Eugene felt feverish and cast his gaze aside. "I wouldn't say I'm scared, exactly."

"No? I never was, either. But you should be." She smiled at his obvious discomfort. “You weaseled out all our secrets yet, with that sharp little brain of yours?”

“Some.”

She laughed. The sound was incongruously bright, and Eugene startled at it. The farmhouse was such a dim, hushed place he had forgotten what it sounded like to be alive.

“Some,” she repeated, and rose from the table to pull a bottle of gin from one of the cabinets. “Do you drink, Mr. Rêveur?”

He didn’t. He was ill so often that he rarely drank more than a drop of whiskey in his tea, and only then to help with a sore throat. “I might as well.”

She fetched two glasses and set one down with a solid clunk before him. The liquor splashed into it clear and hard as she poured. By the sink, the sounds of washing up stopped and Walker returned.

“Thought I’d step out back and have a drink with Todd,” he said. “You all right here?”

“Just having a drink of our own.” Monnet raised her glass as if in a toast.

“Nancy’s going up to bed,” Walker said. “You two keep out of trouble.”

“Will do.”

Eugene said nothing, just looked into the crystalline depths of his glass. The gin looked like water. He swirled it absently as Walker headed to the porch and Monnet drew a cigarette from the little metal case tucked in the top of her stocking. She lit it with a snap of her lighter, the spark gleaming bright for a second before flickering away. Eugene didn’t speak until the house fell quiet again: no sounds from upstairs, none from the porch. He imagined the sun sinking lower below the horizon and the sky staying exactly the same color it had been all day. The yard was always dark, as dark as it was indoors. What time was it really? He ran his finger along the rim of his glass.

“Go on,” Monnet prompted. “Ask me, then.”

“They say your husband’s death was a murder.”

She took a long drag from her cigarette before blowing the smoke up and away. Black and white in the shadows, she looked like a movie star, weaving an illusion of impossible glamor. “Billy was one of those great boorish brutes always stinking of booze. You know the type. I never should've married him.”

“Why did you?”

She shrugged one elegant shoulder and crossed her legs. “I used to run wild with all the boys. My poor mother despaired of my ever settling down. Eventually she got it through my head that I really ought to before it was too late, and Billy was the one who promised to make an honest woman out of me.” She glanced away with a wry smile. “See how that turned out.”

“You couldn’t have known about him,” Eugene offered.

She snorted. “I knew enough. I thought I could change him for the better. I thought we were in love. Maybe we were for a month or two, but it faded fast, and by then the papers were signed before God and everybody. After that it was just booze and never enough money.” She tapped her cig over the table’s ashtray. “He got drunk, and then he got mean. The neighbors felt bad for me, you know. There’s nothing like looking somebody in the eye and seeing their pity.” She took another drag, her mouth hard. “I can’t stand it. Never could.”