When he examined his face in the cracked mirror above the sink afterward, the man who looked back at him had a haggard edge to him, dark stubble having appeared on his jaw and his cheeks still a little sunken. “You’ll never be a poster boy, Will.”

The scent of coffee was warm in the air when he returned to the living room.

“Have you eaten?” Anahera asked from where she stood at the compact kitchen counter that ran along the back wall.

Will shook his head. “I’ll grab toast when I get back home. We should talk over what you heard tonight at the volunteer meeting.” Will didn’t know Anahera, but he’d run her the day she arrived; it was only prudent to find out if the town’s new resident had a record. The last time a prodigal had returned to Golden Cove, he’d turned out to be a drug dealer who hadn’t quite left his old life behind.

He’d abandoned his plans to set up shop in town after Will made it clear he’d do everything in his power to throw the other man in prison.

Anahera, by contrast, had no criminal record.

What she did have was a glittering career as a classical musician. Yet there was no sign of music in this room. Not even a small radio.

Of course, it was obvious most of Anahera’s belongings hadn’t yet arrived. She’d also have taken everything important with her when she said ­good-­bye to the Cove; no point leaving it here to be stolen, vandalized, or impacted by the elements.

“You can have some of this pasta,” she said, stirring in the sauce. “The sauce is from a packet, but it’s hot and it’ll fill you up. And I won’t have to eat leftovers for three days in a row. I’m so used to cooking ­for—­” She cut herself off with the suddenness of a woman who’d slammed up hard against an emotional wall.

Will didn’t need her to finish her sentence. He knew she’d buried her husband seven months ago. “Thanks,” he said, as if he hadn’t noticed her abrupt silence. “I never say no to pasta.”

“I’m having a glass of red with it.” She lifted a plain drinking glass filled about a third of the way up. “I’d offer you the same in my incredibly elegant stemware, but I’m thinking that you’re probably still on duty.”

“Not officially.” Will moved to lean his hip against the counter on the other side of the portable gas stovetop she was using to cook the pasta. A lot of the locals owned one of those; most used them for camping or hunting trips. Probably a good idea for Anahera to stick to that until she could have all the wiring in the cabin checked out.

“But,” he added, “in a place like this, where I’m the only police officer around, I’m never really off duty.” Will liked it that way. It gave him less time to think, less time to relive the past, less time to apologize to the small ghost who never seemed to hear him.

Anahera took a sip of her wine before saying, “I made coffee, too. Mugs on your right.”

Taking hold of a thick green mug from the grouping of four mismatched ones on the counter, Will picked up the ­old-­fashioned and heavy metal teakettle she’d used to keep the coffee hot. “Something like this,” he said, lifting up the teakettle, “it’d probably set you back two hundred dollars in one of the designer stores in the big cities.”

Anahera laughed, the emotion reaching the darkness of her eyes. “You’re right. But that particular kettle has been in my family for the past fifty years or so.”

“They don’t make them like they used to.” Will put the kettle back down on the large wooden coaster beside the ­stovetop—­that coaster looked like an offcut from a plank, but it did the job.

“Is your electricity from a generator?”

Anahera shook her head. “My mother had the lines put in when she was living here.” Her smile faded. “I asked the electricity company to turn the lights back on and everything seems to work. But I’m not chancing using the stove or oven yet.”

She’d lifted the pot of pasta and taken it to the table before he realized her intent. “Come on, let’s eat.”

Will picked up the wine bottle and his mug of coffee, then walked over to join her. After putting both on the table, he went and removed his sodden shirt from the back of the chair, leaving the garment spread out on the floor in front of the fire.

As he moved the chair back to the table, Anahera picked up a loaf of French bread from the counter. “Courtesy of Josie again.” The smile was in her voice. “She says she didn’t sell it at the café today, had Tom pass it to me at the volunteer meeting. I think she’s afraid I’ll starve myself out of grief if she doesn’t make sure I’m fed.”

Tearing the long loaf in half, she placed one half on the cutting board she’d put on the table beside the pot of pasta, then broke the other half into quarters. She took one quarter and bit into it, as if in silent repudiation of her friend’s assessment.

Will had seen grief manifested a hundred different ways: in the movies, they liked to show people weeping and wailing or going numb and collapsing. But the truth wasn’t always so simple. Some people got angry.

Like Anahera.

The cop ate quietly, Anahera thought. Methodically. As if it was a task that had to be completed, as if the taste of the food meant nothing to him. Anahera might’ve been insulted except that she knew she was a good cook even when limited to packet sauce and the basic spices she’d picked up at the Lees’ supermarket.

However, she had the feeling she could’ve put a cordon bleu meal in front of the cop and he’d have eaten it the same way. This wasn’t a man who took time to enjoy the small pleasures of life.

Had he been born like that, or had life changed him, made him into this?

If she had to guess, she’d say the latter. No one was born without the capacity for joy in the soul. Life leached it out of them, drop by drop.

Lifting up her glass, she took a deliberate sip of the wine. The smell of alcohol used to make her throw up, but she’d refused to be held hostage to the past and to her father’s addictions. So she’d taught herself to enjoy it as it was meant to be ­enjoyed—­in small doses.

Edward had helped; he’d introduced her to a whole new world of fine wines and decadent cocktails. Before that, all she’d known was the cheap plonk you could get down at the local supermarket. But no matter how good the wine, Anahera had never felt the desire to overindulge. To do so would be to spit on her mother’s ashes and that was the one thing Anahera would never do.

“This is really good.” Will’s voice was steady, his eyes watchful.

Anahera was ­near-­certain he was trying to make the kind of conversation he thought he should make. “You eat like it’s fuel,” she said, her tolerance for bullshit at an ­all-­time low. “Are you sure you even tasted it?”

The face that looked back at her wasn’t expressionless as much as opaque. Controlled. Probably a good skill to cultivate when you were in a line of work that involved interrogating suspects. “I tasted it,” he said evenly.

But Anahera was no longer thinking about the food. “Am I a suspect?” It wasn’t something she’d considered, given how recently she’d returned to Golden Cove, but by that same token, Will didn’t know her, had no reason to rule her out. “Is that why you asked me to watch people and report back? So you could compare my report with someone else’s and see if I lied?”