Page 28 of The Forest of Lost Souls

She raises her glass. “Here’s to that.”

“What’re you—five feet four, five? Hundred ten pounds?”

“I don’t own a scale.”

“I bench-press three times your weight.”

“Stress like that could give you a heart attack.”

“Pressin’youmight give me a heart attack, how good you look. I’ll take the risk.”

“Is that talk your idea of how to romance a lady?”

“You start actin’ like a lady, I’ll change my talk.”

She takes one, two, three sips of wine because she knows how he’ll interpret that. “Are you married?”

“I once was, fourteen years ago.”

“She come to her senses?”

“She up and died on me.”

“I’m guessin’ not cancer.”

“Why couldn’t it have been?”

“The way you said it.”

“How’d I say it?”

“Like, ‘Hey, shit happens.’”

“Which it does more days than not.”

“She fall down the stairs?”

“You amuse me.”

“Not my intention.”

“This drug addict, Lyle Sussman, broke in the house when Tanya was alone. Raped her, beat her to death with a hammer, stole a little money.”

“You ever catch him?”

“The next day.”

“Good police work.”

“Home security camera gave us a clear picture.”

“He get himself shot resisting arrest?”

“We found him in the woods, where he lived in a tent. By then he’d taken his own life.”

“Hung himself from a tree limb? Threw himself off a cliff? Set himself on fire?”

“Coroner said it was likely an overdose.”