I dried my hands and opened the door wider. “Then you’d better come in out of the cold,” I said. Darlene stepped inside, set both pies on the counter, and walked straight past me into the dining room. She stopped in front of the oak table and laid her gloved hand flat on its surface, the way you’d touch a sleeping horse.

Melanie started to apologize, but Darlene held up one finger. Then she turned the nearest chair upside down, the one Lloyd had been sitting in, and pointed to the bottom of the seat. Down in the corner, beneath Glen’s pencil notes, were two crooked letters someone had carved with a pocketknife long before Glen ever owned it. D.H. Darlene’s voice cracked. “My maiden name was Darlene Hagberg,” she said. “My father made this table.”