White oak was slow-burning wood, and the logs Aunt Marian had lit were fairly large, so Hook knew he would have fire for hours yet, not that he needed it for warmth—the gas furnace in the basement furnished that without mess or effort on his part—but he liked having something to watch, especially if Jennifer were to sleep for hours. Aunt Marian came back in after a while and quietly told him that Bobby was in bed and that he should go now too.

“When she wakes,” Hook said. “Let her sleep now.”

Aunt Marian placed an afghan over her and then patted Hook on the shoulder and left, heading for her and Arnie’s bedroom on the second floor of the old part of the house, where the temperature in winter rarely rose above sixty degrees, one of the reasons Arnie was such an accomplished sleeper, Hook judged. After a time, he had to shift his legs slightly, for comfort, but Jennifer did not stir. He was amazed at the womanliness of her body, an amazement that had begun two years before, when she had first started to develop. Now there was no little girl left physically, just this child-woman breathing shallowly against his chest while her tawny hair, smelling faintly of shampoo, tickled at his face. She was the only one of his children born after he had taken over the farm, so it was the only home she had ever known. In the beginning, though, she had fancied it more an empire than a home, with herself as undisputed empress. Hook remembered her at a year old, plump and cute, with the short wispy white hair of an old man and an air of absolute authority. She was walking by then, but she preferred to be carried, especially on Hook’s shoulders, and her technique for bringing this about was simply to raise her arms and inform him what his orders were: “Carrurdaddy!” some of the time, and “Wouldjaholdja?” at others, though still without the slightest intonation of a plea. Hook and Kate had never worried much about this early arrogance, for it was more than counterbalanced by her brothers’ capacity for meting out to her a justice of great clarity and swiftness, though in time all three of them got along with a reasonable degree of amity, probably because their mother watched over their egos as some women did their own laugh lines. Every now and then she would tell Hook that one of the children was “down” about something and that it would be a good idea if he treated that one with a little extra consideration for a few days. Hook sometimes worried that this attitude, and practice, might leave the children unprepared for the rocky, unsmoothed life outside the family, especially at school, but the only evidence was that it had made them happier and stronger and better able to cope, probably because there had never been anything oppressive or cloying in Kate’s solicitude.

But he did not want to think about her now. Nor Chris. His spirit begged for rest. And there were other practical matters requiring his attention. The farm would not run itself in his absence. He had to anticipate problems.