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apart.
    Because that was a distinct possibility: His entire family was so small that the present situation had the potential of leaving him all by himself.
    The mention of E. T. also served to highlight what few degrees of separation there were within Vermont’s scant population. A small, square man with blunt hands and a manner to match, E. T. had been a near mythological fixture in the greater Thetford area for as long as Joe could think back. He seemed to own at least a piece of every rough-edged business around. And his impact on Joe hadn’t stopped with nostalgic memory—years earlier, Joe had also arrested his youngest son, Andy, for a crime committed in Brattleboro, revealing an abrupt fragility to E. T.’s aura of indomitable feudal lord.
    Joe could sympathize. He had received such reversals himself over time, starting as a young man, when he lost his seemingly indestructible father. After that, life had never seemed quite so secure, and the more of it he’d seen, from combat to police work to the vagaries of the daily grind, the more he’d been confirmed in his skepticism. His wife had been taken by cancer; colleagues had died in the line of duty; Gail, years ago now, had been raped and forever transformed. His personal experience had not been lacking in drama, nor his emotional wariness left wanting for evidence. That a local monolith like E. T. Griffis had begotten a son who would later end up a jailbird was mere proof of the futility of denying humanity’s clay feet.
    Joe Gunther had become a student of hard knocks. As he approached the homestead, he was under no delusions that life would suddenly surprise him by cooperating.
    The farm was less than it had once been. In fact, it wasn’t a farm at all anymore. Much of its land had been sold off to neighbors to retire debts and establish a nest egg. But the core remained, and certainly its appearance was unchanged. All his life, Joe had learned to come up the winding drive and trust that his heart would beat easier. Even now, despite its inhabitants being in the hospital, the place still lent him hopefulness by simply standing strong.
    Ostensibly, Joe was here to feed the cat, turn off the lights, check the doors, and do whatever else hadn’t been considered by two people thinking they’d be out for a couple of hours. In fact, he discovered that this housekeeping applied more to himself. He took his time wandering through the rooms, absorbing the scents and scenery that had populated his upbringing, and tried to position his thinking to accept whatever might be coming. He didn’t want to be pessimistic, but he did want to be prepared.
    He stood, finally, in the living room, his mother’s center of operations. There was a docking station of tables and a desk laden with reading material, a phone, a recently added only-the-basics computer, all facing a large, empty-eyed TV set. Only her wheelchair was missing to make it complete, and it looked barren as a result. He used the opportunity to remember to check on the wheelchair’s welfare in the back of the ruined car. When Mom woke up, she’d be clamoring to get back here and tend to her piled-up projects.
    Gail had arrived at the hospital about an hour earlier, carrying two briefcases and clutching a cell phone as if it were a lifeline. She and Joe had hugged awkwardly before she moved directly to his mother’s bedside to gently stroke the old lady’s hair and murmur her greetings. Joe had left shortly thereafter.
    He sighed, shook his head, and went back outside into the falling snow. Visiting the farm had been useful emotionally, but his instincts told him it was time to get busy. It rarely paid to linger and ponder overmuch.
    Outside the door, under shelter of the roof’s overhang, he pulled out his phone, taking advantage of the farm’s exposure to the New Hampshire hills across the river, and their cell towers. He dialed a number in Burlington, in Vermont’s far northwest corner.
    “Office of the