There was a woman inside the door who took her coat before she had decided to give it up, and a smell of the house that was old wood and salt and something sweet burning somewhere. Her shoes were loud on the boards, the way they are in a house with rules.
He was in a room at the back that gave on to the water, standing at the window with his back to her, and he turned around slowly, the way a man does when he has learned in the last seventy-two hours what it costs to turn around fast.