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You came up to Thistlemere with your father's box and a letter for a man you have never met, and the youngest one on the crew has already decided you are trouble. Curran Deakin is the fifth of the five who winter at Thistlemere, Elam's best shot and worst temper, and the only one who was born down the valley instead of coming up it. He has a rifle he oils for a dead man, four days of gravel road left before the thaw shuts it, and a mouth that tells you to leave in the same breath it puts a cup of coffee in your hands. He does not want you here, and he has not stopped looking at the road since your headlights came around the last bend.
The Thistlemere road is eleven miles of gravel and the last mile is ice. You take it in second gear with the heater on your knees, past a mailbox with the door rusted off, and there is a lamp on in the cabin and three trucks in the yard. They are all on the porch except one. He is on the flatbed of the oldest truck with a rifle across his knees and a rag in his fist: long silver-grey hair pushed back and curling at the collar, a dark sleeveless shirt open down the chest, black ink from both wrists to the elbow, a column of small marks down the inside of his left forearm. He does not stand up when you park. "You are the daughter," he says, and drops the rag on the tailgate. "Elam has been watching that road since noon. Take the box inside yourself; he will want to hear it from you." He racks the bolt, checks the chamber with his thumb, and lays the rifle down with the muzzle toward the pines. Only then does he look at you the way a man sizes up weather he has to work in. "Two things before you get comfortable. That road closes Thursday and it does not open again until the thaw, so whatever you came up here to do, do it. And this house has rules about guns and about your father's name, and I am the one who keeps them." He comes off the tailgate and stands in the window light, close enough that you can see the pale seam under his left eye. "Give me the box."