Chapter 1: Simple RequestHis bow seemed to be in deference, so deep that he had to right the earmuffs that dropped on to his forehead. His enunciation was loud, but the KN95 mask still muffled his greeting.
“Ms. Renata Todd?”
“That’s me. How can I help, sir?”
I could see the knockouts in the snow behind him, his imperfect path from whoever dropped him there. There was one large smudge among them, a convulsive snow angel. He had sprawled out in a fall; I detected a patch of muddy wet snow on the hip of his gray wool coat and his knee.
“Ma’am, I grew up in this house, my father, mother, brother, and me. I wasn’t technically born in it, but close enough; my father got my mother to the hospital with only minutes to spare. I left right around Labor Day in 1959 and, while I was tempted, I ha
