In the kitchen with the sun barely up an hour, Catherine didn’t look as if she’d been crying all night. She looked bright and happy. A T-shirt with an eagle and an American flag peeked out from under her apron. She served me as if I was a king, but I didn’t feel like one. I felt like a lazy guest.

“So, Mr. Harden,” Catherine asked as she poured me a second cup of coffee. I stood by the counter rather than sit in the dining room. “What are your plans?”

I wondered if she knew what her sister was up to or if I was supposed to know that she knew. I wasn’t going anywhere without answers, and I needed answers before I got back home.

“I think I’ll be taking off this afternoon.” I hid behind my coffee cup. “Some house you have here. Harper showed me the master suite.” I put down my cup. “I couldn’t tell if the ceiling was plaster fresco.”

“It’s enamel on tin.”

The stairs creaked, announcing Harper well before she arrived.

“That saved it from water damage,” I said.

“That’s what Reggie said.”

Harper, despite not crying all night as far as I knew, looked worse than her sister. Hair askew. Eyes puffy. Dragging her feet as if she didn’t have the energy to lift them. She didn’t say a word to me as she picked up the coffee pot and poured a cup. She drank it black, cupping her hands around the mug.

“Good morning!” Catherine said. “I got eggs if you want some.”

“No, thank you.” She spoke into her cup, watching me over the edge.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” she replied flatly.

Voice drained of emotion + intense look over cup = Catherine doesn’t know what’s going on.

Catherine went into the pantry, humming.

“How’d you sleep?” Harper asked.

“Like I was awake. You?”

“Slept like a rock.”

Surprise her. Don’t let her get her footing.

“Did you enjoy it?” Sleeping was the text. Fucking was the subtext. I put it on the side of a barn where she couldn’t miss it.

“It’s just sleep.” She poured more coffee, avoiding eye contact. “Not exciting.”

“What would you rather be doing?” I put another target on the side of the barn. I was getting to her. She put sugar in her second cup. No one did that. People picked the way they took their coffee and stuck to it. What was next? A caramel macchiato? Was she flustered? Or was she trying to tell me something about how unpredictable she was?

Catherine returned with cans of beans. Harper and I looked away from each other as if we’d be caught doing something we shouldn’t.

“Can you give me a lift to Orrin’s?” I asked.

“Oh,” Catherine chimed in, “if you’re going that way, can you bring Trudy Givney something?”

“The shop opens at ten,” Harper grumbled.

“Perfect,” Catherine chirped. “I’ll get you an envelope.”

Harper’s attention lit on a stack of red-and-blue-swirled bowls on the counter.

“What are you doing with Grandma’s bowls?” Harper asked.

“Oh, Rebecca can get—”

“No!” she barked. “You’re not selling those. Put them back. Put them back right now.”

“Harper, we talked about this. They’re meaningless objects.”

“Put them back, or I’m going to break them!”

Catherine paused while Harper’s face went into a rigid adulthood that directly contrasted her threat to smash things rather than lose them. I was about to offer money for the bowls. Good money. Whatever they wanted.

“Here.” Harper put her cup down and reached under her hair to her ear. “Take these. Sell them. Give the money to whomever.” A quick tug to the other ear got the second diamond out. She handed them to her sister. “I don’t even like them anymore.”

Catherine took them without a moment’s hesitation. “Thank you. It’s Alejandro. They picked him up for shoplifting, and if he doesn’t make bail—”

“I know. They keep him in jail.”

“He’s just a boy.”

Harper nodded, and Catherine hugged her.

“I can help if you want,” I interjected without thinking. “I have money. Just not here right now.”

“We have it.” Catherine patted my arm and left the room. The stairs creaked.

Harper poured more coffee with one hand and rubbed an earlobe with the other.

“Do you think that was weird, or was it just me?” I asked.

“You should have seen when she tried to sell the silver teapot.” She handed me a cup. “She doesn’t get it about maintenance. If she’d sold everything and invested it in something, she could help Alejandro now and his brother in ten years.” She blew on the coffee. The surface flickered like a pitching ocean.

“And what you’re doing now, bringing me here, that’s maintenance?” I asked.

She sipped her coffee, thinking too hard. Maybe she was out of her league too. “I was supposed to be showing the world what was happening here. I wanted Everett Fitzgerald to see it before he came, and I know you know him. I want you to tell him about the bottle works.” She shifted her cup around in her palms. “I didn’t hack you for personal reasons.”

Bullshit. Everything was personal. Even this. Especially this.

“Whatever I do to you won’t be personal either.”

She smiled and put her cup down. “Want to tell me what you’re going to do to me? I’d like to be prepared.”

“Exactly what you did to me.”

She came to me and put her hands on my chest, drawing them flat down to my waist. “So you’re out to ruin me? I like the sound of that.”

She couldn’t mean what it sounded like. No sane human would go to such trouble to get laid, but her expression oozed desire. So she wasn’t sane, and neither was I. My mind was a seesaw with sex on one side and fear on the other. The fulcrum was curiosity. Once it was satisfied, I’d know whether to fuck or run.

I grabbed her wrists but didn’t move her hands. “Is that all you want?”

I tried to sound amenable, and maybe I fooled her into thinking I’d believe anything she said, but I listened and assumed she was lying.

“More or less. You were pretty prolific at MIT. All the girls talked about how good you were.”

“That’s flattering.”

She bit her lower lip and let it pop out slicked and wet. “I’m not as good.”

“Girls don’t have to work as hard.”

She tensed like a two-by-four holding up an archway. If I’d had a caliper to measure the rage in her face, it would have stretched open as far as Frieda Gallen’s legs.

She picked up her cup and straightened her spine. “We work twice as hard for half as much, and you know it.”

“Not to get laid.”

She spit out a laugh. Inside it was a long story she wasn’t going to tell me. “I worked pretty hard to get you here. I might as well get something out of it.”

“You can’t get some redneck to fuck you?”

She slammed her cup down, spraying sticky black coffee all over the place. If it burned her hand, she didn’t show it, and if the mess bothered her, she didn’t take a second to clean it up. Her face went from stone-solid rage to soft humor.

“I ain’t never fucked no city boy before.” Her accent was overdone to the point of comedy.

Catherine blew in like a ray of fucking sunshine. Harper took her hands off me and wiped the spill off the counter.

“Got it!” Catherine sang, handing Harper an envelope. “She’ll be at the coffee shop.”

“I can do it later.”

“Come on. I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.” I flicked her mug.

“I have to help Catherine.”

“No, you don’t,” her sister said. “Just go!”

Harper gave me a look of death before she acquiesced. “Let me brush my teeth, then we can go.”