Chapter 24: Maren Comes in from the Field

The morning Maren arrived, the fog lay flat against the valley floor and did not lift.

Elliot saw her from the east reading room window at eight forty-three, before the first bell, before the courtyard filled with students shrugging on coats and exhaling small clouds into the November cold. She came up the access road in a grey car he didn't recognize — not the brown one she'd driven six years ago, which meant either the brown one was gone or she had the sense not to come in something he might already know. He watched the car park at the visitor's end of the gravel strip beside the gate, and he watched Maren get out and stand for a moment in the damp air, her hands in the pockets of a dark coat, looking up at the building the way people look at things they have been thinking about for a long time.

She didn't look afraid.