Ellen doesn't drink from the beer. She just listens to her daughter, and can picture most of it in her mind. Jo's always had a hero-worship thing for hunters. Probably partially Ellen's fault, with all the stories she'd tell Jo when Bill was gone, or after he died.

Heroes one and all, but none of them made great husbands or even great significant others or whatever the hell she is supposed to call it. She knows what it's like. Hell, at eighteen, she'd jumped at the chance to run out of her small little town with a hunter with a pretty smile and prettier words.

That had been a huge mistake, and Bill had saved her from that. Ellen knows how it goes. And she knows how big the elephants in the room can get. She'd watched it before. Hell, it'd happened to her.

"What happened? Because it isn't just the time, Jo. Finish it." The words are soft steel. Ellen wants to know the whole of it, before she says too much.