“Be careful,” the woman said. Her final words were drowned inside the gasping, wheezing breathlessness. “Be safe.”

She turned and vanished into the milling crowd, leaving Margot abruptly lost in her wake.

No more. The tent’s heaters had been a relief when she’d first entered, but the packed bodies were turning the space oppressively warm. The flapping tent wall beat its tune without pause. The scents of coffee and churned earth and wine burned her nose as they flooded down to her lungs. She needed to get out.

Margot pressed through the crowd, acutely aware of the way people’s eyes followed her when they thought she wouldn’t notice. The space was packed, and the gaps between black-clad mourners claustrophobically narrow. Someone behind Margot laughed, the sound jarring.

She dropped the half-full cup of coffee into a bin. The exit was close. Margot fixed her sight on the slice of natural light between the tent’s loose door flaps. Bitingly cold air wormed across her skin as she drew near.

A man moved in to block her path. Margot pulled up short, feeling a sting of shock as she recognized him. He’d mussed his shaggy gray hair out of the damp, combed arrangement she’d seen in the church. He stepped toward her, and Margot noticed a slight limp.

“Hello, Margot.” His voice, like his clothes, was rough at the edge—slightly cracked, slightly gravelly. His head tilted as his gray eyes searched hers. “It’s good you made it in time.”

Margot’s palms were damp. She felt exposed under his quiet scrutiny. Someone bumped her shoulder as they passed. Someone else near the tent’s back wall laughed again, the sound a little too loud, a little too urgent.

“Hope it was okay.” The man’s wide shoulders shifted in a brief shrug. His voice was soft and nearly swallowed under the rapid conversations around them. “I’m not good at…planning things. The Palmers helped with a lot of it.”

“Oh.” Margot took a sharp breath, reassessing him. Pieces clicked into place. “Mr…Kent?”

“Kant,” he said.

“Sorry. Mr. Kant.”

“Just Kant is fine.” He blinked slowly. “I suppose you’d want to see the home.”

My parents’ home. My home now, I guess. As foreign as that idea sounds. “I… Yeah, I would.”

He glanced toward the tent entrance. “You’re ready to leave.” It was a statement more than a question, but Margot still nodded. “You have a car?”

“Yeah.”

“Then follow me. I’ll show you the way.”

2

The wipers made rhythmic thudding sounds as they swiped the spitting rain off the windshield. Margot had the heat turned fully up but still hadn’t shed her jacket.