“Can’t,” he said.
“Coward.”
“No, really. I just stopped by to tell Jenny and Annie I won’t be opening Sam’s Place today.”
Jo turned back to her recalcitrant crust and lay on it with the rolling pin. “Going fishing?”
“Hunting’s more like it. A woman’s lost in the Boundary Waters. I’m going in to help find her.”
The crust rolled up with the rolling pin as if it were metal and the roller a magnet.
“Jenny’s at Sean’s. You can reach her there. Annie’s helping Rose at church. They should be home pretty soon. I heard Arkansas Willie Raye’s out at Grandview. Annie said he stopped by Sam’s Place yesterday.”
“He wanted to shoot the breeze about Marais and the old days,” Cork said.
“I didn’t even know he was still alive.”
“He definitely is,” Cork said. “And kicking.”
He leaned against the stove, watching Jo struggle with the pie crust. She wore a powder blue sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up. A small trickle of sweat crawled from her blond hair onto the soft down of her temple and then her cheek. He studied the curves of her hips as they rolled to her labor. He felt an old desire rising up, one that hadn’t visited him in quite a while, tempting and, at the same time, frightening.
“I’d better go,” he said.
Before Cork could move, Stevie burst through the back door. He ran and leaped into Cork’s arms. “Daddy!”
Cork nuzzled his son, who smelled of sunshine and dry leaves.
“Can you play football?” Stevie asked eagerly.
“Sorry, buddy. Not today.”
Disappointment flooded Stevie’s small face.
“I have to go away for a while. A day or two. When I come back, we’ll toss the old pigskin until our arms fall off. Okay?” He tousled Stevie’s black hair.
Stevie pushed out of Cork’s arms. “Okay,” he said, but his voice betrayed him.
Jo put down her rolling pin and knelt to Stevie. “Tell you what. Right after dinner, we’ll make some cookies shaped like footballs, you and me, then we’ll toss them down our mouths till our arms fall off. What do you say?”
“Cookies?” Stevie’s dark eyes were pools of concern. “Yours?”
“We’ll make them together. They’ll be ours.”
“All right,” he finally agreed. He turned around and drifted back outside.
“Smooth, counselor.” Cork smiled.
“I’m great at negotiations. Especially when the opposing party is six years old.”
She followed Cork to the front door and they stood a moment, awkwardly, as if they were on a first date.
“I’ll stop by soon as I get back so I can keep my promise to Stevie.”
Jo nodded. “Fine.”
Cork started down the walk. He was dressed in loose khakis and a red T-shirt. In the last year, he’d lost weight, and he looked good and strong. He’d stopped smoking, too. A promise to another woman-Jo knew and accepted.
A couple of weeks earlier, Jo had taken the girls and Stevie down to the Twin Cities so they could cheer Cork on in the marathon. Although she didn’t say anything to anyone, she felt a good deal of admiration for him-a man in his midforties, running his first marathon. In the best of ways, he was like the old Cork, before so many circumstances had come between them, split them apart, sent them both into the arms of other lovers.
“Cork,” she called suddenly, and went quickly to him as he stood by the Bronco.
He turned to her. Although his face was full in the sun, there seemed so much in it that was shadowed, so much unspoken between them.
“What is it?”
She felt foolish, not certain at all what she’d meant to say. “Just-oh, just take care of yourself.” Then she surprised them both. She leaned to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Thanks.” He looked slightly bewildered. “I-uh-I will.”
She watched the Bronco pull away. The street was quiet. Sunlight dripped over the houses along the block like butter melting over stacks of pancakes. From across the street drifted the aroma of Birdie Frank’s Sauerbraten and the sound of Birdie in her kitchen whistling “That Old Black Magic.” Jo felt empty and out of place.
A moment later, she heard Rose call out. Turning, she saw her sister and Annie approaching along the sidewalk from the other end of the block.
“Was that Dad?” Annie asked.
“Yes. He stopped by to say don’t come out to Sam’s Place. He’s not opening today.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t even invite him to dinner,” Rose said.
“I did,” Jo replied. “He declined.”
“Wisely,” Annie said. Then she ducked, as if her mother were going to swing.
“For that, you get to set the table.” Jo pointed an admonishing finger toward the house.
Jo stood with Rose in the sunlight after Annie went in. She was looking where the Bronco had gone.
“Why don’t you just ask him back?” Rose suggested. “He’d come in a minute.”
“He’d come for the children. I don’t want that.”
“Look in his eyes, Jo. He’d come for you, too.”
“You’re an incurable romantic, Rose.” Jo turned away and headed toward the shadow of the house. She felt suddenly weary, though it was not even noon.
“If you’d just listen to your heart for once, darn it-” Rose began to say.
Jo closed the front door before Rose could finish.
Rose stormed into the house behind her. “You’re so damn stubborn.” She followed Jo to the kitchen and stopped abruptly, staring about her in disbelief. “My God. What are you trying to do?”
“Make the cherry pie. I’m just having a little trouble with the crust.”
Rose smiled. The smile turned to a giggle, the giggle to a full-blown laugh that Rose couldn’t stop. She shook like a sack full of puppies. She laughed hard and crossed her legs. “I think I’m going to pee.”
“What’s so damn funny?”
Rose went to the refrigerator and, from somewhere near the back, pulled out a package that she held out to Jo. The package contained two round-perfectly round-and flat-perfectly flat-premade pie crusts.
“I haven’t made my own crust in years, Jo. Pillsbury does it for me. And so much better than I ever did.”
15
The dirt and gravel road cut alongside a wide meadow full of marsh grass and cattails. The grass was yellow in the late afternoon sun and redwing blackbirds perched on the swaying cattails. Cork took stock of the sky. Long wisps of feathery clouds trailed across the blue. High cirrus clouds. Ice crystals.
“Much farther?” Willie Raye asked.
“Couple of miles.”
“You’re sure this is the way Shiloh went in?”
“Louis is.” Cork swerved to miss a turtle. “You ever been in the Boundary Waters?”
“Never.”
“It runs all the way to the border. Continues on the other side, but the Canadians call it the Quetico there. More than two million acres of tall trees, blue lakes, and fast rivers.”
A white RV came toward them. Cork waved as they edged past one another on the narrow road.
“It’s funny,” he went on. “Spring, you battle ticks. Summer, it’s the mosquitoes and no-see-ums. Then come the black flies. Acid rain is killing the fish and trees. But people still line up for permits like this was Disneyland. There’s something about this country that’s like nowhere else on earth.”
“Do you go into the Boundary Waters often?”
