The Winter Lodge

now damaged by him. He hated himself for doing that, for inflicting wounds she didn’t deserve. By the time she was on the road, headed back to the city, he’d nearly forgotten how they’d met. Was it at a summer concert at Woodstock, or at a bar down in Kingston? Maybe she was one of the women his mother had set him up with. Although his father had never forgiven him for becoming a cop and moving to a tiny river town, his mother kept trying to bring him back into the fold, introducing him to polished, educated young women as though they were offerings.

He ought to swear off women altogether. But that was impossible. Women were…like air. Necessary to survive.

He could do better. He would do better. It was just a matter of focus and discipline. These were things he considered himself good at. They were traits that had been drilled into him, and he practiced them every day on the job. It ought to be a simple matter to extend that to his personal life. Why did he even need a personal life, anyway? He should stick with what he was good at—police work. Crime investigation and crisis intervention, public safety, tactical awareness, bringing offenders to justice were all he’d ever wanted to do. That’s the ticket, he thought. Focus on the job.

Each day as he dressed for the morning briefing, he felt a sense of irony as he put on his protective vest, his carbon-fiber holster and ASP. His own father had sponsored the state regulation requiring body armor for peace officers. Now that Rourke was a grown man, Drayton McKnight was suddenly interested in protecting his son.

Rourke held steady to his vow, focusing on what he was good at. He worked overtime for the good citizens of Avalon—and for the bad ones, too. Sometimes his calls were absurd—a citizen complained that his neighbor’s black Lab kept fouling his yard. The next day, the dog’s owner reported that someone had spray painted a Day-Glo orange obscenity on the side of his dog. Other times, they were heartbreaking—a high-school girl overdosed after being sexually assaulted. An elderly citizen had been scammed out of her life savings. He treated each call as a serious matter, from a complaint about a loud party to a domestic disturbance. His job was not exactly an adventure, but this was the right place for him. Sometimes he thought he was crazy to make his life here, a spectator to Jenny and Joey’s love affair, but he felt a deep sense of connection to Avalon. This was where, as a boy, he’d discovered what freedom was.

He used his personal time to study—negotiation, administration, community relations. He adopted dogs that had been impounded or abandoned and devoted his free time to training them. Every night at the end of his shift, he checked his e-mail. Joey was an excellent correspondent, and with e-mail, communication was instantaneous. Rourke sometimes learned breaking news before it broke. Despite the screening process, Joey offered a vivid picture of his life in an undisclosed location, which seemed to consist of physical discomfort and boredom interspersed with the pure adrenalin rush of life-or-death action. Joey ended nearly each note with a reference to Jenny: “Keep an eye on my girl.” “Eat a kolache for me.” “Tell her I’ll be home before she knows it.”

Lately, his battalion seemed to be on the move, and Joey’s correspondence was more sporadic. He was going on night ops now, often transported with his battalion in a specially configured Chinook helo. He had a stomach bug but concealed it because he didn’t want to miss out on the action, which sounded typical of Joey.

Rourke was in the backyard one night, letting the dogs out for one last run, when he heard the phone ring. Although it was well past ten, he stayed up late with them to make up for his long hours on the job. He gave the soggy tennis ball one final lob and sprinted to the kitchen, wiping his hand on his jeans and then searching for the handset. Too late. By the time he found it wedged between the sofa cushions, the voice mail had kicked on. Muttering with impatience, he listened to the message.

“It’s me,” she said, and didn’t have to explain who “me” was. Ordinarily, she would offer a cheerful greeting, but tonight there was something in her voice. Something that froze Rourke in his tracks. “Please,” she continued. “I need you to come over. Please.”

He forgot he was a public safety officer as he drove to her place, running stop signs and speeding as though pursued by demons. He surged into the driveway, got out of the car and took the porch steps three at a time.

Jenny was waiting for him at the door. He knew before she even said a word. One look at her face, and he knew. Joey.

She was drinking champagne—the bottle of Cristal she’d been saving for Joey’s homecoming, and it was nearly gone. She shook her head, mute, and then seemed to melt against him, pressing her cheek to his chest. He set aside her glass and held her. She didn’t cry, didn’t make a sound, but she was shaking from head to toe.

“Tell me,” he whispered, stirring the cinnamon-scented hair by her ear. “You can tell me.”

“Not yet,” she said. “Just…let’s stay like this for a minute.”

Any inkling of hope he had of being wrong died in that moment. Under ordinary circumstances, he and Jenny tried to avoid physical contact. It was an unspoken agreement between them, enacted the moment she got engaged to Joey. She and Rourke were too volatile together and always had been. When he was around her, the surface of his skin seemed to heat and the world shrank to the number of square inches beneath her feet. And yet she was forbidden territory.

Tonight’s circumstances were far from ordinary, though, and this embrace, open and raw, was the only