The man had been humming in her dreams all last night. But this morning she couldn’t concentrate on anything because of her landlady.

Louella Bertram was eighty if she was a day, never met a cat she didn’t like, made coffee so weak it looked like dirty water, and treated every guest as if they were skinny runts that she took in just to feed.

“Now, sugar.” When Lily tried to rise from the breakfast table, Louella was already trying to block the doorway. “You can’t go a whole day on a sip of coffee and a half a bite of toast. You’ll waste away in the heat. Now you just take a little bag along with you. It’s just a couple of my cinnamon muffins, something to tide you over. You end up here at lunch, you just come on back to the kitchen, and I’m sure I can whip up something for you.”

She’d been here less than a week, yet Lily already knew better than to argue. She took the bag, then, when Louella lifted her wrinkled cheek, bent down to give her a smooch and a hug. Louella wouldn’t let her out the door without those, too.

“Now,” the older woman walked her to the door, “I know you think you want answers to the past. Everybody wants answers. The whole South, we understand about how the past and our history is part of who we are. But sugar, the things that matter in life, you never find those kinds of answers in facts. It’s all in the heart. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t look, honey. But I just want you to enjoy being back in your home town, instead of dwelling on that one bad moment. Your momma and daddy had a good life here once. You try and think about that, child.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And another thing…”

Lily escaped inside of ten minutes, the best she’d managed to do so far. Carrying her purse and a satchel-and the muffins-she headed straight for the street. She didn’t have a thermometer, but outside, this early, it couldn’t be more than one hundred and ten. In the house, it was hot enough to fry eggs.