The car pulled up, and he rose, and he was not astonished but mildly nonplussed by the driver, who got out and faced him. Woman. Fifties, maybe early sixties. Pantsuit, makeup, and the ubiquitous high-end sneakers that most American women wore most places these days. Her smile was tentative, not practiced and professional. Her face was slightly out of symmetry, as if parted and rejoined inadequately, but no scars showed. It was just an oddness of cast that suggested complexities. He couldn’t help picking up a note of forlorn loss, however, when he added it all up. Something damaged about poor whoever-she-was.

“Ma’am,” he called. “Just so you know: this is private property, and I’m not what you’d call a public fellow. If you’re selling, I’m not buying. If you’re interviewing, I’m not talking. And if you’re campaigning, I don’t vote. But if you’re lost, I will happily give you directions, and a glass of water.”

“I’m not lost, Mr. Swagger—Sergeant Swagger. It took me days to find out where you lived. I know you don’t like interruptions, and there’s no reason you should, but I would claim the right to a hearing because of the circumstances.”

“Well—” he said, thinking, Oh, Lord, what now?

“My son. Lance Corporal Thomas McDowell, sniper, 3/8. Baghdad, 2003. Came back to me in a box.”

•   •   •

They sat in silence on the porch for a bit. He didn’t know what he could say, because of course there is nothing that can be said. He knew enough of grief to know that only time eats it down, and sometimes not even that, and death is the only ultimate release. So, it would be her show, and she seemed to need some time to gather.

Finally, she said, “It seems very pretty here.”

“I like to sit a couple of hours each day. Just watch the weather and the grass change. Sometimes a batch of antelope wander by, sometimes a few mulies—a buck and his gals. Once a bull elk, magnificent rack, but they seem not much in evidence these days.”

“You’re being very kind to me.”

“It’s just my way.”

“You think maybe I came for explanations. Context, history, the who, the why, the what, the physics of it. The ballistics. You would know such things.”

“If it helps, I’ll sound off.”

“I’ve learned a thing or two since the notification team knocked on the door. Seven-point-sixty-two by fifty-four, 160 grain. Classic Dragunov. Velocity about sixteen hundred feet per second by the time it reached him. Steel-cored, probably didn’t distort or rupture. Went clean through. It would have been instant, I’m told.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I should be grateful for that mercy, but don’t look to me for grateful. Mom doesn’t do grateful. Mom wants the man who pulled the trigger dead. That’s what Mom wants.”