"Huh," his mother said, but she left him alone as the county highway twisted and turned through densely packed trees, skirting the mountains to the west of Millers Kill. Eventually, the forest gave way to a broad valley, the road falling away like a fast-moving stream to run up and down the gentle hills between one dairy farm and the next.

They were closing in on Janet and Mike's quarter-mile-long driveway when his mother said, "Go on past. We're meeting them at the neighbor's."

Russ took his foot off the gas. "Mom. This isn't some sort of setup, is it?"

She looked-not guilty, she never looked guilty as far as he could tell-but like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "I'm not sayin'. It's a surprise."

"Listen, Mom. If they're fixing me up with some sweet little widow woman or divorcée, I'm turning this truck around and heading home right now."

His mother made an exasperated noise. "It's not that sort of surprise. Honestly, Russell, it's not all about you all of the time."

There wasn't any good reply to that. He mumbled something that might have been either an apology or an accusation and accelerated up the road.

The neighbor's place was a pretty bungalow, probably bought in kit form from Sears, Roebuck back in the twenties. He started to turn up the short drive. "No, not there." His mother pointed. "The other side of the road."

"The barn?" Like many of the newer farms in this part of the world-newer meaning one century old instead of two-the barn and outbuildings were across the two-lane highway instead of attached to the house, giving some breathing room, literally, to the residents. Between the main building, the double silos, and the cow byre stretching out toward the pasturage, the neighbors' barn took up four or five times the space of their house.

"Just pull into the drive."

Russ obeyed, parking his truck on the least-muddy section of the short wide road leading to a pair of tractor-sized doors. "Mom, what's this about?" he asked.

His mother, ignoring him, slipped down from the cab and squelched toward the double doors. He jumped out and hurried after her. "Open this for me, will you?" she said.

A vision of hordes of well-wishers waiting inside, balloons tied to the rafters, filled his head. But there wasn't any occasion for a surprise party, was there? His birthday was five months gone. It wasn't the anniversary of his joining the MKPD.

"Criminy's sake, Russell. You going to make a poor old lady haul this back by herself?"

He snorted. Margy Van Alstyne was about as weak and feeble as a steamroller. But there wasn't anything to be gained by standing out in the cold and gathering dark. He wrapped his fist around one curved handle and rolled the door open.

They were greeted by the familiar farm smells of machine oil, hay, and manure, nothing more. His mother strode in, turning pale beneath the cool fluorescent lights dangling from the three-story-high ceiling. "Huh." She put her hands on her hips. "They must be in with the cows." She threaded her way between a tractor and a baler and disappeared through a small door beneath the haymow.

"Who? Mom, what's going on?" He rolled the door shut behind him and followed her, dodging a conveyor belt that led from a hay cart to the mow above. Overhead, Russ could see a few scattered bales in the shadows, ready to eke out the five or six weeks remaining until the arrival of the tender grass of spring. He ducked his head and entered the cow byre.

It was long and low and bright and modern, and it made his heart start to pound. He found himself looking left, right, past the rows of neat stalls that stretched out and out, one silky black-and-white back after another, trying to pinpoint an exit. He took a deep breath to steady himself, but the smell of warm cow and wet straw stuck in his throat as if it would strangle him.

"There you are!" His sister's cheerful voice focused him a little. Janet and Mike waved from halfway down the center aisle. They looked impossibly far away. A clank to his left made him jerk his head around, and he found himself face to face with a marble-eyed, wet-nosed heifer, staring incuriously at him while chewing its cud.

His brother-in-law laughed. "Look at him. He's gotten all wide-eyed." He spread his arms. "It's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

No, it pretty much reminds me of the cow barn I nearly got shot in two months ago. Where the best person I know had to kill a sociopathic monster to save my life.

It reminds me of where I was when my wife died. He wanted to say it, so they'd have some idea of who he was and what was going on in his head. But he couldn't. His mother would get scared and his sister would spend the rest of the evening being forcefully jolly. Trying to "make him feel better." They didn't want to know crap like that.

Clare would understand.

As always these days, the thought of her brought with it a wave of longing and loss and guilt and self-loathing. For once, he welcomed the acidic brew. It blew away the fog of fear and made this barn just another barn, just another place he had to be before he could climb into bed and achieve his fondest desire: total unconsciousness.

His relations were looking at him expectantly. "Yeah," he said. "Impressive."

Janet and Mike beamed at each other. "I knew you'd think so," Janet said. "It's ours."

"Well, ours and Mom's." Mike put his arm around his mother-in-law.

Margy grinned. "Surprised ya!"

"What?" Russ stared at them. "Yours?"

"The Petersons wanted to sell out and retire," Mike said. "It was the perfect opportunity to expand our operation."

"We're doubling our herd to two hundred and forty head!" Janet said. "Plus an additional fifty acres with hayfields-"

"We'll be able to grow most of our own feed corn," Mike broke in.

"-and produce three million more pounds of milk a year!"

Russ held up his hands. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm no farmer, but even I know doubling the size of your herd means a big jump in expenses. Not to be nosy, but how are you swinging this?"

His brother-in-law grinned. "Well, we thought first we might raise a cash crop of wacky weed, but we figured that wouldn't fly so well, with you being the chief of police and all. So we got a loan from the bank of Mom." He put his arm around Margy's shoulders and squeezed.

"Not all Mom," Janet added. "We took out a mortgage on our place."

"I'm a partner." His mother beamed. "It's an investment."

"An investment?" Russ gaped at the trio. "In a dairy farm? There's been at least one farm closed in this county every year for the past twenty years!" He rounded on Janet. "You think that's a safe investment for a seventy-five-year-old woman on a fixed income?"

"Russell!" His mother sounded shocked.

"Mom, I can't believe you'd do something so irresponsible."

"It's my money," she said, at the same time Janet said, "Who are you to tell Mom what she can and can't do?"

"I'm looking out for her future. And if you thought a little bit more about her and less about yourself-"

"Oh!" Janet stepped toward him, her eyes-the same eyes he had inherited from their father-blazing hot blue. "All those years you were gallivanting all over the world in the army, who was looking out for her then? I was! I was the one who stayed here in Millers Kill and spent every Sunday with her year in and year out when the only thing she'd see from you was a postcard!"

"And that gives you the right to get her involved in this idiotic-ow!"

Janet let out a similar screech of pain. Margy had reached up-way up, since they had also both inherited their dad's height-and pinched hold of their earlobes.

"Ow! Ow, Mom, stop it!"

"Not until you two stop behaving like a pair of brats fighting over a lollipop."