He turned slow and saw her face split in half with shadow and light, her eyes wide, her nostrils flared as if to breathe him in and her lips parted like the mouth of a bell. He took a step closer and said, “I thought that was maybe you follering us.” Smiling.

“You never seen me.”

“Seen something.”

“Sho.” She snorted this at him and he almost laughed. “Something in your head I guess.”

“Well,” he said. “You were there and now you’re here.”

“I didn’t follow nothing. Been here waiting.”

“That right?”

She nodded. He could see she wore a different dress, once a deep green now faded to old moss.

“Waiting for what?” And he immediately wanted to bite back the words from the night.

But she only said, “Waiting for that woman to get done with her charity while you all tore up her barn. Waiting to see you walk out here sometime tonight. Waiting to see if you jump up in the air already running when you see me like you see a spook. You still got time for that I guess.”

“I’m sentry tonight. If I tore off running who knows what would happen. So I’m standing right here I guess.”

“Sentry sposed to walk around I thought.”

He shrugged. “War’s over. I guess you heard that.”

Now she shrugged. “You think that’s gonna change a thing, Mister Norman Pelham?” Before he could respond she reached out one hand and ran her fingers down his forearm, and he felt the flesh of his arm rise up to meet her. She was speaking not of her life or the lives of her people or even the people all around them but of the sudden and irrevocable breach each had made in the other. And nothing said out yet in the air between them, nothing said to make it real, as if words could do such a thing. So he only asked, “You get anything to eat today?”

“Some folks shared what they had.” She watching him now as if seeing he’d finally figured things out. Or maybe afraid he knew the words to break it apart. So he touched her upper arm and felt the chill of her skin, smooth and tight with cold. And said, “I need to find you a coat.”

“I got a coat. Out there.” Pointing out into the dark with her chin. “With my blankets and mess.” Norman shuddered with the complicated ripple of knowledge that the next minutes hours days would circuit his life; he’d learned early in the war to avoid reading signs or portents into any one small thing because the larger ones pay no attention to those small events. Hope and desire or dread are puny human attributes beside the work of a dreadful god or a careless universe but at this moment he knew his life was some way shapable. He was breathless that long moment and then Leah moved forward so her face was in full light now and he told her, “You wait right here. You wait just one minute. Please. Here, hold this.” He thrust the Springfield into her hands and turned to lope back up to the fire, where he poured out a can of coffee and took biscuits and bacon from the racks by the fire, stuffing his tunic pockets to a bulge. He was turning to leave when he saw Goundry watching him, the fervently quiet small blacksmith from Poultney now captain of the company, whose voice just carried the five feet between them.