Chapter 1

The rag made a sound like a long breath being let out.

Dane Kettering wiped the whiteboard corner to corner, top to bottom, and then along the bottom edge where the aluminum frame met the wall - slow, the way a man reads a page he can't find.

Junie Marsh stood in the doorway with her hands in her jacket pockets and watched him do it. The hallway had been warmer than the lane, so she'd come in. That was all. The door to the east wing stood open the way it always stood open, and nobody had ever told her not to.

Six o'clock. The hall clock said so, and the barn lights came on across the yard at the same moment, row by row, like somebody walking a fence with a lantern.

"Nothing today either, Uncle Amos," Dane said.

The old man in the chair didn't answer. He hadn't answered anybody since the stroke, nine years back, and by now the whole house had agreed on that version of events. He sat with his bad right hand on the arm of the chair and his good left hand in his lap, and he looked at the board.

Junie had been in this room three times before. She'd said hello every time. She'd gotten nothing.

"Why do you wipe it?" she asked.

Dane turned, and his face did the thing it did, the wide easy thing, the face the county called good. "Habit. Boards get sticky. Dust cakes on them."

"Nobody writes on it."

"That's right." He folded the rag and set it on the tray beside the pill cups. "Nobody does."

Then he did the small thing. He ran his thumb along the bottom edge of the frame - quick, twice, the way you check a door to see if it's locked - and he didn't look at it while he did it. He looked at her.

Junie noticed, because she was nine and nobody ever watched her, so she had a lot of time to watch other people.

What she didn't notice, not yet, was the man in the chair. His eyes had come off the board. They had gone to the frame where Dane's thumb had been, and then they had gone to her, and they stayed there.

Nine years of looking at a wall, and now he was looking at a person.

"Goodnight, Mr. Kettering," Junie said.

He didn't answer. But his left hand closed on the arm of the chair, once, hard enough that the leather creaked.