- No one ever sees Mrs. Breen alive again. Say what?!
- Tom had thought about going back to see her or telling Mr. Hook about her situation, but he remembered how insistent she'd been about wanting to stay as she was in her house, so he forgot about it.
- Joe Hemphill went up to the Breen place on April 1, something he did every year, to take Mrs. Breen into town for her spring trading. When he got there, he found her dead, sitting on the settee in the kitchen wrapped in the blankets, as she was the last time Tom had seen her. (Well, aside from being dead this time.)
- Though Joe Hemphill hadn't seen signs of a break in or other trouble, he goes to see Billy-Bob Baxter, a lawyer, to report the death. Billy-Bob says that it is standard to send the Sheriff and the Coroner in such cases. Then Joe gets mad when Billy-Bob says he'll represent him if there's a murder investigation.
- Tom is concerned about how much wood Joe had seen left on the porch, since he had stacked some there when he went to visit in February. No doubt he is thinking about when she died in relation to the last time he had been there.
- Tom is worried that he should have done more, but he doesn't know what exactly he could have done.