A car drives slowly past on Broadway, headlights slicing through the mist gathering on the bluff. Tourists frequently cruise this street to look at Edelweiss, the Parsonage, and Rosalie, but when I glance down to my left, I see Tim writing down the license number.

“I kind of wish you hadn’t told me that story,” I murmur.

Doris releases my upper arm and pats it. “Don’t say that. Lying to yourself is the worst thing you can do when you’re at war.”

“Spoken like a true soldier,” I say with a hint of mockery in my voice.

“Look at me,” she says, stepping in front of me. “I’m forty-one years old. Quentin is thirty-two years older than I am—eight years older than my father. But that’s who I sleep with, every night. And each day, sickness takes something else away from him.” Her eyes blaze with the anger of a woman on the edge of despair. “You think I’m not in a war right now? You ain’t payin’ attention.”

When I draw back from the intensity of her bitterness, Doris shocks me with a laugh, full-throated and filled with pleasure. “You know what I’d like more than anything right now?”

“To go home to Jefferson County?”

“Nope. To get in your car and drive to some club where they don’t care what color we are and dance all night. Dance till the sun comes up.”

“Are you serious?”

Her eyes are glowing, but the weight of her sadness is still plain in the slope of her shoulders. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve danced like that?”

“A great dancer I’m not, Doris.”

“Oh, baby. You’ve still got both your legs, and you ain’t a bad-lookin’ man.”

Her words make me feel like Quentin could be listening from the third-floor window.

“Quentin’s sound asleep,” she says, reading my mind. “Today wore him out. But he doesn’t have to eavesdrop to know my mind. Quentin can read thoughts, Penn. Don’t think he can’t.”

“You really believe that?”

All humor leaves her face. “You watch him with that jury. With hostile witnesses.”

“Are you really that confident? A lot of people believe Quentin’s losing it. My mother, for one. Several attorneys, as well. They say he’s not the man he used to be.”

Doris reaches out and pokes my stomach with her finger. “Are you the man you used to be? Could you please me the way you could have twenty years ago?”

“I’m not talking about the body.”