Page 15

"I shouldn't have left you here," he says.

"You told me you would."

"I know what I told you." His voice has dropped. "I told you I had to be somewhere by seven, and I was at my desk at one minute to, and half an hour later you were standing on this porch with a skillet. I'd give a lot to have done that differently."

"It's a barn. You're not responsible for a barn."

"I'm responsible for you not being out here alone with someone trying the doors."

I don't say anything. He lifts his hand and hovers it above mine on the counter. Then, delicately, as if checking whether I'll allow it, lays it over my knuckles. It's warm. It covers my whole hand and the cuff of his sleeve brushes my wrist.

"I'm angry at you," I say.

"I know."

"I'm also glad you're here."

He's quiet for a second. "That I didn't know."

He rubs his thumb once across the back of my hand.

A truck door closes outside. Boots come across the gravel with the unhurried rhythm of someone who has never run to anything in his life. A voice I know from the phone says from the front hall, "Ethan."

"Kitchen," Ethan calls, and takes his hand away so smoothly that I almost don't feel it go.

The man who comes to the kitchen doorway is a few years older than Ethan, quiet and angular, in the same uniform with a notebook already open in his hand. He has a face that gives away exactly what he decides to. Right now it gives away nothing. He looks at the back door, then at me, then at the skillet in the hall behind him. His eyes move to Ethan and rest there for a fraction of a second longer than anything else.

"Ms. Whitaker," he says. "Kieran. We spoke."

"You told me not to touch anything."

"I did."

"I read the note."

"Reading's fine." The corner of his mouth moves, barely. "You're the first person in this county to follow the instruction at all. Can you walk me through the morning?"

I do. I tell him about the cracks I heard from upstairs, the two of them, a few minutes apart. The cold floor. The long wait at the top of the stairs. I tell him that I checked each room and that I came down and found the porch like that. I tell him the note was wedged in the door, and that I read it.

He writes with a short pencil, in handwriting I can read upside down. He asks sensible questions in an even voice. When did you arrive in Bloomfield, who knows you're here, has anyone contacted you about the property.

"Yesterday at noon. The lawyer. Everyone at the cider tent, probably, since I told the boy at the counter my name. And yes. There's an offer."

I go and get my bag from the hall, where it's slumped against the wall, and take out the envelope I've been carrying since four o'clock yesterday. "Ridgeline Land Partners. It came to the lawyer's office three weeks ago."

Kieran and Ethan look at each other over my head. I'm not a short woman, but they manage it.

"What?" I say.

"Ridgeline's been working this county for a year. Two farms out past Fenner Road sold last spring. Nobody I talked to would say why." He glances at the envelope without taking it. "It doesn't prove anything. But it's enough that I want to know who in Bloomfield was in a hurry for you to say yes."

"The whole town knew I was here by nine last night. Somebody told Dolores."

"Dolores told everyone," Ethan says.

"Ethan walked me home from the festival. He came up through the orchard with me. He left a little after five-thirty. He pressed the lock on the knob on his way out, I remember, because I told him to, so in case it goes in your report, the front door was locked when he left."

The kitchen goes very still.