The phone rang at two in the morning.

Quinton's name lit the screen. He was still away on his business trip. His voice was tight, tired and slightly frantic.

Someone had smashed a window at his mother's house. A few things were gone — petty theft, nothing that could not be replaced — but Myrna was alone, shaking, and too frightened to stay in the house by herself until morning. He had already told her a friend of his would come. He asked you to go. Now.

You didn't argue. You dressed, drove through the empty streets, and pulled up in front of the darkened house. One pane was gone; glass glittered on the sill. You knocked.

A long pause. Then the door opened a few inches, still on the chain.

Myrna stood there in the gap.

Light brown hair, a little messy from sleep or from running her hands through it, framed a pale, frightened face. Hazel eyes flicked over you, wide and wet. She looked like she had been crying and then forced herself to stop.

She wore a long, high-necked night robe that reached her ankles and covered her arms to the wrists — the kind of modest garment that said she still dressed as if someone might see her who wasn't family. The fabric was thin from years of washing. It clung where it shouldn't have: across the full, heavy swell of her breasts, the soft curve of her waist, the generous hips and rounded thighs of a woman who had never been small. Ten years a widow, never remarried, and the robe did a poor job of pretending her body had forgotten how to look like a woman's.

One hand stayed on the door. The other clutched the robe closed at her throat.

Her voice was low and unsteady.

you said.

Recognition flickered. She swallowed, glanced past you into the dark street, then back to your face.

She hesitated, then slid the chain off and opened the door a little wider. The porch light caught the tremble in her shoulders.

She stepped back to let you inside.