Kant was hanging the dish towel to dry when Margot reentered the room. He gave her a single nod, which might have just been an acknowledgment of her presence but that Margot hoped was approval of how she looked, then wordlessly led her to the door.

He’d taken down the ropes while she was changing. They now lay in a loosely coiled heap beside the porch’s stairs. Margot held a wary gaze on them as she passed. They truly looked like they had been dragged out of the forest floor; roots and loamy earth clung between the twisted fibers and the rope itself was beginning to rot in places.

The sun rose, slowly devouring the frost that clung to the sparse grass tufts. Margot thrust her hands into her jacket pockets as she put her head down. She’d half expected Kant to suggest they take her car, but he led her along the dirt track instead, his shaggy, gray hair whipped back by the wind.

“One of the upstairs lights broke last night,” she said, more to make conversation than anything. “Scared me pretty badly.”

“I’ll come around later and fix that.”

“Oh…no…I can take care of it. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.” The ground began to lead downward, and although his gait became more pronounced, he didn’t slow. “Used to do repairs for your parents too. It’s an old house and needs more work than one person can keep up with.”

She risked a glance at him. “There are a lot of rooms. Did my parents ever have guests stay?”

“No. Never. Liked the place to themselves.” He shrugged, his knit turtleneck bunching up over shoulders that were slightly too broad for it. “Most of the house stayed locked up. It was built for a much larger family.”

She’d guessed as much. At the time it was constructed, families of ten or twelve weren’t unusual, and the building would have played host to other relatives who wanted a place to stay in return for working in the winery. The house was built to be crowded and full of voices. Now it lay all but hollow, filled with furniture that never saw use, slowly growing stiff and cobwebbed from neglect.

The driveway wove them in a twisting route down the hillside. They passed thin clusters of trees, the branches anemic as they strained toward the pale sunlight. Margot hitched her jacket higher around her throat.

Close to halfway down the hill, a side path led off to the right. Although the driveway to the house had been intended as the main road, it was clear that far more traffic took the bend to the side; the ruts in the compacted dirt were wider and deeper, and less grass managed to poke through. The tire tracks cut the corner, and Kant followed them, leading Margot toward a strand of buildings.