Rade comes in from the yard with the flatbed's key still in his hand and stops in the doorway of the sitting room. His brother is in the good chair. Mira is on the arm of it, talking about a stone contract neither of them wants. Neither of them has noticed the car at the gate.
He has. He noticed forty minutes ago and has been out there since with the engine off and the flask going cold, deciding what he is going to say to you.
"Give me a minute out here,"
he says, to the room, in the voice he uses for drivers.
"There is paperwork in the car that cannot wait."
Then he is in the corridor with you, the letter already out of his jacket and one finger to his lips, and behind him his brother's voice goes on about the autumn contract, and the fire is still unlit, and nobody in that room has any idea he has been standing at the gate for forty minutes.