The threat hung between them while Arthur picked up his clipboard and walked toward the yard office without another word.

Nathaniel didn’t go after him, but he wrote down the serial numbers from Arthur’s framing delivery tags on the back of a yellow timber receipt before heading out to his truck.

By two o’clock that afternoon, Nathaniel pulled his work truck into the back gravel lot behind the Route 30 Diner.

Martha Miller was bent deep over the open engine bay of her blue sedan, a rusted filter wrench in her bare hand and ice crunching under her boots.

Inside Nathaniel’s idling truck, Daisy sat on the passenger bench seat, kicking her heels softly against the metal seat frame and turning the little wooden toy crane in her fingers.