her away?”
Joe was hurt by the question, and pulled quickly to the side of the road so he could turn in his seat and face her.
“No, honey, of course we’re not angry with you,” he assured her. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“But I was responsible for her,” Sheridan said, fighting tears that seemed to come, Joe thought, much more easily than they used to.
“That’s never even crossed our minds, Sheridan,” Joe said. “Never.”
As they pulled out into the road, Joe restrained a heavy sigh. He felt badly that he hadn’t seen this coming, hadn’t thought to talk to Sheridan about this earlier.
It had been rough on Sheridan and Lucy, Joe knew. They missed April, and they missed the way their mother used to be. Marybeth had seesawed between snapping at them and smothering them with physical affection. Lucy had complained to him that she didn’t know what to say to her mother because she never knew what reaction she would get.
Joe knew he was far from faultless as well. He felt distant, and uninterested in so many of the things that used to give him joy. His thoughts were still up there on the mountain, in the compound, in the snow. He sometimes forgot that the living members of his family were in front of him and needed his attention.
“Your mom will be all right,” Joe said. “She’s tough.”
Sheridan nodded.
“We’ve never really talked about what happened up there on the mountain, Dad,” she said. “It seems like the good guys turned out to be the bad guys, and the bad guys weren’t all that bad.”
Joe smiled. “That’s a pretty good way to put it.”
“I can’t really sort it out,” Sheridan confessed.
“Sheridan, it’s all about accountability,” he said after a pause. It was something he had thought a lot about recently.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that people should be accountable for their actions. They
Sheridan sat silently for a few moments.
“Who is accountable for me losing a sister for no good reason?”
Joe frowned. “I am, to a certain degree . . .”
“No, you’re not!”
“Yes, honey, I am,” Joe said, looking straight ahead out the window. “I didn’t protect her as well as I should have. I didn’t get her back.”
“Dad!” Tears rolled down Sheridan’s face.
“Others are even more accountable,” he said.
That evening, after dinner, the telephone rang. It was Robey Hersig.
“Joe,” Hersig said.
Joe could tell that something was wrong. There was no greeting, no small talk, no mention of the coming storm.
“Yup.”
“We got an early look at the findings of the joint FBI and Forest Service investigation. Munker and Melinda Strickland were not only exonerated, they were commended for their actions. There will be a formal announcement tomorrow.”
Joe squeezed the receiver as if to crush it.
“How could this happen, Robey?”
“Joe, you’ve got to stay calm.”
“I’m calm.”
He looked up to see Marybeth staring at him from where she had turned near the sink. It was obvious she could tell what was happening by reading his face. Joe watched as her expression went cold and her fists clenched.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Hersig said. “We knew this was a possibility. You and I discussed it. With an internal investigation and all . . . well, they weren’t too likely to find that their own people screwed up. Remember, these are the Feds—the FBI. We knew that going in.”
Joe said nothing.
“Joe, promise me you’ll stay calm.”
Marybeth had run upstairs to the bedroom and closed the door after Joe told her what Hersig had reported. He needed to give her some time, he thought, before he went up there. He needed some time to figure out what to say that wasn’t angry and bitter. Grabbing his coat from the rack in the mud room, he went outside into the dark to try to clear his head.
It was cold, and there was humidity in the air. The stars were blocked out by clouds. After two months, there would be snow coming again. For some reason, he welcomed it. He zipped his coat as he strode up the walk toward the picket fence.
