He gathered up a change of clothes and a few toilet articles and put them in a gym bag. He put the gifts into a big box, thinking he would wrap them again at Gooseberry Lane. He took one last item, a rolled bearskin, from a trunk in the cellar behind the old heater. He locked the door, got in the Bronco, and headed…
Home.
Rose opened the kitchen door. She wore an apron, and the aroma of baking cookies floated out around her. There were traces of flour in her dustcolored hair.
“Christmas baking?” Cork hung his coat on a peg by the door.
“My favorite time of year. I can bake to my heart’s content. Would you like some milk and cookies?”
Rose took a half gallon carton of Meadow Gold from the refrigerator. Cork set his gym bag and the box of gifts and the rolled bearskin on the floor and went to the cookie jar on the counter by the sink. The cookie jar was shaped like Ernie from Sesame Street. Cork had bought it years before when Sesame Street was Jenny’s favorite program. Now his daughter admired the darker visions of Sylvia Plath and was considering piercing her nose.
Rose put a glass of milk on the table.
Cork sat down. “So where is everyone?”
Rose bent and peeked through the oven window. “Jo’s working late with Sandy Parrant. They’re trying to straighten out things with Great North in light of the judge’s suicide. Apparently everything’s pretty complicated.”
“I’ll bet,” Cork agreed.
“Jenny’s on a date.”
“Date?” Cork nearly choked. “She’s only fourteen.”
“They’ve just gone to a movie.”
“Who’d she go with?”
“Chuck Kubiak.”
“Don’t know him,” Cork said with a note of disapproval.
“He’s nice, Cork. Really. He’ll have her home by eleven-thirty.”
The buzzer on the stove went off, and Rose took out a sheet of sugar cookies shaped like Christmas trees.
“Anne’s in her room,” she went on. “Asleep or reading. And Stevie’s been down for hours.”
Cork watched his sister-in-law as she tapped colored sprinkles on the cookies. “How did we ever do without you, Rose?”
“You didn’t.” She laughed.
Which was almost true. She’d come just after Jenny was born, come to help for a few weeks while Jo finished law school. She never left. Although she was heavy then, she was heavier now, and at thirty-five was completely without the prospect of marriage in her own life. There were times when Cork felt sorry for Rose and guilty because all the care she could have given to a family of her own was lavished on his instead.
“I put the guest room in order for you,” Rose said as she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That’s my last batch tonight. I’m going to bed.”
“Any idea when Jo-” Cork began.
The back door opened before he finished speaking, and Jo stepped in. She took in the sight of Cork at the table and his things on the floor.
“A little late for a visit, isn’t it, Cork?”
“It’s not a visit, Jo.”
“What is it, then?” She eyed his gym bag again and the box and bearskin.
“I’d like to stay for a day or two.”
“I invited him,” Rose jumped in. “His furnace is broken and he has no heat.”
Jo went to the cookie jar, lifted Ernie’s head, and took out a cookie. She leaned against the counter and considered the situation as she nibbled.
“A day or two?” she said.
“Until Monday,” Cork told her. “Art Winterbauer can’t come out until Monday at the earliest.”
She didn’t appear pleased by the prospect.
“It’s his house,” Rose argued with a note of anger. “For goodness sake, Jo, what harm will a couple of days do?”
Jo sighed and seemed to go a little limp, looking suddenly very tired. “All right,” she said.
“I have the guest room ready for him.” Rose began to undo her apron.
“I’m tired,” Jo said. “It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed.”
“Shouldn’t somebody wait up for Jenny?” Cork asked.
“She’s been on dates before.” Jo headed toward the living room. “She’ll be fine.”
Cork picked up his things. “Guess I’m tired, too.”
“Go on,” Rose said, shooing him with her hands. “I’ll lock up.”
Cork followed Jo upstairs. He looked in on Stevie, who lay twisted in his blankets. He carefully straightened out the bedding. The door to Anne’s room was slightly ajar and he peeked in. The reading lamp was on beside her bed. The Diary of Anne Frank lay open at her side, but she was sleeping soundly. Cork put the book on the stand and switched off the light.
Jo watched from the door of her bedroom. She leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded. Behind her on the bed, her briefcase lay open, files laid out on the side of the bed that used to be Cork’s.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I told you. My furnace is on the blink.”
Jo looked skeptical. “I mean really. What’s this all about?”
“Circumstances beyond my control.” He shrugged.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek a moment, a long-standing habit when she was considering saying something against her better judgment. This time she only said, “Don’t hope for too much.”
“I’m not hoping for anything.” He moved past her toward the guest room. Her door closed at his back.
He spent a while in the bathroom tending his ribs, which had turned a sick-looking yellow. He swallowed three ibuprofen tablets, went to the guest room, stripped to his boxers and T-shirt, and crawled under the covers. He could hear Rose moving around in the attic room above him. That room was cozy, with a brass bed, mahogany dresser and vanity, flowered curtains, and a rocker where Rose sat at night for a long time reading. She read mysteries and romance novels and, although she wouldn’t admit it, kept a drawer full of National Enquirers. Cork lay in his bed listening to the squeak of her rocker as she read in the warm light of her lamp.
He was tired but couldn’t sleep. He was puzzled. Too many strange things had happened that didn’t seem to make sense. In the way his thinking had been conditioned to work, he was looking for connections.
The judge was dead. Paul LeBeau had vanished-onto the reservation, Cork would bet-with his father. The Windigo had called Lytton’s name. And someone had broken into Sam’s Place. On the surface, there was nothing, really, to connect any of these things. Still, they were extraordinary in a place like Aurora, and they’d happened within an extraordinarily short time. From what he’d seen examining the judge’s body, he believed it was very possible the judge hadn’t committed suicide. Whether Paul’s disappearance was connected with the judge’s death, he couldn’t say. It was probably mere coincidence that Joe John had chosen that particular time to spirit his son away. However, coincidence was not something Cork was trained to believe in. The ransacking of his cabin-how did that fit in? And over it all loomed the presence of the Windigo. How much stock should be put in the words of an old Anishinaabe medicine man?
He thought some more about Lytton, wondering why the Windigo would call the man’s name. He was a loner, a mean son of a bitch. Even so, Cork found himself feeling sorry for Harlan Lytton. The picture of the man on his knees beside his dog and the terrible sound of his grieving still twisted Cork’s insides. Everyone was capable of loving something. Even a man like Lytton, who loved his dog. Now the thing Lytton loved had been taken from him and he was utterly alone. That was something Cork understood.
He couldn’t help turning his thinking to Molly. What was she doing now? Knitting? Reading maybe? She was a big reader. Novels, self-discovery, things that when she talked about them seemed interesting and enlightening. She often took classes at Aurora Community College, not with any goal in mind except to learn. She was a woman curious in many ways.
Cork looked out at the darkness beyond the window of the guest room. Sometimes Molly used the sauna at night, then stood outside in the cold and studied the stars while the steam rose off her skin and the chill clamped shut her pores. Was she there now? Like a beautiful white ghost, naked and vaporous?