Winter at the Door by Sarah Graves

you’re thinking,” said Missy suddenly when he’d gone inside. “That I should go somewhere, do something. Away from here.”
    Lizzie turned back to the girl. “I never said …”
    “You don’t have to.” Missy gazed flatly at her. “I know he seems … a little unfriendly. But he’s got a lot on his plate. All this—”
    She waved a hand, indicating the house, yard, and buildings, andthe men working among them. “It can be a lot of pressure. He didn’t get anything handed to him, and it’s hard, making a go of this place.”
    She took a breath. “And a woman like you who went to college and even graduate school, probably, I know what your type tends to think about someone like me, too.”
    My type?
Lizzie thought a little defensively.
    Missy went on: “But I live here, Lizzie, okay? This is my home, right here in Bearkill, and I don’t want to go anywhere,” she declared.
    From the sound of it, she’d made this speech before.
Fine, but is that because you do love it?
Lizzie wondered.
    She looked once more through the geranium-filled window at the kitchen with its arched doorway into the pretty sunroom.
    Or is it because it’s so safe, familiar, and comfortable, and you don’t know what you’d do otherwise?
    “Of course,” said Lizzie, putting her hands up placatingly. “I never meant to imply any other thing.”
    Thinking,
She’s quick on the uptake. She’d have been good to have in the office
. “Anyway, see you in town,” she finished. “And by the way, that kid of yours is really cute.”
    “Yeah,” Missy relented with a faint smile. “He is, isn’t he? And … look, thanks again for your help last night.”
    “Don’t mention it.” The flannel-shirted foreman, Tom Brody, crossed the yard and got into the Escalade that Brantwell had just driven up in, pulling it across the wide graveled area toward where Missy’s new Jeep sat gleaming in the yard lights.
    Hey, at least the benefits here are good
. As Lizzie started the Blazer, Brantwell came back outside again; then he and his daughter went in together and the door closed behind them.
    It was only just past four in the afternoon, but the cold sky was edging toward dark when she reached Bearkill, the sun’s last thin gleams fading behind the treed ridges to the west. Parking the Blazer across from her office, she noted in dismay that her new helper had hung blue plastic tarps at the windows, concealing whatever was going on inside.
    Dope smoking, probably, she imagined. Or beer drinking, or both. God, what had she been
thinking
when she—
    She shoved open the door. The kid looked up. “Hi.”
    “Hi, yourself.” All ready to blast him with verbal fury, she found herself at a loss for words. “What’re you doing?”
    The answer, though, was clear. It was just that it was all she could think of to say, confronted by the prospect of a space so utterly changed that it might as well have been transported from some other solar system.
    The planet Whitewash, maybe. The walls and the ceiling were now devoid of the many tack holes, bumps, scrapes, and gouges that the previous surfaces had possessed. The ceiling tiles had been painted and new fluorescent fixtures, shedding bright light that somehow managed to be pleasant yet forcefully illuminating at the same time, had replaced the old, dim, flickering ones.
    “Well, I—” He got to his feet, a big, plump, dreadlocked teenager with piercings and tattoos everywhere, wearing a pair of black jeans, black high-tops, and a ratty black sweatshirt with the sleeves cut out of it.
    He gestured around. “I did what you said. Today I got the place ready. The furniture’s coming tomorrow. Oh, and I’m having the communications stuff done by the sheriff’s people, okay?”
    The floor covering, which had been cruddy beige rug, was now gray indoor-outdoor carpeting, not quite professionally installed but still pulled acceptably tight under wooden furring strips; he’d nailed them like floor