“Before that. Long before that.”
“You want to come back?”
“I miss home.”
“I don’t believe you,” Jenny said. She turned and started for the Bronco.
“I don’t blame you,” Cork said after her. “In your shoes, I wouldn’t believe me either. But, Jen, I’ve never lied to you. At least not intentionally.”
She turned back angrily. “You’re saying Mom’s responsible for the divorce.”
“I’m not trying to turn you against her, sweetheart, really. I hurt her pretty bad, I guess, and maybe all this is exactly what I deserve. I just want you to know that if I could, I’d put it all back together.”
For a while Jenny looked at the trampled snow between them, then at the geese. “I thought if you loved someone you were supposed to, like, forgive them. I thought that was what love was supposed to be all about.”
Cork shook his head. “Easy to say, harder to do.”
“So… what are you going to do?” Jenny asked quietly.
Cork risked moving to her. “I’d like to get your mother to talk with me. Tom Griffin-Father Tom-has offered to counsel us. I’m not saying we’ll succeed, but I’d like to give it a try. What do you think?”
She looked past him where the ice edged the open water and the signs warned of danger and the safety stations offered the help of ropes and life rings and sturdy sleds. What could he offer her that was as substantial?
“I think I’d like to go now,” she said.
They walked back toward the Bronco. Cork saw sunlight glint off a tiny thread of a tear down her cheek. He wanted to reach out, to hold her as he had when she was small and the simplicity of Sesame Street had been her world. But he was afraid now. They walked without speaking, and they walked apart.
“Wait here,” he told her at the Bronco. “I’ll be right back.”
He took the bucket back into the Quonset hut. The place was still a mess, but it appeared as if nothing more had been disturbed in his absence. The cardboard was still in place on the kitchen window. The furnace hadn’t miraculously repaired itself.
“What happened?”
Jenny stood at the door looking shocked.
“Someone broke in,” Cork said.
Jenny took a couple of tentative steps inside. Stevie and Anne had visited Cork there before, but Jenny always found an excuse not to come. This was her first time inside Sam’s Place.
“A burglar?” she asked.
“Nothing was taken.”
“Why’d they break in?”
“I think they were looking for something they didn’t find.”
Jenny knelt and picked up a cushion from the floor. “What?”
“If I knew that, I might have a better idea who broke in.”
She hugged the pillow to her as she took in the spectacle of the disarray. “It’s scary.”
“It is a little.”
She looked at him suddenly. “What if you’d been here?”
“Maybe they wouldn’t have broken in.”
“Or maybe they would have hurt you.”
Remembering the warning the intruders had painfully delivered, Cork didn’t want to say anything more. There was no way Jenny-or any of his family-was going to be involved. “Come on,” Cork said brusquely. “Let’s go.”
The wind rose outside, a sudden body of air that passed over the lake and into the small woods where the old foundry stood. The snow rose and swirled as it passed, as if alive. Cork froze when he heard the voice in the wind.
“Dad, are you okay?” Jenny asked.
He stared at her, wondering if she’d heard. But he could see she hadn’t.
“Let’s go,” he said again, trying not to show how afraid he was. But Jenny looked at him and he saw that she knew.
“What is it?” she asked, frightened.
“Nothing. It’s nothing, Jen.” He put his arm around her and led her out into the sunlight, into the winter air that had become still again. He looked toward the trees and, as he’d expected, saw nothing unusual there.
As they drove away, Cork said, “Jenny, promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t say anything about this to anyone. Please.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Is it because you don’t want anyone to know you’re afraid?”
That seemed as good an explanation as any, so he nodded.
“I understand,” Jenny said. And she smiled as if she did. Perfectly.
17
After lunch, Cork and Rose took the children and headed to the offices of Great North Development Company, where Jo had worked much of the morning with Sandy Parrant. Great North was housed in the old firehouse a block off Center Street. Built in 1897 of charcoal gray granite, the firehouse had been scheduled for demolition, but Sandy Parrant and the judge had bought it and had it remodeled as a home for Great North.
Before he disappeared, Joe John LeBeau had the contract to clean the Great North offices. He’d told Cork the old firehouse was haunted. He claimed that when he cleaned alone late at night, he could hear the boots of the long-dead firefighters clomping across the floor overhead. He swore that once he saw the ghost of Lars Knudsen, who’d become a local hero by giving his life trying to save the children when the old Freemason orphanage burned in ’09. Joe John told Cork these things in the time when he was sober, before he walked away drunk from his truck, abandoning his family and his livelihood, a thing Cork had never understood. But a man who heard ghosts was probably a troubled man to begin with.
Jenny and Rose stayed in the Bronco. Cork took Anne and Stevie into the old firehouse. Joyce Sandoval, a woman with white hair and half glasses, sat at a reception desk typing into a computer. She looked over the flat top of her glasses at Cork and the kids.
“They pay you a lot for working Saturday, Joyce?”
“They don’t pay me a lot, period,” she grumbled, but amiably.
“Why aren’t you out doing something with Albert?”
Albert Nordberg and Joyce Sandoval had been dating for a quarter of a century. Their courtship was an institution of sorts in Aurora.
Joyce took off her glasses, which were secured by a beaded cord around the back of her neck. “He says he’s buying me a Christmas present. He says he doesn’t want me to know what it is.” She gave Cork a knowing and hopeless look. “He buys me Wind Song cologne. Every year. I made the mistake twenty-five years ago of telling him it was my favorite.” She glanced at Anne and winked. “Men, huh?”
“Joyce, would you let Jo know we’re here?”
She lifted the receiver of her phone and pushed three buttons. “Cork O’Connor and a couple of elves are here for Jo.” She put the receiver down. “They’ll be right out. Why don’t you have a seat.” Joyce Sandoval went back to working on her computer.
Behind the reception desk, the area of the firehouse where the big engine had parked was occupied now by a dozen work spaces, all currently empty. Cork and the children sat on a brown leather sofa in a small waiting area. While they waited, Cork entertained them with ghost stories he’d heard from Joe John LeBeau. By the time the elevator doors opened and Jo and Sandy Parrant stepped out, Stevie’s eyes were huge with amazement.
