hardly wait to send you something. You friends of the family?"

"Please come in," Tolliver said, because he had to. "I'm Tolliver Lang; this is my sister Harper."

"Ms. Lang," Ted Hamilton said, bobbing his head at me. "Let me just put this down on the counter here." He set down the dish he'd been carrying.

"Actually, I'm Ms. Connelly, but please call me Harper," I said. "You and your wife live out here year-round?"

"Yep, since I retired, that's what we do," he said. The Hamiltons must live in the small white house next door, to the north. I'd seen the Hamiltons' house out the window and noted it was inhabited. Ordinarily the Hamiltons and the McGraws wouldn't really have to see each other a lot, since the McGraw parking was on the south side of the cabin. The Hamiltons' white frame house was a very ordinary little place that just happened to have been put down at the lakeside, with no concession made to setting or locale. It did boast a very nice pier, I'd noted.

"We're just going to be here a couple of days," I said, pretending to be rueful. "This was awful nice of Mrs. Hamilton."

"I guess you know Twyla, then?"

He was obviously dying to get the scoop on us, and I was just as determined not to spell it out for him. "Yes, we know her," I said. "A very nice woman."

"Just for a couple of days? Maybe we can persuade you to stay longer," Mr. Hamilton said. "Though with the bad weather coming in, you may want to rethink staying out here. You'd be better off with a room in town. It takes them a while to get out here when the electricity goes out."

"And you think that's gonna happen?"

"Oh, always does when we get a lot of ice and snow like they're predicting for tomorrow night," Ted Hamilton said. "Me and the wife have been getting ready for it all day. Went to town, got our groceries, stocked up on water and got oil for our lanterns, and so on. Checked the first aid kit to make sure we can patch up cuts and so on."

You could tell the oncoming bad weather was a big event for the Hamiltons, and I got the distinct impression they'd enjoyed themselves to the hilt preparing for it.

"We may be on our way tomorrow, with any luck," I said. "Please tell your wife we appreciate her fixing us something. We'll get the dish back to you, of course." We said all this a few more times, and then Ted Hamilton went back down the outside stairs and around our cabin to get back to his. Now that I was listening for it, I could hear his cabin door open and I thought I heard a snatch of his wife's voice raised in eager query.

I took the aluminum foil off the dish to reveal a chicken and rice casserole. I sniffed. Cheese and sour cream, a little onion. "Gosh," I said, feeling respect for someone who could whip up a dish like that in the forty-five minutes Tolliver and I had been in residence in the cabin.

"If you had some leftover chicken," Tolliver said, "it would only take twenty minutes for the rice to cook."

"I'm still shocked," I said. My stomach growled, demanding some of the casserole.

We found plastic forks and spoons and some paper plates, and we ate half the dish on the spot. It wasn't restaurant food. It smelled of home…a home, any home. After we'd put the aluminum foil back on and put the remainders in the old refrigerator, I lay down to take a nap, and Tolliver went out exploring. The fire was crackling in a very soothing way, and I wrapped myself in a blanket. We'd made the beds, working together, my rhythm all thrown off by my bad arm. There hadn't been any pillows here—presumably the family brought their own each time they camped out here—but Tolliver and I each had a small pillow in the car, and once I was swaddled in the blanket and warm and full, I drifted off to sleep feeling better than I had in days.

I didn't wake up until almost four o'clock. Tolliver was reading, lying stretched out on his bed. The fire was still going, and he'd brought more wood up. He'd positioned two wooden chairs close to the fire.