The front door slammed so hard behind her it rattled the porch windows.
Her brother-in-law, Wade Mercer, had locked it from the inside.
Evelyn stood in the blowing snow for one stunned second, her mother leaning against her shoulder, and still did not quite believe it had happened.
The house had belonged to Evelyn and her late husband, Daniel. A broad, weather-beaten ranch home at the edge of Bitter Pass, with a long porch, a mudroom full of boots, and a kitchen big enough for six people to crowd into during elk season. Daniel had built the additional back room himself the year they got married. The two of them had planted the cottonwoods near the fence line when they were twenty-eight and stupid enough to think trees grew fast.
Daniel had been dead eleven months.
