The road in front of his house was buried. Buried under black hoods and chrome grilles and the low, expensive growl of engines that had never once been asked to negotiate a dirt road in their lives. Black Escalades parked nose to tail. A silver Bentley. A Rolls-Royce the color of gunmetal sitting directly across from his mailbox. He stood very still and held his coffee mug and looked at his road the way you look at something that has no reasonable explanation.

His neighbor Ray Cutler was already in his yard in a bathrobe, phone raised, mouth open.

Eli appeared at Caleb’s hip, blinking, still in his pajamas, the cereal bowl in his hand tilting at an angle that was going to become a problem in approximately four seconds. He looked at the road. He looked up at his father. His father looked at the road.

A woman stepped down from the lead vehicle with the measured, unhurried certainty of someone who had long since stopped worrying about entrances. She wore a red dress, fitted, sleek, the kind of red that does not apologize for itself, and a cream coat over her shoulders that moved with her in the cool morning air.

Her heels struck the packed dirt of the road with a deliberate, even sound. The handbag on her arm was white and structured and probably worth more than Caleb’s truck, possibly more than his truck and the fence he had been meaning to repaint since September. Her hair was dark gold and fell loose past her shoulders. Her face was the kind of face that made Ray Cutler lower his phone without noticing he had done it.

She walked straight across the road and stopped in front of Caleb at the bottom of his porch steps. She looked up at him with a directness that was not aggressive, just complete, the full attention of someone who does not scatter their focus.