“Is the guy named Aaron?” the man relayed over the mike.
“That’s a roger, Seth,” came the reply.
“Tell him I’ve got some of his party here with me. We’ll be coming in.”
“Will do.”
The man in the launch said, “My name’s Seth Bascombe. Tell you what, folks. There’s an old Indian fishing camp just ahead. What say you tie up to the dock there and come on with me to Young’s Bay Landing. You can see about this Aaron, and we can figure what to do about your missing parties.”
“Can we go back out looking tonight?”
Stephen asked. Bascombe stroked his beard as if considering, then shook his head. “Son, the truth is it would be best to wait until morning for that. Mine’s one of the last boats still out searching, and I count myself lucky to still be afloat in all this damn debris. It may be that your missing parties made it to one of the inhabited islands, and we’ll be hearing from them before too long anyway. And to be honest, I’m pooped. Need some shut-eye. We’ll head back out at first light. Ought to be a flotilla along with us then. You all onboard with that?”
Their reluctance was obvious to Rose, but Bascombe’s wisdom was hard to argue with, and so they all agreed.
They crossed the international border in the dark. Once they’d left the area the storm had devastated, Bascombe made good time across what seemed, under the face of the moon, to be a lake of liquid silver.
“Young’s Bay Landing,” he called out, pointing toward a cluster of lights looming ahead.
He throttled back, and they entered a narrow passage and motored to a brightly lit dock where several people stood waiting. Bascombe eased the boat against the dock and asked Stephen to toss the bow line. One of the men caught it and looped it around a piling, and someone else tied the stern line to a cleat. Lots of hands helped Rose and the others from the launch.
“Everyone all right here?” The question came from a woman who scrutinized them with what appeared to Rose to be a trained eye.
“No,” Rose said. “My husband’s hurt. A broken ankle, maybe.”
“Let’s get him inside so I can take a look.”
Two men flanked Mal and gave him their shoulders for support, and he hobbled between them toward a long, lighted building that stood a dozen yards back from the dock.
The others followed, except for a tall, lanky young man who hung back. Rose hung back with him.
“Hello, Aaron,” she said.
She knew him from pictures Jenny had sent, knew him from the talks she’d had with her niece, the kinds of talks Jenny would have had with her mother if Jo were still alive. Jenny had told her Aaron was twenty-nine, but Rose saw something in his face, pinched and critical, that made him seem much older. For Jenny’s sake, she wanted to like him, and, instead of a handshake, she gave him a hug.
“You must be Rose,” he said. “Jenny’s told me all about you.” He looked toward the building where everyone had gone. “She’s told me about all of you.”
They stood together under the light on the deserted dock. Night insects flew about them. From inside the building came the hubbub of voices, and Rose heard the kids and Mal telling their story.
“You must be worried sick,” she said.
His hair was the color of wet sand and unkempt. His eyes were deep green and heavy with fatigue and concern. “They never showed up,” he said. “We could see the storm from here. It looked like some kind of monster barreling across the lake. Folks said it was headed straight up through something called the Narrows and God help anyone caught in it there.”
“She’s with her father,” Rose said, taking his arm. “If anyone could keep them safe, it’s Cork.”
She walked him into the building, which turned out to be a general store and cafe. Mal was at the center of the gathering inside, his injured ankle cradled in the lap of the woman who’d met them on the dock. With her fingertips, she felt carefully around the bruised area and finally pronounced, “I don’t think it’s a break, just a really bad sprain. Ice,” she said to no one in particular. “We need ice. And a towel.”
“Are you a doctor?” Rose asked.
“No, but around here you see everything,” the woman replied. “Fishhooks through the thumb, fingers nearly sliced off by some drunk trying to fillet a walleye, heart attacks, you name it.”
“Lynn here is the closest thing we got on the Angle to Florence Nightingale,” Bascombe said.
“Lynn Belgea,” the woman said and offered her hand to Mal. She was perhaps fifty, small, with a plain face honest as the day was long. “I’m a nurse practitioner. We probably ought to get you to Warroad and have that ankle X-rayed, just to be on the safe side.”
“I can drive him, Lynn,” one of the men offered. “Got my truck outside.”
Mal waved off the offer. “Ice and ibuprofen’ll be fine. We have some folks still out there on the lake who need finding.”
“Those two Seth called about?” Belgea asked.
“Yes,” Stephen replied. “My dad and my sister.”
Bascombe said, “I explained to them we’d best wait until morning.”
Belgea nodded. “Seth’s right. Morning’s safest and will come soon enough. We got lots of folks still unaccounted for. Don’t need to add any more to that number by sending boats out in the dark. Where you folks staying?”
“Our accommodations are somewhere out there,” Mal said, waving toward the lake. “We docked our houseboat.”
“Look, folks,” Bascombe said, his eyes drifting over Mal and Stephen and Anne, and finally Rose. “I have a little resort on Oak Island. Got some empty cabins. Be glad to put you up while we look for your family.”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Mr. Bascombe,” Rose said.
“It’s Seth. And anybody here’d do the same. On the Angle, folks help each other out. There’s a lot of territory between us and the rest of the world.”
Belgea, who looked as tired as everyone else, smiled wanly and said, “Sometimes up here, I get the feeling there is no ‘rest of the world.’ ”
SIXTEEN
Bascombe said, “You folks hungry?”
They’d landed at an unlit dock on the far side of Oak Island, a fifteen-minute boat ride from the mainland. Bascombe had shown them to their cabins, small and rustic and with only the very basic amenities inside: two bunks in each, a table with a single lamp, a sink with a mirror, and a small bathroom/shower. No bedding on the bunks, no towels hanging on the bathroom racks. Bascombe had apologized for the austerity.
“I don’t rent them out anymore, and when I did, it was to fishermen who didn’t particularly care about their comfort. They came to catch walleye. I’ve got bedding and towels and such at the lodge, if you want to come up and snag them.”
Rose and Mal had taken one cabin, Stephen and Aaron another, and Anne had been given a cabin to herself. They were all ready to get their sheets and blankets and turn in, but Bascombe’s question about food seemed to stir the realization in them all that they hadn’t eaten since lunch.
Stephen leaped at the offer. “You bet,” he said.
“We don’t want to put you out any more than we already have,” Rose told their host.
They stood in front of the open door to the cabin Rose and Mal had been given, in a drizzle of light that came from the table lamp inside. Bascombe held a big flashlight, which he swung toward the largest of the buildings in the resort.
“Up here, it’s a long trip to the grocery store, so I keep the lodge pretty well stocked. And the kitchen’s in good shape. I’m not much of a cook, but I can rustle you up something.”
“Aunt Rose is the best cook in Minnesota,” Stephen offered eagerly.
“That so?” A broad smile spread across Bascombe’s long, broad face. “You want to give me a hand, Rose or,
