Chapter 17: Pryce Comes to the Farm

The morning Pryce came to the farm, Mara was on the porch before he cleared the tree line.

She didn't know it was him at first. She heard the gravel on the county road before she saw anyone, which meant whoever it was had come on foot rather than by car, and she filed this fact away before she even stood up from the step where she'd been sitting since five-thirty with her father's journal closed in her lap and a cup of Ruth's coffee going cold beside her. She had not slept. She had not tried to.

The figure that emerged from the birch trees at the edge of the property walked with the careful deliberateness of a man who was either very tired or very certain of what he was walking toward, and as he got closer she could see the dress shirt, tucked in despite the hour and the heat, and the way he moved as though he had forgotten to take his clinical composure out of some drawer and was managing without it. He was older than she'd imagined from his handwriting. His handwriting had been precise, controlled, a man who measured every word before he committed it. The man coming up the gravel path had sweat through his shirt collar and was carrying nothing.