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teens. Local women, even the beautiful ones, usually developed a veneer of hardness by the age of thirty or so, a cynicism that brittled their femininity. But Charlotte’s beauty was still soft and womanly, and her eyes were the evidence of this. The eyes of someone who could still be startled, impressed, have her breath stolen by a sudden flash of beauty. And the delicacy of her hands. When the sunlight fell on them, the fine golden hairs at her wrist . . .
    He pulled away from the thought. Closed the shed door and strode purposefully toward the barn. A glance into the burn barrel along the way. It was a third full of ashes, just like his own, just like everybody else’s. Keep your eyes open , he told himself. Focus .
    The barn door swung open easily, so well balanced that the considerable weight of the left-hand panel, eight feet wide and twelve high, felt negligible in his hand. A metal stake stopped its swing not quite parallel to the exterior wall. Not far from the stake lay a cement block, which he slid in front of the door to hold it open.
    He paused on the threshold. A flutter of wings in the rafters. The warm scent of hay, a thick scent of dust and enclosure, a cavernous space. Thin shafts of light thick with dancing motes, tiny planets rising and falling in brief, unpredictable orbits.
    A few farming implements hung from hooks along the front wall, probably left over from Old Bert’s days. The plank floor was empty all the way back to the loft, though scarred and scored with the movements of eighty-odd years, dotted with a few splatters of pigeon droppings. Gatesman leaned down close to the floor, turned his head this way and that in search of footprints but saw none, only a few stray straws of hay here and there. He knew from previous conversations with Mike Verner that Mike sometimes had to make work for Dylan, find simple tasks, like sweeping out a barn, to keep the boy busy. Mike was known throughout the county for the tidiness of his farm, the impeccable state in which he maintained all of his equipment, a fastidiousness Mike was always quick to blame on Claudia, his wife. “She makes me wash up and brush my teeth before I’m allowed to open the refrigerator,” he liked to joke.
    Gatesman brought himself back to the matter at hand. No dusty footprints crossing the floor. So much for the theory that Jesse fell down the feed shoot into the stalls, he told himself. It had happened to Gatesman when he was a boy, ten years old and playing barn basketball with a couple of friends, running around heedlessly. Straight down through the feed shoot he had dropped, whacking his head on the edge. He had lain unconscious on the mucked-up floor until awakened by his friend’s mother flicking water in his face.
    But not here, not Jesse. Even so, Gatesman told himself, you’re here so just keep looking, don’t be sloppy about it.
    He crossed to the ladder and hauled himself up into the loft. Warm currents of air rose off the hay. The dust made his eyes itch. He gazed from wall to wall across the stacked rows of rectangular bales. Nearest the loft window, bales were missing from three of the rows, those bales nearest the window and easiest for Dylan to reach the last time he had tossed bales down to Mike’s wagon. But there was no sign that Jesse had climbed into the loft, no sign that he had built himself a little cave of hay to keep himself warm through the night.
    Anyway, you had to look, Gatesman thought. There had been the Rose boy, what, maybe ten or eleven years ago come summer? Built himself a little cubbyhole in the loft while his daddy and two brothers were stacking hay in the barn, then climbed in, dragged a bale close to seal himself inside, and fell asleep. His daddy and brothers went off to eat lunch.
    â€œWhere’s Ronnie?” Mrs. Rose had asked.
    The oldest boy said, “Last I seen him he was pestering me about taking him to a movie. I told him to shut up and get