“You going to let Brad scare you off your own hill?”

“No,” I said.

“I’m not.”

I reached into my purse and put a twenty-dollar bill on the table to cover lunch.

“Chin up, Amy,” Gordon said, watching me slide out of the booth.

I drove out of town and back toward Elk Mound, watching the gray clouds thicken above the dry cornfields along Highway 12.

By five o’clock the daylight was nearly gone, and the sky had turned the color of cold slate.

The temperature had fallen into the twenties, and crisp white frost was creeping along the gravel edges of the drive.