A Superior Death

burn your fucking boat to the waterline,” she said quietly. “I swear to God I will.”

A rustling followed, then a pale shape began to insinuate itself into the darkness of the doorway.

“All the way out,” Patience said coldly. “I’ve never seen a child molester up close.”

Tattinger came out into the unflattering white light. He’d either retained or dragged on his tee-shirt and underpants. They were white Fruit of the Looms, baggy like ill-fitting diapers. The undershirt was tucked into the panties. He had blue socks on his feet and his carroty hair was standing on end.

From the shadows of the Venture, Anna braced herself for the familiar whine, the stream of self-justification that was bound to follow. Just as she began to think that for once he had the good taste to be ashamed of himself, he began to speak.

“Look here, Mrs. Bittner,” he said as if Patience, instead of being his peer, were decades older than he. “It’s not what you think.”

One graceful hand shot out, plucked the blue and white band of his underpants away from his bony frame and let it snap back. Tattinger turned pigeon-toed and grabbed his crotch in a parody of masculine modesty.

“It’s what I think,” Patience said. “Just shriveled and uglier.” Tattinger opened his mouth to speak but she forestalled him. “You will not talk to me,” she commanded. “You will not talk to nor come near Carrie. If you do I will kill you. Really. If you stay away, I will content myself with telling Lucas, getting you fired, getting you sent to jail. There you will be the little girl the ugly men want and I shall rejoice in every day you spend facedown bent over some bench with your trousers down around your ankles.”

Finished, Patience stepped away from him, took a solid stance, doubled one fist inside the other, and, straight-armed, swung a roundhouse. Her knuckles collided with Jim’s jaw just below his left ear and he went down.

As the Venture motored away, Anna could hear him screaming, “That’s assault! That’s assault! I’ll press charges!”

“He will, you know,” she said. “He’s that slimy.”

“So will I,” Patience returned. “And mine will stick.”

Carrie Ann began to howl.

TWENTY FOUR

Counseled!“ Patience fumed, spitting out the word. At Patience’s request Anna had followed her and her daughter back to Rock Harbor in the Belle Isle, then accompanied them to the Chief Ranger’s house on Mott Island. After talking with Lucas Vega, the two women and the eternally weeping thirteen- year-old returned to Patience’s apartment behind the lodge. Carrie had stumbled off to bed to cry into her stuffed animals. Anna sat on the couch watching Patience stomp around the tiny kitchen.

“Counseled again,” Anna said unhelpfully. She wasn’t feeling much like defending the Park Service. Though Lucas had been as shocked as they, if the flashing of his usually somber dark eyes was to be believed, all he could promise was that Jim Tattinger would be forced to undergo psychological counseling. For reasons Anna could understand, Patience didn’t want to drag her daughter-or herself-through the courts trying to prove attempted statutory rape or child molestation. Lucas would lodge a complaint, but without Patience pressing charges, he didn’t have the power to fire or even suspend Tattinger without pay. Chances were good the higher-ups wouldn’t want to be tainted by the tawdry goings-on below. As in any bureaucracy, the best way up in the Park Service was to produce a smokescreen of paperwork, an avalanche of plans and studies and proposals, but to be very careful to never actually do anything.

“I’m getting cynical in my old age,” Anna said to break her train of thought.

“Cynicism is the fool’s synonym for realism,” Patience snarled. Anna laughed. At first the other woman looked angry; then her face cracked and she laughed. “Pretty bad, aren’t I? This has been one of the those life’s-a-bitch- and-then-you-die days. The worst of it is, I remember being happy. I remember when I was a nice woman: cheerful, optimistic, fun. I remember, but just barely. The good old days are getting older by the minute.” There was a satisfying pop as she eased a cork from a bottle and the familiar, comforting glugging noise as the wine was decanted.

Patience brought the glasses over to the couch and handed Anna one. “To counseling,” she said and raised the glass.

“To old friends and better days,” Anna said.

Patience would drink to that. Tonight, Anna suspected, Patience would drink to anything. “Too much light,” the woman said. She turned off the lamps at the ends of the sofa and opened the drapes that had obscured the black square of night beyond the picture window.

With the lights out, the window ceased to show a blind eye, but looked out across the sparkling waters of Rock Harbor. Raspberry Island was a ragged silhouette against a pearl-gray curtain of fog that hung further out on the lake.

“It doesn’t take much here,” Patience said as she curled her little body up in an armchair. “Even a half-moon throws enough light. I do this all the time. Not all the time,” she amended. “When I can browbeat little Miss Video into turning off the television. You never had kids?”

Anna thought she sounded a bit wistful. “Never did.” She drank her wine.

“Never wanted them?”

“Never wanted them.”

“You were married, though,” Patience said. “I got that from Sandra. Widowed, she said, not divorced. Supposedly that’s easier to take. Probably depends. I would like to have been widowed, like to have widowed myself with my bare hands a time or two-” Patience stopped abruptly and fifteen seconds ticked by audibly on a clock Anna couldn’t place. “If I’d had more than a couple of tablespoons of wine I’d blame it on the drink. As it is, I shall have to accept the fact that I am an insensitive clod. Nerves-will you buy that? My mouth is just running away with me. I hope I haven’t been riding roughshod over any old wounds.”

“Talk doesn’t open them,” Anna answered truthfully.

“What does?”

“Forgetting. Thinking you’re healed, you’re as strong as you used to be, that you can leap those old buildings at a single bound. Then the wounds open and you fall and you wonder if you’ll ever be the woman you were.”

They sipped in silence, watching a late-arriving sailboat, sails furled, motoring up the channel.

“Divorce isn’t like that,” Patience said. “The wounds maybe aren’t as deep-certainly aren’t as deep-but everybody, everything rubs salt in them. Other women that look like the Other Woman, his friends, your friends, things he kept, things he didn’t get, kids that want to call Daddy every time you yell at them and come to Mommy anytime they want money. Money. God yes, money! Suddenly at thirty-five you’re shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart and dusting off your library card because you can’t afford even a paperback. At least with death you can look tragically beautiful in something black and silk you bought with the insurance money.”

Anna laughed. “Patience, you would sell orphaned virgins into white slavery before you would wear anything from Wal-Mart.”

“I would,” Patience admitted.

“Zachary wasn’t insured.” Anna wasn’t sure why she told that to Patience, it just seemed natural. “He’s been dead seven years.”

“What happened?”

“Hit by a cab crossing Ninth Avenue in New York City.” Both women laughed.

“Sorry,” Patience said.

“It’s okay. It strikes everybody funny. Me too. Comedy of the absurd, I guess. Divorce: is that when you went to work in the winery? After the divorce?” Anna moved the subject back to Patience.

“It seemed genteel somehow,” Patience said. “Paid genteel too: eleven sixty-five an hour. How anyone is expected to live on that is a mystery to me.”

Since joining the Park Service, Anna had never made anywhere near $11.65 an hour but she didn’t say so.

Patience poured the last of the wine into their glasses. Alcohol was beginning to warm Anna’s muscles, relax her brain. “Did you grow up rich?” she asked rudely.