When he reaches the driveway to the ranch, he feels an odd panic and keeps driving. That’s his excuse for going on, over the wooden bridge, and turning down the driveway to the old house instead.

He has no idea what he intends to do here, either. No more of a plan than he’s come up with for the moment when he faces Robbie and has to explain where he’s been and the outcome of the theft charges in a way that won’t make Robbie look at him like a lost little boy, forever ruining their chances of being more.

But the stakes are manageable out here, with these strangers who’ve settled into the husk of a place that carries so many of Lance’s most conflicted feelings.

He has the wild fear and hope that they won’t be home, and the idea of standing alone outside the little house fills him with a dread which is similar to the feeling of standing at his father’s bedside. But he’s spared having to walk to the door and knock, at least. The woman and the little girl are outside, apparently as immune as all Nebraskans tend to be to the biting cold under a midday sun. The little girl is back in that lavender snowsuit, packing snow together into the lumpy semblance of a snowman, and the woman is watching her from the front steps, where she’s sitting wrapped in a blanket. The moment Lance comes around the bend in the drive and sees them, though, the girl spins around and the woman jumps to her feet.

Lance feels another moment of unease, but the young woman doesn’t pull out a rifle and point it at him; she just trots down the steps in her slippered feet and takes the little girl’s hand. Her face reminds Lance of someone, but he can’t figure out who. He stops a careful distance from the house, and then, because he’s backed himself into a corner and left himself with no other choice, he gets out of the car and walks over to talk to them.

The little girl’s eyes widen as she gets a good look at him, and she tugs on her mother’s hand. Lance easily overhears her loud whisper. “Mama, that’s the man from the woods!”

Lance winces and stops, rounding his shoulders in a way that he hopes makes him seem less intimidating. “I told her she probably shouldn’t talk to strangers in the woods,” he says helpfully.

The woman is even younger-looking up close than she was from a distance. She’s definitely no older than Lance. He still hasn’t figured out where he’s seen her before, though he’s increasingly sure he has. He thinks through the names of people close to his age while he was growing up, but her face doesn’t match any of them.

“You told her your dad owned this place,” the young woman says, her voice a little stiff. Her eyes are intent on his face, though, like she’s seeing something that surprises her—and not in a good way.