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Remind him that I'll be back later. I'll be back."

"All right."

Nodding, she pressed for the elevator, hitched her bag on her shoulder. "I appreciate... I really appreciate you coming. You barely know him. Hell, you barely know me."

"Cilla-"

"But you came." She stepped into the elevator, turned, met her father'seyes. "You came. It means a lot," she said as the doors closed between them.

WORK. WORK GOT HER THROUGH the day.And the next day. She was better at work, she thought, than at sentiment, at expressing emotions- unless they were scripted. She made her schedule, and stuck to it. So many hours on the house, on the landscaping, so many at the hospital, so many in the barn.

That left her so many hours to fall on her air mattress and clock out.

So far, she thought, so good.

Except Steve's mother had jumped down off her broomstick and thrown the schedule into the Dumpster. So, more time for work, Cilla told herself. More time to get things done.

She picked up a pole lamp, scowled at the six funnel-shaped shades running down the spotted brass rod. "What were they smoking when they bought this?"

On impulse, she took a few running steps and launched it at the open barn doors like a javelin. Then yipped when Ford stepped into view. He jumped back so the lamp whizzed by his face with a few layers of dust to spare.

"Jesus Christ!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't see you."

"Shouldn't you yell 'fore,' or something?" he demanded. "How the hell would I have explained that one? Yes, Doctor, I've been impaled through the brain by perhaps the ugliest pole lamp in the history of pole lamps."

"I don't think it would've impaled. More dented. Anyway, it offended my eye."

"Yeah, mine too. Almost literally. What are you doing back here? It's early for you," he added when she frowned at him. "I saw your car. I thought maybe..."

"No. Nothing new. Except Steve's mother's there."

"Yeah. I ran into her this morning for a minute." He dipped his hands into his pockets, hunched a little. "She's scary."

"She hates me. For marrying Steve, for divorcing him. She doesn't actually like Steve all that much, but me? She hates. So I cleared the field. Deserted, actually. I don't do well with mothers."

"You do okay with your stepmom. She sent over that nice casserole last night."

"Tuna noodle. I'm not sure that's a sign of affection."

"It is, take my word." He stepped through and around some of the mess to get to her, to touch her cheek. "You're working too hard, beautiful blond girl."

"I'm not." She pulled away, kicked at one of the boxes. "The cops want me to go through this stuff, to see if anything's missing."

"Yeah. I think I've been bumped down the suspect list, which is oddly disappointing. Tall White Guy asked me to sign a copy of The Seeker: Indestructible for his grandson."

"Tall... oh, Urick. I told them it wasn't about you or Steve or me. But what the hell is here? What's here somebody would want so damn bad? It's junk. It's trash. It should be tossed, all of it. I'm tossing it," she decided in an instant. "Help me toss it."

He grabbed her, pulled her back up as she started to drag up a box. "No. You don't toss when you're churned up. And you know that what someone might have wanted isn't here. Because you already found it and put it somewhere else."

"The letters."

"That's right. Did you tell the cops about the letters?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, exactly. Partly because all I could really think about at first was Steve. And what would they do with the letters? Thirty-five-year-old letters, unsigned, no return address."

"Fingerprints, DNA. Don't you watch CSI?"

"Fact, fantasy. And it'll leak. It always leaks, that is a fact. Letters from a lover, days before her death. Was it suicide? Was it murder? Was she carrying a love child? All the speculation, the print, the airtime, the reporters, the obsessed fans, it all pumps up. Any chance I had here, at peace, at a life, pretty much goes up in flames."

"Why?"

"I don't want to live like that, in the crosshairs of the camera lens. I want this to be my home." She heard the edge of desperation in her own voice but couldn't dull it. "I wanted to bring something back from her, and for her. But I wanted it to be mine at the end of the day."

"You don't want to know who wrote those letters?"

"Yes, I do. I do.