“I’m sure your mother is very tired-” Rose began.
But Jo reached across the table, angled the shaker successfully on a pinch of grains, and said, “Of course I’ll play. Let me eat first and change my clothes, okay? Why don’t you go gather all your Legos and decide what we’ll build.”
Stevie disappeared. Rose poured a cup of coffee and sat at the table with her sister.
“Delicious,” Jo said with her mouth full.
“Thanks.” A small, satisfied smile appeared on Rose’s plain, wide face. “I remember Mom used to come home from the base hospital and I’d have dinner ready. We’d sit down, and you’d always have something interesting or funny to tell her. You know, a place to start the conversation. I used to love that time, all of us at the table together.”
“Mom would start her drinking then,” Jo reminded her.
“Not always.”
“Too often.”
“She was alone. Taking care of us alone.”
“We did the caretaking, Rose.”
Rose stared at her. At first the look held hurt and mild anger, but that passed quickly.
“You’re too hard,” she said.
“I just try to be realistic.”
Rose stood up and looked down at her. “Maybe you should try being forgiving instead.” She took her coffee and headed back to the sink to finish the dishes.
The food in Jo’s mouth seemed tasteless all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m just worried.”
Rose came back and sat beside her. “What is it?”
“They’ve lost contact with Cork and the others.”
“How?”
“Equipment failure, they say.”
“But you don’t believe them.”
“Oh, Rose, I don’t know what to believe. Or who.”
Rose put her plump, wonderful arms around Jo, who could smell the lilac powder her sister always used after her afternoon bath.
“What does your instinct tell you?” Rose asked.
“Never trust a man. Period.”
They both managed to laugh. Jo briefly related the events of the day, the Benedettis, what Schanno had discovered, the confrontation at the Quetico.
“Somebody must be lying.”
“But who?” Jo asked.
“Do you think Cork and the others are in real danger?”
“My instincts say yes. But I don’t know how to help them.” Jo pushed her plate away, put her arms on the table, and laid her head down. “God, Rose, I feel so tired, so confused, so fucking responsible. For everything.”
“First-child syndrome. And Catholic to boot.” Rose stroked Jo’s hair gently. “When I said you should be forgiving, I meant you should try it on yourself as well. Look, you’ve always been the smartest woman I know. You’ll figure something out.”
Jo hugged her sister tightly and for a long time. “You’re the best, you know.”
“I know.” Rose finally pulled away. “I’ll finish the dishes. I think you’ve got a construction job waiting for you in the living room.”
Jo spent the evening building a Lego castle with Stevie. She put him to bed at eight and read to him from The Indian in the Cupboard. Annie came home at nine. Jenny on the stroke of ten. Jo was at the kitchen table drinking herbal tea. When Jenny breezed through the door, her face was bright as a harvest moon.
“How did the studying go?”
“Oh, fine.”
Jenny smiled from a distant place. She went to the refrigerator, pulled out a carton of milk, and poured herself half a glass. She took a couple of cookies from the cookie jar and leaned back against the counter.
“Mom, how old were you when you got married?”
“A lot older than you.”
“How did Dad propose?”
“Badly.” Jo sipped her tea and smiled as she remembered. “He took me out on a cruise on Lake Michigan. I’m sure it cost him half a week’s pay. He’d never been on a boat like that before. The lake was a little rough. He got seasick. He proposed to me and threw up.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did you accept? I mean, right then and there?”
“Uh-huh. He looked so pathetic, I couldn’t say no.”
Annie stepped into the kitchen from the other room. The concern in her voice stopped the conversation dead. “Mom, there’s someone outside again, watching. In the shadow of the lilac hedge.”
“Turn out the light,” Jo said.
Annie hit the switch. Jo went to the kitchen window and peered out. She saw the figure, black against the shadowed hedge, motionless, nearly lost in the night.
“What is it?” Rose asked. She came into the kitchen knotting the tie around her robe. “Why’s everybody standing in the dark?”
“Call the sheriff’s office, Rose,” Jo said. “Get someone over here right now.”
Rose didn’t pause to ask why. She went straight to the wall phone.
In less than five minutes, a sheriff’s department cruiser rolled up the street and stopped near the lilac hedge. Two deputies with flashlights converged on the figure, which had not moved. Jo couldn’t see a face, but whoever the lurker was, he didn’t resist. The deputies brought him between them toward the kitchen.
“Your Peeping Tom,” Deputy Marsha Dross said, presenting the offender at the back door.
“Sean?” Jenny peered around her mother.
“Hi, Jen.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“Nothing. Just-you know-looking at your house.”
“Why?”
“Sean, were you out there last night?” Jo asked.
He was dressed in a black leather jacket, black pants, black boots. Long and lanky, dripping wet, and chagrined.
“It’s all right, Sean. I’d just like to know.”
“Yes,” he said. He looked at Jenny to gauge the degree of his transgression. “I just didn’t want to go.”
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Annie said dramatically from somewhere in the kitchen.
“Thanks, Marsha,” Jo said.
“No problem. ’Night.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. O’Connor,” Scan said.
“Good night. Sean. Go home.”
From the kitchen window, Jenny watched him walk away. She turned back. “Kind of embarrassing for him.”
“It could have been worse.” Jo smiled. “He could have thrown up.”
In her nightgown, she switched off the bedroom light and stood at the window. The rain had turned completely to snow. By morning, everything would be covered in flawless white. All the faults of the earth would be invisible, as if forgiven.
Forgive yourself, Rose had advised. Jo wished it were that easy. But when the wounds you’d inflicted went so deep, was there anything that could heal them? When your own soul felt so broken, could anything make it whole? She closed her eyes and said a prayer again for those out that night in the wilderness. Then she crawled under the covers. It was a large bed, and she’d taken a long time to become accustomed to lying in it by herself. Usually, she
