She didn’t mean the coffee. I watched her face. “The glass where?”

“A kitchen. A little room.” She shivered. “At the back of a bigger place.”

I found her bony leg beneath the blankets. Rubbed the spot below her knee. “What else?”

“Too late for him. Standing right there at the stove. He’s one of the good ones. And they know it.” Aunt Mae’s eyelids twitched. “Skin gone. Shirt charred to his body.”

There was a little trail of drool leaking down Aunt Mae’s chin. I patted it away with my sleeve. “What else?”

“Spreading. Out into the big room. Bottles bursting. Bags of coffee beans. Pop pop pop.”

I felt it. The hot breath on the back of my neck.

They’re getting closer. They’re nibbling away at the edges. They want to leave me nowhere to hide.

“The Crow’s Nest?” I asked, although the answer already sat heavy inside me.

Aunt Mae’s eyelids flickered upward. She looked out at me. Watery eyes, blue on red. “Yes,” she breathed. “That’s it. Yes.”

“Do you know when?”

“Soon.” Aunt Mae squinted. “Afternoon. The sky outside the windows is light.”

I squeezed her leg again. “I’ll take care of it.”

Aunt Mae gave me a grateful look. Another long sigh. Then she blinked down at her coffee, seeing it for the first time.

I watched her take a careful sip. “Do you think it’s an accident?”

Aunt Mae just looked at me. More sharply now.

“I’ll be there before they open,” I told her.

And I am.

The Crow’s Nest opens at three on weekdays. Most of its customers are at school or work or asleep until then. I’ve been waiting since one. Sometime around two o’clock Ike Lawrence’s big gray truck rumbles up the road that’s slashed through the oaks and pines like a paved wound. He veers across the empty parking lot, stopping at the far end.

He climbs out of the cab. The trees hush.

He saunters toward me, face unchanging, one hand swinging his ring of keys.

Ike is well over six feet. His face is like carved oak. His black T-shirt strains around his torso. The Crow’s Nest doesn’t need bouncers.

But Aunt Mae is right. He’s one of the good ones. You can see it, deep down, under the black T-shirt. The light.

He stops, standing above my spot on the stoop. He looks down. I look up.

“There’s something wrong with your stove,” I tell him.

His face doesn’t change. “Well,” he says. “Let’s see about that.”

He unlocks the back door.

I follow him up into the kitchen—a small room at the back, lined with wire shelves of paper goods, seasonings, bulk food bins. The smell of gas is faint. Easily hidden behind the rich hum of coffee, the lingering harmonies of chocolate, muffins, toasted bread.

Ike throws me a look.

He grasps the sides of the big gas stove and yanks it out, one corner at a time, onto the scarred black-and-white checked linoleum. He cranes around it.