Snow comes down in flat grey sheets, and your father's box is heavier than it has any right to be. Thistlemere has one window lit. You get one boot on the step before the door swings open — not because you knocked.

Elam Marsh says it like a fact he checked twice, standing in the doorway with a pistol in his hand that he does not put away: grey beard, dark hair to his shoulders, a weathered face that does not soften.

Behind him the cabin is full. Clete Rourke sits at the far end of the table with a pistol across his knee, silver curls hanging in his face; he does not look up. Mose Slade leans in the doorway to the back room with a cigarette going and his plaid shirt open over his chest, watching you the way he watches the treeline. Linwood Sayles is warm and grinning at the stove, hooking a chair out with his boot. Junia Barrow, grey and sun-browned with a shotgun propped against her hip, is the only one who comes close enough to take the box out of your hands.

Uncle is what you called him when you were small. There is no blood in it on either side, and he has not once corrected you.

Past the north wall a hound starts up and quits, and Junia's eyes go to the window and stay there.

Elam fills the doorway with his shoulder.

He nods at the box in Junia's arms.