“They’re going to meet at Wolf Cliff Falls tomorrow at eleven,” he said, as we pulled into the motel parking lot. He got out and I slid behind the wheel. After closing the door, he leaned in the window.

“Brennon is going to look over the area where he wants the dam. Phillips and Kowalsky will be there too, so I’ll have a chance to talk with all of them more in-depth. Maybe you can get some good photos as well.”

“I probably can,” I said.

“Kowalsky said I could ride out with them, but I said you’d know how to get there.”

“I’ll come by at nine,” I said.

“Good. I’ll be waiting in the lobby.”

Allen stepped away but I spoke anyway.

“Sounds like Kowalsky is going out of his way to make your job easy.”

“So far at least.”

“Is he a fan of your work?”

“Not that I know of. He said Hudson contacted him, told him I’d be covering the story.” Allen paused. “Hudson told him I’d be more understanding than other reporters because of what had happened to my wife and daughter.”

He turned away before I could respond. Glancing back, he raised his hand, then walked toward his room.

I pulled out of the lot, drove past Billy’s store, and took a right onto Damascus Church Road. The few houses I passed, including Aunt Margaret’s, were dark. The road curved a last time and I turned right at the battered mailbox with GLENN hand-painted on its side. Gravel crunched and spun under the wheels as I drove up to the house. No porch light lit the steps, and the moon was waning. But the stars were out, so much brighter than in Columbia. They looked closer up here as well, as though each one had been picked up and polished, then set nearer to the earth.

I knocked and no light came on, so I knocked harder, hard enough that my knuckles stung. Finally the front bedroom light came on. I heard movement toward the door, then the sound of a latch unfastening.

Daddy stepped back to let me come in. He wore a green pair of pajamas that probably hadn’t been washed in weeks. His eyes were dulled and unfocused. They registered no surprise, though I hadn’t told him I was coming.

“How long you been knocking?”

I set the suitcase beside the fireplace. “A little while.”

“That medicine the doctors gave me puts me under pretty good. If I’d been in the back bedroom I’d yet be sleeping.”

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, the way a drowsy child might.

“You go on back to bed,” I said. “I know where everything is.”

“I can make us some coffee,” he said. “That’ll wake me up.”

“There’s no need to do that. Soon as I unpack I’m going to bed myself.”