3.
ALMOST TWO YEARS EARLIER, THE eleventh of December, 2015, Hudson, New York, Jay sat in a rocking chair on the porch at the Hatchers’ farmhouse, studying the line of spruce trees about two hundred yards away across a hayfield to the north, its grass a brown blanket glowing faintly red from the setting sun, the scene an omen of winter. The Hudson police had called him the day before, when he’d also been sitting on a porch in San Saba. A terrible accident, the police chief said, his voice shaky; Raymond and his wife Megan, dead from a stray hunter’s bullet. Jay had gone to New York and had now sat for hours on the Hatchers’ porch, paralyzed with grief, knowing that once he began to look for a reason, their deaths would become real. The early night air became colder as the sunlight faded.
