“No, ma’am, I’m not going to do that.”

“I expect a full accounting, Warden Investigator Bowditch.”

I thanked her for the coffee and cookies.

Outside the air had grown colder. The sun, already low in the southern sky, had moved behind the house and the icicles along the gutters had ceased to drip.

I was surprised to find Bibi following me. She hadn’t bothered to grab a coat.

“Please don’t harass that poor man,” she said. “It’ll only provoke him.”

“If he’s so easily provoked, why don’t you believe your mom’s theory that he had something to do with your grandfather’s death?”

“Because I pity him. Bruce Jewett doesn’t know who he is. Or he doesn’t want to know.”

“That describes a lot of people who aren’t racist gun nuts.”

“Really?” She seemed genuinely surprised by this claim. “Maybe I take it for granted because I’ve always known who I am—and what I am. I suppose that was my grandfather’s greatest gift to me. Acceptance.”

“You’re lucky then.”

She seemed to take the remark as patronizing. “You don’t exactly strike me as someone who struggles with self-knowledge.”

Little did she know. Most mornings, the sight of my reflection still ambushed me in the mirror.

13

Sparks shoot upward from the fire and are caught in the moving air and carried outside with the smoke. The pink fiberglass near the entrance grows black with creosote. The plywood floor has begun to darken beyond the pink circle of insulation. I break branches and toss them onto the embers to feed the flames.

My instinct tells me I am pushing my luck, staying here when I should be running. But Shadow seems so exhausted. And my parka could use twenty more minutes to dry.

I know I am rationalizing.

Softwood hisses as steam escapes from the burning gas. The flames change color depending on what has ignited. Orange for pine and birchbark, yellow for maple branches, blue for cellophane, monofilament fishing line, and assorted trash gathered from the floor.

With swollen fingers, I reach up to feel the polyester fabric of my undergarment armor, hanging from a nail, and find it damp. There is nothing to do but slide the plates into place and shrug on the vest again. When I pull the sweater over my head next, I smell woodsmoke baked into the wool fibers.

My jeans have dried a little, but not enough. “Cotton kills” is another of my mentor Charley’s backwoods sayings.

My insoles seem warm when I slide them into my boots. But within minutes of tying up the laces, the cold clamminess returns.

The wind has changed direction, swung around from the northwest, causing smoke to back up inside the shack. I want to give the wolf a chance to get warm, but the urgency to flee while I can begins to build again.