A skeletal woman with eyes that seemed too large for her face answered the bel . She wore a saggy, pil -covered cardigan over a faded polyester housedress. The garments draped her fleshless form like clothes hanging on a hanger.

The woman spoke to me through an aluminum and glass outer door.

“Got nothing this week.” She stepped back to close the inner door.

“Mrs. Cobb?”

“You with the kidney people?”

“No, ma’am. I’m not. I’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”

“Got no daughter.”

Again the woman moved to close the door, then hesitated, vertical lines creasing the bone-tight flesh on her forehead.

“Who are you?”

I dug a card from my purse and held it to the glass. She read the card then looked up, eyes fil ed with thoughts that had nothing to do with me.

“Medical examiner?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” Keep it simple.

The aluminum gril work rattled when she pushed open the door. Cold seeped outward, like air from a recently unlocked tomb.

Wordlessly the woman led me to the kitchen and gestured toward a smal table with antique green legs and a simulated wood top. The trailer’s interior smel ed of mothbal s, pine disinfectant, and old cigarette smoke.

“Coffee?” she asked as I seated myself.

“Yes, please.” The thermostat must have been set at fifty-eight. Goose bumps were forming on my neck and arms.

The woman took two mugs from an overhead cabinet and fil ed them from a coffeemaker on the counter.

“It is Mrs. Cobb, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Mrs. Cobb set the mugs on the simulated wood. “Milk?”

“No, thank you.”

Sliding a pack of Kools from the top of the refrigerator, Mrs. Cobb took the chair opposite mine. Her skin looked waxy and gray. A growth protruded from a comma below her left eyelid, looking like a barnacle on the side of a pier.

“Got a light?”

I dug matches from my purse, struck one, and held it to her cigarette.

“Can’t ever find the darned things when I need them.”

She inhaled deeply, exhaled, flicked a finger at the matches.

“Put those away. I don’t want to be smoking too many.” She snorted a laugh. “Bad for my health.” I shoved the matches into my jeans pocket.

“You want to talk about my child.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Cobb fished a Kleenex from a sweater pocket, blew her nose, then took another drag.

“My husband’s dead two years come November.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“He was a good, Christian man. Headstrong, but a good man.”

“I’m sure you miss him.”

“Lord knows I do.”

A cuckoo popped from its clock above the sink and sounded the hour. We both listened. Ten chirps.

“He gave me that clock for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

“It must be very dear to you.”

“Fool thing’s kept working al these years.”