“Maybe,” Nate said. He was afraid his father might want to start talking about the facts of life or body changes.

“I should give you a few pointers, for when the time comes. There’s a right way and a wrong way of shaving.”

“I figure you’ll show me when I’m ready,” Nate said. “It would probably make more sense then.”

“Still,” his dad said to him, “I might be gone when you get around to it. Off on a trip or something. You know how it goes.”

Nate didn’t know how it went, actually. His father hardly ever went anyplace, and when he did, Nate went along.

“Anyway,” Nate said, “there’s not all that much to it, right?”

“Ah,” said his father. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

He took a comb out of his pocket then. He held it up to his face, sideways, flat against his cheek, and dragged it across the skin very slowly, as if it were a razor. “Always down, not up,” he said. “You need to go with the growth of your beard. Don’t fight your own skin.

“There’s certain times in a man’s life,” he told Nate, “that it’s important to have a good clean shave.”

“When?”

“When you’re going out on the town with a woman you really like and you hope to be kissing her,” he said. “That’s one. I remember when I first met your mother, back when I got the job at Poppa’s. I shaved every morning—and evenings, too—just in case the opportunity might come up.”

Nate hadn’t kissed anybody. It was one of the things that worried him, actually.

“And what’s another one?” he asked. “Another situation where you need a shave?”

“When you’re going away someplace, and maybe people won’t be seeing you for a long time. And you want to leave them with a good impression. You want them to remember you in the best light.”

“So why did you shave this morning, Dad?” Nate asked him. “You aren’t going away anyplace.”

His father just looked at him and ruffled his hair. Then he got up off his milking stool and walked out the barn door. It was the last time Nate saw him, except for that afternoon, when the bloodhounds brought him in.

From where he stood in the hallway now, Nate heard the clatter of dishes. Officer Scruggs setting his coffee cup in its saucer, probably. Nate imagined him reaching for a chocolate or studying his fingernails, the way he always seemed to be doing.

“Your husband was a difficult man to live with, from what I hear,” he said. “It wouldn’t be all that surprising if you just got fed up with those moods of his. Especially recently, after he’d lost all that money and thrown the family into debt. Terrible pressure with two kids to think about.”