“John does start early. He’s usually gone before I’m even up. He’s done with the entire route by eleven, and he stays until four.” Howard grabbed another crepe, popping it into his mouth. “He hasn’t turned in a time card yet—it’s due this week—but when he does, I gotta see what hours he puts down. He’s not supposed to be working more than eight. I think it’s more like ten or eleven, though.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little weird?” Doug asked. “I mean, delivering the mail so early?”

Trish shot him another withering glance over the postmaster’s head as she sat down next to him.

“Yeah, John might be a tad strange. But he’s a good worker. He does his job well and gets things done. And he’s always eager to do more. That’s not something you see a lot of these days. I couldn’t ask for a better carrier.”

Doug nodded silently. Howard’s words were full of praise, but there was an undercurrent of something else in his tone of voice. It was as if he were repeating words he had read and practiced, as if he were saying what he was supposed to say rather than what he actually felt. For the first time since he’d known the postmaster, Doug thought that he was being out-and-out hypocritical, and that was something he never would have thought he’d feel about Howard Crowell. His eyes met Tritia’s across the table, and he knew that she’d caught it too.

But Tritia refused to continue this line of conversation, and she deftly changed the topic to something less personal and more neutral, and Doug followed her lead.

Dinner was excellent, and they ate it slowly. Billy had come down, taken what he’d wanted, and then retreated upstairs to his hideaway. The rest of them ate at the table, enjoying the food at a leisurely pace: Cobb salad, followed by rare roast in wine sauce, served with baked potatoes stuffed with sour cream and chives. To go along with the meal, Tritia had baked some of her homemade bread, which was thick and warm and soft and disappeared almost immediately.

Howard smiled blissfully. “I can’t remember when I’ve had a meal this good.”

“Neither can I,” Doug said.

“Enjoy it while you can,” Tritia told him. “This is our red-meat quota for the month.”

“She’s very big on eating right,” Doug explained. “This is a very health-conscious family.”

“You need all the help you can get. If you exercised a little more, we could afford to be more lenient. But you live a completely sedentary life. It’s the least I can do to see that you eat properly.”

Howard chuckled.