The woman in gray left her at the mouth of the corridor with the basket in her hands and did not say goodnight.
"He'll want to know you're back," she said. Then, after a pause Elaine would think about later, "He always knows anyway."
Then she was gone, and Elaine walked the nine doors to her own with a basket of the valley's best on her arm, pears and plums and a bunch of greens still cold from the mountain air, and told herself the day had gone exactly to plan.
She opened her door on the dark and knew, before her eyes found him, that the room was not empty.
The cold reached her first.
He sat in the chair by the dead hearth as though he had grown there, as though the room had always been his and she the guest in it. He had not lit a candle. He did not need one. In the dark his stillne
