He thought he was stopping for a stray dog in the snow-until he saw what she was hiding beneath her body

the window, though the road was hidden by dark and trees.

“Has anyone reported him?”

Ruth gave him the tired look of a woman who had lived too long in a county where people knew how to stay out of trouble by pretending not to see it. “People have talked. Talking isn’t the same thing.”

No, Cal thought. It never was.