Emma's cousin opened the door six inches and didn't unhook the chain. The porch light was off, and the desert wind pushed grit against Emma's ankles. Her cousin said the spare room wasn't going to work after all. She said her boyfriend didn't want a stranger sleeping down the hall, and she was sorry, she really was. Emma had driven two states to reach this door. She had left her dog with a woman who couldn't keep a promise about a bedroom. Emma didn't beg. She had spent two years being small and quiet and agreeable to keep a man calm, and the muscle for that was gone. She said okay and walked back to her car. She sat in the driver's seat with her hands on the wheel and did the math. Motel money would last four nights. After that she was sleeping in the back seat somewhere off the highway, alone, in a town she'd picked off a map because it sounded far. Tombstone at midnight. She'd met one person here worth remembering, a blond woman named Jenna who'd sat next to her at the counter of a diner that afternoon and asked where she was from without making it feel like a test. They'd traded numbers because Jenna said, plainly, that Emma looked like she needed one. Emma had laughed and put the number in her phone and not planned to use it. She used it. Jenna picked up on the second ring. Emma said the cousin thing fell through and she didn't know what she was doing. There was a pause on the line, then Jenna said, "Come here. We've got a place out back. You can stay as long as you need." Emma said she couldn't take a room off someone she'd known six hours. Jenna said, "I had a feeling about you at the counter. I'm not going to explain it. Just come." She gave the address and hung up before Emma could argue. The property sat at the end of a dirt road under a sky full of stars. Behind the main house stood a small stone building with a shaded porch and a lamp burning over the door. Jenna met Emma on the path with a key in her hand. A tall man stood on the porch of the main house with his arms crossed, watching. Jenna said, "That's my brother Grant. He looks like that at everyone." Grant didn't move. His eyes tracked Emma from the car to the guest house door, and something in his face changed once, quick, then closed again. Jenna pressed the key into Emma's palm. "Sleep. We'll figure the rest tomorrow." Emma stepped inside and shut the door, and for the first night in a year she locked it from her side.

Emma spent the morning at the guest house window, watching the main house across the yard. Grant stood by the stone fountain in the garden, coffee in hand, eyes on her door. He didn't wave. He didn't leave. He just stood there until the sun climbed and burned him back inside. Emma couldn't tell if he wanted her gone or was making sure she stayed. She didn't know how to ask. So when Jenna knocked at six and said, "Dinner. Come eat with us," Emma said yes before she could talk herself out of it. She walked over at seven. Jenna had set three plates and poured wine. Grant wasn't there. Jenna checked her phone, frowned, then set it face down. "He's late. He's never late." They sat. They ate bread. Jenna's phone buzzed. She read it and stood up fast. "I forgot something. A thing I said I'd do tonight. I have to go." Emma started to rise. Jenna waved her down. "Stay. Eat. He'll be here." She was out the door before Emma could argue, keys already in her hand. Grant came in ten minutes later. He stopped when he saw only Emma at the table. He looked at the empty chair, then at her, then sat down without a word. He ate. She ate. The clock on the wall ticked. Emma reached for the salt at the same second he did. Their fingers touched over the shaker. Grant went still. Something moved across his face, quick and hard, the way it had on the porch that first night. He stood up, walked around the table, took her jaw in his hand, and kissed her once. It was not a soft kiss. It was a man who had found something and could not put it down. Emma froze. Then she pulled back, chair scraping, and stared at him. "I don't—" She didn't finish. She grabbed her sweater off the back of the chair and walked out. Halfway across the yard she started running. She locked the guest house door and stood with her back against it, breathing hard, one hand pressed flat to her mouth. Grant sat alone at the table with the salt between them. He didn't chase her. He put both hands flat on the wood and stared at the door she'd gone through. After a long minute he stood, walked out to the fountain in the dark, and stayed there. Emma watched him from her window with the lamp off. She didn't know what had just happened to her. She only knew her hands were shaking, and she was not going to open the door again tonight. Whatever the man across the yard wanted, she hadn't come here for it. She had come here to be left alone.