The chap­ter intro­duces Car­ol Schmidt, a 69-year-old wid­ow liv­ing a qui­et life in Encamp­ment with her three-legged dog, Bridger. A hard­work­ing and com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed woman, Car­ol spends her evenings wait­ing for Bridger to fin­ish his night­ly rou­tine in the snow-cov­ered back­yard. The dog, a res­cue brought home by her late hus­band Paul, is her sole com­pan­ion since Paul’s trag­ic death in a log­ging acci­dent two years pri­or. Car­ol reflects on her grief, recall­ing Paul’s final moments in the hos­pi­tal, where his last word was Bridger’s name, a detail she accepts with­out resent­ment.

As Car­ol waits for Bridger, she wears Paul’s old coat, which still car­ries his scent, and rem­i­nisces about their life togeth­er. The cold night air brings an unfa­mil­iar, unpleas­ant odor that trig­gers a repressed child­hood mem­o­ry, unset­tling her. Her atten­tion shifts when she notices a sus­pi­cious gray pick­up truck with a camper shell dri­ving errat­i­cal­ly near the mill across the road. The truck’s unusu­al behavior—moving with­out head­lights and stop­ping abruptly—alarms her, espe­cial­ly when it hits a neighbor’s dog and speeds away with­out help­ing.

Car­ol wit­ness­es the inci­dent clear­ly, not­ing the truck’s license plate ends in “600” and over­hear­ing the driver’s harsh com­mands to leave the injured dog. The encounter leaves her shak­en, her hands trem­bling as she tends to Bridger, who final­ly returns inside. The chap­ter builds ten­sion as Car­ol, now dis­turbed by what she’s seen, decides to call her neigh­bor, hint­ing at a deep­er mys­tery or con­flict tied to the sus­pi­cious men in the truck.

The chap­ter blends Carol’s per­son­al grief with a grow­ing sense of unease, as the mun­dane rou­tines of her life are inter­rupt­ed by an omi­nous event. Her obser­va­tions of the pick­up and its occu­pants sug­gest a loom­ing threat, while her emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to Bridger and mem­o­ries of Paul ground the nar­ra­tive in her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of her qui­et resilience and the sud­den intru­sion of dan­ger sets the stage for fur­ther devel­op­ments in the sto­ry.