I order Scotch, Kelly the same. Our reflections watch us from the mirror behind the bar like solemn relatives visiting from a cold northern country. When the whisky comes, I swallow a shot big enough to steal my breath, then wipe my mouth on my jacket sleeve. Kelly sips with a deep centeredness, like a man who has known life without luxuries and wants to savor them while he can. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t look at me. He stares through the bottom of his glass, as though pondering the grain of the wood beneath. Yet I am certain that every movement in the restaurant—even on the street outside—registers on his mental radar. Kelly is covering me even now.

“Kelly?”

“Mm?”

“Did you have a maid when you grew up?”

His head bobs once. Then I hear soft laughter, an ironic chuckle.

“Did you?”

“My mother was a maid.”

He glances at me from the corner of his eye, then looks back into his glass. Embarrassment is not exactly what I feel. It’s more like mortification. I’m trying to think of how to apologize when he says, “Nothing wrong with being a maid. It’s honest work. Like soldiering.”

I want to hug him for that.

“How long did Ruby work for your family?”

“Thirty-five years. She came when I was three.”

“That’s a long time.”

“And she burned to death. Because of what I’m doing, she burned to death.”

Kelly rotates his stool and puts his foot on a crosspiece of mine. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you doing what you’re doing?”

“The truth? I don’t know. In the beginning I wanted to nail a guy who hurt my father a long time ago. And me.” I take another shot of Scotch, and this one brings sweat to my skin. “That’s a bad reason, I guess.”

“Not so bad.”

“It’s not worth Ruby’s life.”

“No. But that’s not the only reason you’re doing it. You’re trying to set a murder right. And from what I can tell, it needs setting right. I’ve watched you these last few days. You’re a crusader. I knew some in the service, and you’re one of them. I’ve got a feeling you saw some horrible atrocity when you were young. A race murder or something. Something that’s weighed you down a long time.”

“No. I never saw anything like that. Not much of that happened around here, to tell you the truth.”