“When would someone have come in?”
“The only time I can think of is when we were out shopping for the tree.”
“Did you lock the door?”
“This is Aurora, Cork. I never lock the door except at night.”
The house was dead still. The refrigerator motor clicked on with a deep, startling hum. Rose jerked in her chair.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Rose,” Cork said. “But let’s start locking the doors just to be sure.” He locked the back door. “I’m going upstairs to clean up a little. You okay?”
“Yes.” Rose smiled. “I’m sure, like you say, it’s nothing.” She went back to work on her bow.
Cork locked the front door on his way upstairs. He checked the guest room, Anne’s and Jenny’s and Stevie’s rooms, and finally Jo’s. He stood in his wife’s bedroom, where on the surface everything looked fine. When he’d lived in the house, he’d had an intimate knowledge of how things should feel, but he’d been gone for months, and he’d lost that feel. Now he stood there a stranger.
Still, he trusted Rose.
First Sam’s Place had been violated. Then the house on Gooseberry Lane. Were they looking for something here, too? Or was this just another warning, a subtle indication that his family wasn’t safe either? If they were looking for something, what the hell could it be and why did they think he had it?
He went to the basement, took the rolled bearskin from a locked black trunk near the furnace, and brought it to his room. The skin had been left to him by Sam Winter Moon in his will. It had come from the biggest black bear Cork had ever seen, the one he’d hunted with Sam when he was fourteen. Cork undid the ropes. As he rolled out the skin, he uncovered the box he’d put there over a year ago. It was the size of a large dictionary and nearly as heavy. He lifted the lid. Inside was a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 Police Special, a belt and holster, and a box of cartridges. He’d put them away after he’d killed Arnold Stanley. He’d believed he would never use them again. But like so much about his life, it appeared he might be wrong.
He was tired, so tired he could barely lift his feet to keep walking. The pack on his back felt so heavy he could hardly carry it. Sam Winter Moon moved ahead of him silently, the Winchester held ready in his hands.
They were in an unfamiliar part of the forest, an area torn and desolate. The trees had been razed, the stumps ripped from the ground. Their roots had become claws thrust toward the evening sky. The sun was low and red, and everything in the forest was tinted with an angry hue.
Sam Winter Moon had said the bear was near. Very near. They had to be careful now. Sam moved lightly on the balls of his feet and made no sound. Every step for Cork was labored and broke the silence with a terrible crunching of dry autumn leaves.
They came to the middle of the desolate ground, to a place where stumps and logs and branches had been piled in a heap, the way loggers would leave a mess for burning. The area was full of thistle grown chest high and autumn sumac with leaves gone bloodred along the branches. Sam looked the pile over carefully. In the evening light, it looked like something humped and dying.
Sam Winter Moon chambered a round. He lifted his hand in a sign for Cork to wait, then began to circle the huge pile of debris. In a moment he was lost among the tall thistle and sumac. Cork’s heart beat so hard and fast it shook his whole body. The sound of it got louder and louder, so that Cork was sure the noise would startle the bear. He tried to breathe out the fear. He wanted to call to Sam, call him back from the danger, but Sam Winter Moon was already gone, already lost to him.
Then the pile began to stir. The jagged stumps and timber rose up, forming themselves into the great bear standing on its hind legs. It rose above Cork and splayed its claws, long and sharp and white, against the red of the sky. The bear lifted its black muzzle and a deafening roar exploded from its maw. As Cork watched terrified, it came for him.
He gripped the bow in his hands, a bow that had not been there before, and he reached toward his back, toward the quiver that hung where the pack had been. His hands trembled as he drew out an arrow and tried to think where best to shoot for a kill. He glanced at the bowstring and quickly fitted the arrow. When he looked up, the bear had changed. It wasn’t the great black animal anymore, but a huge ogre, the Windigo, man-shaped with its skin bloodied and its teeth stained from feeding. Cork raised the bow and sighted on the creature’s chest where the heart would be if the Windigo had a heart. But the bow was no longer a bow. It was a. 38 Police Special. And as he pulled the trigger, the Windigo was no longer an ogre but was little Arnold Stanley with wet hair and a hopeless look on his face as his chest exploded with splashes of red.
“Cork, are you all right?” It was Jo in the doorway. “You cried out.”
Cork sat up in bed, his heart still racing.
“Yes,” he said. He breathed deeply, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Just a dream.”
He pulled off the covers and swung his feet off the bed. He reached to the nightstand for a cigarette. A bit of light came through his window, the reflection of the streetlamp off the snow outside, but his room was mostly dark.
Jo came in, not far. She wore a flannel night-gown and held her arms across her chest as if she were cold. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.” He struck a match, lit his cigarette, sighed out a cloud of smoke. “It was just a dream and it’s over.”
He could smell her, the scent of the Oil of Olay she used at night to soften her skin.
“Putting up the tree today was nice,” he said after a while.
“Yes,” she answered.
“I’m amazed the blue bulbs have lasted this long,” he said.
“We’ve been careful. About the bulbs at least.” She might have smiled. It was hard to see her face clearly. “I’m going back to bed.”
“You’re cold?” he asked to keep her there.
“Freezing.”
“You were always too cold and I was always too warm. You used to pull the blankets off me, remember?”
Her heard her take a deep breath. “Good night, Cork.” She turned and left.
He finished his cigarette. And then he tried to sleep.
19
The next morning, after Jo and Rose had taken the children to church, Cork drove to Molly’s place. She didn’t answer his knock. He checked the shed where she kept her old Saab and found the car still there. He glanced at the sauna by the lake. No smoke from the stovepipe. Ski tracks headed down to the lake, but he couldn’t tell how recently they’d been made. He went back to the house and let himself in with the key she hung on a nail under the back steps. She usually kept her skis on a rack on the back porch, but the rack was empty. Cork stepped into the kitchen, took off his hat and gloves and coat, and began to make himself coffee from the can of Hills Brothers Molly kept on hand just for him.
He loved Molly’s kitchen. There was always a certain disorder to it that made it feel comfortable. She wasn’t slovenly, but she often left a book open on the table, a few dishes sitting by the sink, or her knitting bag sagged on the floor next to a chair. Molly lived in her kitchen and her spirit filled it, so that just standing there, Cork breathed her in.
If he’d believed in prayer, he would have prayed at that moment for a way around what was ahead.
He bent over the sink, feeling weak and sick to his stomach, shaking as if he had a fever.
At least he hadn’t told Molly he loved her. Maybe that was a small blessing, something spared them both. The only woman he’d ever been sure he loved and had told so was Jo, and that hadn’t exactly turned out well. Was it always that way with love?
He poured himself a cup of coffee, and as he took his first sip, Molly came off the lake and removed her skis. He watched her disappear into the sauna. Smoke began to rise from the stovepipe. She reappeared with a long metal bar with a chiseled end, an ice spud, went ten feet out onto the ice, and began vigorously thrusting the bar
