“We good?” he asked.

Her response was noncommittal. “Bring my cigarettes.”

As he climbed the steps, she slowly came into view, from the top of her disheveled head to her crossed blue-jeaned legs. She was sitting on the floor, her back to the wall. She looked tired. He glanced at the shotgun, whose chamber was locked open, further evidence of its being empty.

Joe sat on the landing and handed over the pack of smokes. “Been a rough haul,” he commented. “You must be wiped.”

“I been better,” she admitted, extracting a cigarette and lighting up.

“I bet. It’s hard enough just goin’ along, without more crap coming down on your head.”

“Yeah.”

Joe reached out and tapped her skinny knee lightly with his knuckles—a show of support. “I am sorry things soured between you and Donny.”

It was a gamble. He was making presumptions. But there had been truths not acknowledged by this woman from the start, and he wanted her to open up.

Her eyes narrowed. “How the hell?” she began before lapsing back into silence, her cigarette forgotten between her fingers.

“Cheri,” he said, an angler teasing a fish to bite down. “People like me have been at this a long time. We’re not bad at finding things out.”

She sighed, took a drag, and filled the air above her head with smoke. “Wish to hell I’d seen some of it comin’. I mighta been able to duck it.”

Joe nodded as if this were all old news. “It’s not how it works, though, is it? Do me a favor, just because so much else has been hitting the fan?”

“What?”

“Tell me how it started. I mean this whole mess. We know how it ended, but not the beginning. But what was the first domino to fall over? It got lost in the drama afterward.”

She answered casually, disarmed by his supposed knowledge of the facts. “Oh, yeah, well, nobody would know that. Not really. It was too many years ago. Hell, Lemuel and I woulda been in goddamn high school, weren’t we?”

Joe hid his surprise with a knowing smile. “Long time ago.”

“No shit.”

He gave a small tug to the hook—another guess disguised as old news. “But you weren’t in the same school.”

“No, course not. He went to Keene. Back in the day, that was the big city for some of us, and he really caught my eye.”

She seemed momentarily lost in the memory, blowing another plume into the air.

“He must’ve been a lot different back then.”

She laughed slightly, ending in a smoker’s wet cough. “No kiddin’. Tall, skinny, built like an athlete. He could go all night. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him again. I had to ask if it was really him, he’d gotten so old and fat. I know I got some wrinkles on me,” she added proudly, “but I still look pretty good, right?”

“You do,” Joe said agreeably, adding, “When was this? That you met again?”