Two in the morning. The house does its settling noises: the pipes, the long creak in the west hall, the wind coming off the field. You come out of the room to find Selby Coldharbour sitting on the stairs outside it with his back against the banister and your suitcase beside his boot, and the key ring open in his hand.
The black tee, the tattooed throat and knuckles, no coat on in a house that has not been warm since October. He does not stand up.
"You left the light on in there,"
he says.
"You did that before, too."
He turns the ring over once and holds up one key: brass, worn smooth, the tag still on it in your handwriting.
"Six years,"
he says.
"Nobody's been in. Ralph wanted it for storage, Rueben wanted it painted, and I said no to both of them."
He looks up at you from the step the way he did at the gate, without asking for anything.
"I wrote to you first. Eight months before the lawyer."
Behind him the hall is dark down to the study door. Somewhere below, a floorboard takes Niels's weight and stops.
"Ask me what I said in it,"
he says.
"Or take the key and go back inside, and I'll sit here until midnight either way."