“I can’t, no.”
“We don’t have a body. No witnesses. All the principals are dead.” Dross came and stood over him. “We have Max Cavanaugh’s confession, so we know who killed his sister. Hattie Stillday’s part in it she’ll have to answer for, but I don’t think any judge or jury will go hard on her. As for the bodies placed there more than forty years ago, those are cold crimes. This department doesn’t have the time or the resources to pursue that investigation. The media already think we’re a hayseed operation. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is the uproar that would be caused by your story, a story conjured up during some hallucinogenic Ojibwe ritual, being made public.”
“Wait a minute, Marsha-”
“I’m not finished.” She leaned down to him, very near and in a way not at all friendly. “The Great North Mining Company has deeper pockets than this county. Hell, probably deeper than this whole state. What if they chose to sue you or me or Tamarack County for libeling the Cavanaugh name with accusations of serial killings and cannibalism?”
He started up, out of his seat. “The law-”
She pushed him back down. “Screw the law. Let’s talk justice. It seems to me that justice has already been served. Do you not agree?”
He sat, chewing on her question. Finally he said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“All right, then.”
“It’s not that simple,” Cork cautioned. “You’re taking a big risk, Marsha.”
“There’s a lot I admire about you, Cork, but you always make things more complicated than they need to be. You keep your mouth shut and let me worry about this, okay?”
For a moment, Cork held to an unrelenting sense of responsibility.
“Okay?” Dross said, more forcefully.
Cork finally let go, and that release felt very good.
“Okay,” he said.
EPILOGUE
He still sometimes dreams his father’s death.
As Dr. Faith Gray continues to tell him, the mind is complicated, and the connections between conscious understanding and subconscious beliefs are difficult to unravel and take patience to reknit.
Nights, when he’s awakened by the nightmare, he often walks the quiet hallways of the house in which he has spent his life. It’s comfortable territory, and although the place has seemed dismally empty since Jo left him-or he abandoned her; it’s a connection whose understanding still eludes him and on which he’s still at work-he knows that, in truth, he’s surrounded by good spirit. It is as Meloux said: All things in Kitchimanidoo’s beautiful creation are connected. Cork and his children and Jo. And also those who have come before and those who will come after.
And so, on those difficult nights, he will sometimes speak to the spirit of his father. He thanks him for saving his mother’s life. He asks his forgiveness for not praying his young heart out when Liam O’Connor lay dying. And he assures him that he loves him.
But most important, he tells his father that he understands.