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fire had burned down but the air in the cabin was hot, at least in a layer starting at Eric’s face. The floor remained frosty. He slipped to the stove without her assent and felt how wet he was, and likely how close to hypothermia. He couldn’t think straight. If he’d been thinking straight he wouldn’t be back down here. He pulled the rain boots off and poured puddles from them to show her how bad it really was. “It’s getting
colder,
” he said. “They said it would get colder and the roads would freeze and they have. And anyway I was scared for you. They’re saying
four feet.
Apparently it really is the storm of the century. I was worried about your safety. I mean, I was truly worried about you.”
    She tapped the knife on the block. “Worried about me. Scared for you. Two stories equals a
lie.
That’s what Jimmy says.”
    He pressed close to the stove, felt the heat on the fronts of his legs, the cold at the back. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry. Relax, please chill. This is not better for me than for you.”
    “Chill? You chill, you liar.” She turned the knife, held it weapon style,
Psycho
style, took a menacing step toward him.
    He felt that grin rising in his cheeks, couldn’t stop it.
    “
You’ll
smile,” she said. “How does your car get towed in Woodchurch, Maine? Tell me that, mister. No one ever gets towed in Woodchurch.”
    Very softly: “You win a case against the veterinarian, I guess.”
    She wielded that knife, stalking closer. “You sued her? You sued the fucking nice old vet?”
    Even softer: “A client sued her. She killed his dog.”
    She feinted at him with the knife. “You’re a fucking lawyer?”
    He shrugged, grinned harder, backed away from the stove. “Easy,” he said.
    She said, “You’re not old enough to be a fucking lawyer.”
    He couldn’t stop the grinning. Same thing in court when he wasn’t sure of his case. “I’m old enough to be anything,” he said calmly. “But, yes, a fucking lawyer. Okay? As small town as they get.”
    Keeping her eye on him, knife still poised, she reached awkwardly across herself and pulled the long iron poker from its hook behind the stove, came at him as he shuffled backward, back into the cold, back toward the door, her weapons really more comic than menacing.
    He composed his face. “I’m just a nice person who helps others for small pay or even for free, or even gives away money, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. And I’ve got no way to leave.”
    She pushed the tip of the ancient poker against his chest, rested it there, too heavy to loft for long. She said, “Why don’t you call your wife?”
    “She’s not available. We’re separated. It’s bad. And it’s very bad out there in the storm. I was frightened. And my phone, it’s in the car.”
    Glimmer of compassion on Danielle’s face, knife still poised.
    Eric turned the ring on his finger, gazed at it, a poor thin thing from antimaterialist Alison, twenty-one dollars at Kay Jewelers. Danielle had seen it, good or bad. He’d never removed it for any reason, never since Alison had stuck it on his finger in her parents’ church. More sadly than he wanted, he tugged it off, stuffed it in his pants pocket. He said, “An artifact, I guess.”
    “Okay, so now it’s archeology.”
    “And even if she were home where she belongs, I’m not sure the roads are passable in any case. There’s not a car in sight. Nothing’s been plowed, nothing at all. Record rate of accumulation, they said. Please put the knife down.”
    Instead she feinted with it again, prodded him hard in the chest with the poker, once again indignant. “Who said? The pixies? The roads are passable, all right. Of course they’re passable. People have big four-by-four trucks around here. Nothing stops them. Don’t you have any friends? Aren’t the plow guys driving around? The tow-truck guys? The ones who towed your car, for example? But you come down here? You hide the ring and think it’s gone?