A few last road directions, and I was on my way.

Twenty minutes on the two-lane and I began to regret my decision. The flakes that had floated lazily in my headlights were now slicing across in a steady diagonal curtain. The road and the trees to either side were covered by a membrane of white that was growing more opaque by the second.

I clutched the wheel with both hands, palms clammy inside my gloves. I slowed to forty. Thirty-five. Every few minutes I tested the brakes.

While I have been living in Quebec off and on for years, I have never grown accustomed to winter driving. I think of myself as tough, but put me on wheels in snow and I am Princess Chickenheart. I stil have the typical Southern reaction to winter storms. Oh. Snow. Then we won't be going out, of course. Les quebecois look at me and laugh.

Fear has a redeeming quality. It drives away fatigue. Tired as I was, I stayed alert, teeth clenched, neck craned, muscles rigid. The Eastern Townships Auto-route was a bit better than the back roads, but not much. Lac Memphremagog to Montreal is normal y a two-hour drive.

It took me almost four.

Shortly after ten, I stood in the dark of my apartment, exhausted, glad to be home. Quebec home. I'd been away in North Carolina almost two months.

Bienvenue. My thought process had already shifted to French.

I turned up the heat and checked the refrigerator. Bleak. I micro-zapped a frozen burrito and washed it down with room temperature root beer. Not haute cuisine, but fil ing.

The luggage I'd dropped off Tuesday night sat unopened in the bedroom.

I didn't consider unpacking. Tomorrow. I fel into bed, planning to sleep at least nine hours. The phone woke me in less than four.

"Oui, yes," I mumbled, the linguistic transition now in limbo.

"Temperance. It is Pierre LaManche. I am very sorry to disturb you at this hour."

I waited. In the seven years I'd worked for him, the lab director had never cal ed me at three in the morning.

"I hope things went wel at Lac Memphremagog." He cleared his throat.

"I have just had a cal from the coroner's office. There is a house fire in St-Jovite. The firefighters are stil trying to get it under control. The arson investigators wil go in first thing in the morning, and the coroner wants us there." Again the throat. "A neighbor says the residents are at home. Their cars are in the driveway."

"Why do you need me?" I asked in English.

"Apparently the fire is extremely intense. If there are bodies, they wil be badly burned. Perhaps reduced to calcined bone and teeth. It could be a difficult recovery."

Damn. Not tomorrow.

"What time?"

"I wil come for you at six A.M.?"

"O.K."

"Temperance. It could be a bad one. There were children living there."

I set the alarm for five-thirty.

Bienvenue.