“You’re a man. I’ve spent my whole life in a business dominated by men. I know what men think.”
“Men like Max Cavanaugh?”
“Max is different.”
“How?”
She looked at him. “Are you really trying to get me to open up to you? Because if you are, you’re doing a shitty job.”
He kept his eyes on the road ahead, but he could feel her glare.
“Hell,” she finally said, settling back. “Are you married?”
“I was. My wife died.”
It had been well over a year, but the actual words still felt alien to him, and every time he was forced to say them, he wondered if they would ever come easy.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softening just a bit.
“Gauging by the rock and the gold band on your finger, I’d say you’re married.”
“To a wonderful guy named Steve, whom I love very much. Given what you’re clearly assuming about me, you may not believe that.”
“I don’t know you well enough to assume anything about you.”
Cork swerved to avoid a deer lurking at the edge of the road.
“Look, Max speaks highly of you, so I’m going to level,” she said. “I knew him a long time ago. Before Steve. We were in graduate school together at Carnegie Mellon.”
“You knew him well back then?”
“Very well.”
“The one that got away?”
“I let him go. He made it clear from the beginning that he had no intention of ever settling down, having a family. And those were things I wanted very much.”
“For two people who let go of each other a long time ago, you looked pretty cozy on the dock.”
“We’ve stayed in touch over the years, okay? He needed to talk to someone about Lauren. It’s tearing him up, and he doesn’t have anyone here he feels he can confide in.”
Cork said, “I appreciate what you’re telling me.”
“And I’d prefer it wasn’t something you share with people.”
“Worried about conflict of interest where Vermilion One is concerned?”
“The appearance of it. In my mind, there is no conflict of interest.”
“Folks around here would give a whole lot to know your thinking about the mine right now.”
“I still have a lot of mine to look at. I’m excellent at what I do. And fair. If it’s a good site for nuclear storage, I’ll say so.” She was quiet again, then: “I have children, Cork. I have a home I love. I understand how people here must feel.”
“But in the end, you have a job to do?”
“In the end, don’t we all? And isn’t a part of who we are about the integrity we bring to our work?”
It was a tough point to concede, but Cork understood exactly where she was coming from.
He delivered Kufus to the sheriff’s office, along with the evidence bags. He stayed while Dross and Larson and Rutledge interviewed her.
As the two men drew their questioning to a close, Dross signaled Cork to follow, and they exited the interview room.
In the hallway, Dross said, “We got a preliminary indication from Agent Upchurch this evening. All the skeletal remains are female and, except for one, appear to be Native American. The one that isn’t was the one with the bullet in her spine.”
“Monique Cavanaugh,” Cork said. “Mother and daughter killed with the same weapon. Curiouser and curiouser.”
Cork escorted Genie Kufus back to her hotel. He walked her to her room, where she opened the door and allowed him inside to check the safety of her lodging.
“Lock your door,” he said as he prepared to leave.
“See? Just like a man. Of course I intend to lock my door.”
“Sorry,” Cork said. “Habit.”
“Are there any women in your life?”
“A couple.”
“They haven’t taught you anything, have they?”
“They’ve tried. Night,” Cork said.
“Good night.” Then she added, though it seemed to go against her better judgment, “Thank you.”
She closed the door behind him.
He waited in the hallway until he heard the lock click.
SEVENTEEN
Much earlier that night, when he saw how things were going, Cork had called Judy Madsen and asked her to supervise the closing of Sam’s Place. She’d agreed, though reluctantly, and had said, “You know, if I were a bona fide partner in this enterprise or, heck, owned the whole damn thing, I’d feel a lot better about this.”
Cork had never before seriously considered taking her up on her offer, but that night he thought the unthinkable. He thought,
At the house on Gooseberry Lane, he fed Trixie and walked her. Afterward he carted in the boxes he’d taken from Millie Joseph’s room. He carried them to the office on the first floor, the office that had, for nearly twenty years, been his wife’s, and he set them on the floor next to the desk. Then he stopped, caught in one of those moments that still ambushed him sometimes. He reached out and ran his hand along the polish of the desk, recalling the day Jo had bought the old antique. He remembered the overcast sky, the farm where the estate sale had been held, the look on his wife’s face when she’d seen the desk that had been stored in the barn, covered with dust and strung with cobwebs. Somehow beneath that thick skin of neglect, she’d been able to see the beauty waiting to be rediscovered. She refinished the piece herself, over the course of the summer that she’d been pregnant with Stephen, and now, sometimes, when Cork’s hand touched the wood, it was as if he was touching Jo’s hand as well.
The moment set him to wandering. He left the office and walked the first floor, encountering apparitions. Trixie followed him, but only Cork saw the ghosts, which were the memories that haunted him and made him happy. They were his memories of being a father and husband. Memories of his children and Jo and him gathered around the dining room table for the pleasure of a thousand meals he’d thoughtlessly taken for granted. Of the games they’d played in the living room—Operation, Monopoly, Risk! Of wrestling with the kids when they were small enough and the girls not so worried about being girls. Of Jo and him on the sofa together in that quiet hour after Jenny and Anne and Stephen were asleep and before they themselves, wearied, had trudged upstairs to bed. Often in that sofa hour, Jo would slip her feet, cold always, under him for warmth.
So small and so precious, the moments lost to him now, lost to him forever except as the ghosts of memory.
He realized that he’d forgotten to eat, a chronic occurrence since Stephen had been gone and Cork had become responsible for feeding only himself. In a saucepan, he stirred together milk and Campbell’s tomato soup, and when it was hot he crumbled in some crackers. He grabbed a cold beer to wash it down.
He returned to the office and ate at the desk while he checked his e-mails, hoping for word from his children. He wasn’t disappointed. Jenny had sent him a short note updating him on a home painting project she and Aaron had undertaken. Anne had sent him a longer note. Her work in El Salvador was hard and the conditions were difficult and she was tired. But the bottom line was that she was doing what she felt she was meant to do and was
