Instead, she looked past his shoulder toward the street, as though the explanation were out there and had to be kept from coming inside.
“Please,” she said. “Just the beef.”
He gave it to her.
After she left, the unease remained.
It lingered in the sawdust beneath the counter and in the little bell above the door. Tomas told himself it was none of his business. He told himself old women were entitled to their eccentricities.
But he also knew that people did not scan a street like that unless they were hiding something terrible—or hiding from something terrible.
By afternoon, the story had grown legs.
Someone said she was selling the meat across the river.
Someone said she was keeping a man in the house.
Someone else said the smell on Binder Lane had changed.
