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place on earth. Everything is better. I like getting up in the morning. I like the hunting and collecting and fixing. I love going to bed at night. Before, those were just things I did. Since you've been here, my bones work better than before, and....” She almost looked embarrassed. “I confess I have asked about you. It wasn't polite to intrude on your privacy, but I did ask if you loved me.” She nuzzled him. “I'm just afraid if you know too much about me you'd not trust me, or be afraid of me.”
    “We've both done things it'd be best the other didn't know. Everyone's like that. And I have no interest in leaving. If did, I'd tell you.”
    “You'd be a nice guy, like your mother taught you.”
    “I try.”
    “I wish I could thank her.”
    ....
    On the counter were five apples, a grapefruit, and two bottles of wine, lined up like trophies.
    Natalie passed by Jack and let her fingers drag across his shoulder. Today, typically, she was in a white shirt and jeans. She went out to her utility room where he heard her moving things around, getting ready to go meet a traveler. Jack sat reading one of twenty-year-old magazines she had. He knew she would return, sit by him—
    She sat and positioned the leather disk on her lap.
    “I can't believe the luck we've been having. The pantry's nearly full. And today....” She let the finger bones fall from her hands onto the intricate patterns on the disk.
    “The weather's changing,” Jack said. “They're desperate. I remember what that was like. I saw a guy trade his coat for a hot meal. That evening he froze to death.” By now he was accustomed to her finger bone readings. He didn't have a guess how it worked, but he was convinced that it did.
    Natalie studied the bones.
    “The traps will be empty today. But two travelers are coming in about half an hour — with a bag of sugar, two sweet potatoes, and a few other things he might be willing to part with. Luckily we still have those two rabbits from last week. I'll gut one out for him. And my bones tell me I should be very good to you, which I plan to do.”
    “I worry about you, out there by yourself, dealing with those people. Hewitt wasn't the only psychopath on the road.”
    She patted his hand, stood up, then leaned down and gave him biting kisses on the neck. She whispered, “They wouldn't have a chance.” She pulled back from him enough that out of her black hair, her face suddenly appeared. “I'm not one you have to worry about.” Then, “I saw you working on the south end of roof. You don't need to do that.”
    “I have a lot of time.”
    “I promise we'll eat well tonight.” She headed for the back door. “I have to hurry to get the rabbit cleaned out.”
    Through the wide windows, he watched her cross the desert scrub to the rabbit hutches twenty or thirty yards away. He watched her pull a struggling rabbit from its cage and strike it behind its head. The rabbit slumped like a rag in her hand.
    Jack took a pause to consider how she had struck it. She hadn't done it like he thought a woman might. It was a swift, violent, straight-down strike that Jack guessed would have dropped or debilitated a human. There was nothing tentative about it. He had seen her do this before: She would splay the carcass on her butcher board and with a thin knife slice it open as easily as if it were bread. With a dozen quick moves, she would have the guts scraped into a pile and the skin peeled off.
    Jack turned away. She did this before every meal where they ate one of them. He didn't like to think about it, but he had the idea that if he watched the killing once in a while, it would relieve the guilt of eating in ignorance of how it got to his plate. He only had to watch; the rabbit had to get butchered.
    His eyes caught on the leather disk and the finger bones spread across it. She had left it on the sofa where he had been reading when she came in. He went over and sat beside it. The finger bones looked like something