I didn't tell her about this because she'd want to help and I don't. He stopped. She's done enough getting herself somewhere. I don't need to put my problems in her path.

Ria looked at him. at the side of his face. The permanent faint displeasure that she had learned was not displeasure at all, but simply the face of a man who felt things deeply and had decided long ago that depth required armor. "Rex," she said. She's studying housing cases.

"You just spent 3 weeks in the middle of one," she paused. "She might want to know." He looked at his bench for a long moment. "Maybe," he said. It was the most yielding thing she'd heard him say.

The sun came up at 6:42 and it came up the way October suns came up in that part of the country without drama, without warmth, just the slow increase of light that turned the tree line from black to gray to the particular amber of bare branches in mourning. She stood in the bay door and watched it arrive and drank the fresh coffee Decker had made when he came back inside at 6:15, smelling of cold air and cigarette smoke. She hadn't known he smoked, had never seen him do it, understood that it was what he did when he had processed things to their edge, and needed to stand outside himself for a moment. Eleanor appeared at the back room door at 7.

She had her cardigan on, and her hair arranged, and her expression was the one she wore when she had been awake for a long time, and was not going to discuss it. She looked at the shop, at Crane still upright on the cot, at Moss with his documentation, at Puit asleep in the chair, at Rex at his bench, at Decker with his fresh coffee, at Silas on his stool, and she took all of it in with the slow, comprehensive attention of a woman who had outlived a great deal and knew how to read a room that had survived something. Then she looked at Ria. The tree, she said, damaged, Ria said.

Lower third, the core is standing. It'll come back. Eleanor nodded once. Your grandfather planted that tree the June before your mother was born.

She said he planted it because he said every house needed something living that wasn't inside it. She was quiet for a moment. He was right about most things. I know, Ria said.

Eleanor looked around the shop again. Is it over? She said. Ria looked at Silas.

Silas was looking at his coffee. The immediate part, she said. The rest takes longer. Courts, filings, the federal case, months.

But the immediate part is, yes, it's over. Eleanor looked at Puit asleep in the chair. She looked at him for a moment with an expression that was complex and unreadable in the way of someone processing a moral position that had too many competing pieces to resolve into something simple. Then she went to the small camp stove Decker had set up in the corner and began without asking anyone making more coffee.

Nobody said anything about this. Silas looked up from his coffee, looked at Eleanor at the camp stove, and something moved across his face that was not an expression she had a category for, something very old and very private. He looked back down at his cup. Crane woke at 7:15 with the complete and immediate alertness of someone whose nervous system had never fully agreed to sleep deeply.

He looked at the room, assessed its current state, and said, "Coffee being made," Decker said. Crane nodded and stood and rolled his neck and went outside without putting a jacket on, which Ria had come to understand was how Crane communicated that he was fine and didn't need anyone to check. Puit woke at 7:40. He sat in his chair for a moment looking at the room coming back to himself in pieces.

Then he looked at Silas. Silas looked back at him. "May," Puit said. "I called her again this morning."

"At 5:00?" Silas asked.

"She was already awake." Puit paused.

She said she'd been awake since I called her last night. Puit nodded. "She wants me to tell you." Silas stopped. He looked at the bench.

He looked at his hands. She said to tell you that she's not interested in what the lawyers work out. She said that separately. Whatever it is, she wants you to go see the Harmons.

He paused. She knows where they are. She looked them up herself. He stopped again.

She said if you don't go, she'll know what that means. And if you do, she'll know what that means, too. Puit was quiet for a long time. All right, he said.

That was all. He stood up slowly, the way people stood up after the kind of sleep that hadn't really rested them. He looked at Ria. For what it's worth, he said, for whatever it's worth, he stopped.

I'm sorry it took what it took. She looked at him at his face, which was the face of a man at the start of a very long road rather than the end of one. It took what it took, she said. Go see the Harmons.

He picked up his jacket from the bench. He went out. At 8:30, Burch called. The AG desk had formally opened the case at 8:00.