She removed her gloves and touched the satin shoulder of his pajamas. He stirred. She sat carefully on the bed, ran her hand along his fine jawline, swept her palm lightly over the heavy stubble there. She’d never slept with him, never awakened beside him, never seen his hair tousled from sleep or smelled the stale breath of morning slip from his lips. For some reason, he seemed more real to her in that vulnerable moment before waking, while his face was still slack and his eyelids trembled with dreaming, and she felt something break inside her. Before she knew it, she was crying.
“What is it?” Sandy was instantly awake. He sat up and reached for the light beside the bed.
“No, don’t,” Jo said, stopping his hand.
“Are you all right? What are you doing here?”
She stood up and stepped away from the bed. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’ve been thinking.”
“Terrible thoughts, it sounds like.”
“Sandy, maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
“Why?”
“There’s no future in it. We’ve both known from the beginning.”
“No. We agreed not to talk about a future together. That’s different.”
“Because we knew it couldn’t be,” she insisted. She walked to the window. The sky had turned an empty white, still sunless. “My life is here. My family is here. In a couple of weeks you’re gone for good.”
“You can join me. After you take care of the divorce.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not as hard as you think.”
“What is it you see in me?” She turned and faced him. “I’m not young. I have children.”
“I see you beside me in the White House.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Sandy threw aside the covers and stood up. He wore blue satin pajamas and with his red-brown hair a little ruffled looked like an exotic bird. “Jo, no one in Aurora would blame you for leaving Cork. He’s a man disgraced, falling apart. He hasn’t been a fit husband or father for a long time. You’ve said so yourself. And have you taken a good look at him lately?”
“He’s been terribly hurt.”
“You don’t have to defend him.”
“It’s the children I’m worried about.”
“My parents divorced and I survived. Your mother raised you alone and you turned out beautifully. Children are resilient.”
The long night felt heavy on her. She sighed. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
“It doesn’t, believe me.” He stepped toward her and took her hand. “Look, Jo, I have one more exhibit to offer in evidence. Something that might make everything easier for you. Come with me.”
Sandy led her from the bedroom to his office. He switched on his desk lamp, opened a drawer, and took out a large photo, eight by ten.
“I recently came into possession of this. I wasn’t sure if I should show you, but I think it’s for the best now.”
“What is it?”
“Something Dad gave me. He was trying to be helpful.”
Sandy handed it over. Jo took a good look. The photograph showed Cork naked, embracing another woman. They were outside somewhere. Near a small building by a lake.
“Who is she?” Jo asked.
“Molly Nurmi.”
“Nurmi?” Jo was surprised and stung. Molly Nurmi? She was only a waitress. A woman with a reputation. A girl everyone knew had broken her father’s heart. Was that the kind of woman Cork wanted?
“From what I gather, they’ve been at it quite a while. He’s playing you for a sucker, Jo. Acting the victim while he commits the crime.”
“That son of a bitch,” Jo said. Anger climbed inside her like fire up a dry tree. It flared in her brain, brilliant and blinding. “Making me feel like some kind of coldhearted snake. And all the time he’s the snake.” She flung the photograph away. “God, he was good. He had me convinced.”
“Jo, this is going to sound strange, I know,” Sandy said calmly. “But give him a break. He’s a man after all. You didn’t expect him to stay celibate forever.”
“He’s not a man!” she hissed. “He’s a-a-worm.”
“Jo-”
“What!” she snapped.
He looked at her appreciatively, undaunted by her anger. “Have I told you lately what a beautiful woman you are?”
She felt suddenly free. From the shoulders of her weary conscience a great burden simply vanished. She felt weightless, rising into an atmosphere where every breath made her feel wonderfully ruthless and wild. She stepped to Sandy, put her arms around him, and kissed him long and hard.
“Let’s go to my bedroom,” Sandy murmured.
“Bedroom, hell,” Jo said, and she drew him down with her to the floor.
An hour later she lay sprawled on Sandy’s bed, the covers pulled loosely over her. She’d made love ferociously and now she felt exhausted, ready to sleep.
Sandy came in wearing his robe. “I called my housekeeper, told her to take the day off. We can sleep as long as we like.”
He threw off the robe and crawled into bed, naked beside her.
“Grand,” Jo said. She pushed herself against him and closed her eyes. In a moment she was deeply asleep, carrying with her into her dreaming the musky smell of the freshman Senator from Minnesota.
32
Cork was up and out of Sam’s place early. The sun was still below the trees, the sky clear, a cold bright day at hand. He paused at Hardee’s to pick up a drive-through breakfast-a biscuit sandwich with sausage and egg, and a cup of steaming black coffee. Then he headed east out of Aurora, past the casino and, a mile farther, the turnoff to Sandy Parrant’s. Three miles beyond that he took a right, moving away from the lake along County Road 16. The road wove through marshland and a long stretch of hayfield, then Cork could see the big stand of balsam, birch, and tamarack that marked Harlan Lytton’s land. He turned up the narrow lane, which was streaked with red-orange sunlight and shadows.
It was dead quiet when he got out of the Bronco. He stood a moment, his breath clouding the air as he looked the cabin over. The shattered window had been boarded up. Across the doorway, Wally’s men had put the yellow-and-black tape warning “Crime Scene Do Not Cross.” Cork walked around the cabin. In back was a garage housing Lytton’s pickup and snowmobile. Just beyond that stood a large shed. Cork glanced into one of the dirty windows of the shed and could see it was where Lytton did his taxidermy work. Outside, a cord of split wood had been laid up neatly against one wall. The only other structure was an ancient outhouse, the boards gray, the nails loose, the whole thing leaning like a tired old drunk.
A bird fluttered onto a branch of a birch at the edge of the clearing where the cabin and other buildings stood. It caught Cork’s eye mostly because of the flash of color on its breast. A robin. Middle of winter and there was a robin still about, apparently plump and healthy.
Because of the stories of The People told him by his grandma Dilsey, Cork knew the robin was created in rather a sad way. A young man wandered from his tribe one spring to undergo giigwishi mowin, the fasting that would bring him visions to guide him into manhood. After several days, the young man’s father came and urged his son to persist in the fasting. The young man obeyed. Several more days passed, and the father returned again to urge his son to continue the fast. Although the young man had seen all the visions he needed to prepare himself for his life as a man, he obeyed his father’s request. After a time, the father once more visited his son and found him painted red and lying at the foot of a tree, dying. The young man chastised his father for urging him to fast beyond his time. As the father watched, his son slowly rose upward, changing in the air with a flutter of feathers, and perched on a branch of the tree, having become a robin. To his father he said, “Whenever danger threatens any of the Anishinaabe, I will alert them with this call… nin-don-wan-chee-gay, I am warning.”
The robin was a good spirit, manidoo, that warned of danger or the nearness of enemies or of the approach of a maji-manidoo, evil spirit. Cork looked at the robin, out of place in that bitter winter landscape, and returned to the Bronco. He lifted his Winchester from the backseat, took several shells from the box of cartridges in his glove box, and loaded the rifle.