find an expedient solution to his dilemma.
“So long, Dad,” I said.
“Bye, son,” he said.
I got in the car and as I headed up the drive back to the highway, I slowed and took one last look at the smoldering ruins of the Wickens farmhouse. There was nothing much left but a foundation and a few blackened timbers at what was once the back of the structure.
Something caught my eye. Something large, and black, and lumbering, moving amidst the debris that was once the farmhouse.
It was a bear.
I stopped the car, opened the door, and stood by the car, one foot on the rocker panel, a hand on the roof, ready to jump back in if I needed to.
The bear was rummaging around, hunting for food, I figured. Suddenly aware of my presence, he rose up on his haunches, sniffed the air, looked in my direction. He stared at me lazily for a moment, then, quickly losing interest, he dropped back down onto all fours, and wandered off into the woods.
There was a lot to think about on the ride back. About Dad, Dad and Lana. The revelations about my mother, and Lana’s husband. About Orville. About Bob, and what he’d done.
About evil.
Sarah met me at the door. After we kissed, and held each other for at least a minute, she said, “It’s all over the news. There was even something on CNN. But their details are really sketchy. And the office has called. Three times.”
“It’s already written,” I said. “In my head. They say how much they want?”
“They can go three thousand words, starting on front, turning inside. They hired a helicopter, took shots of the site from the air. And Lawrence called. He’s got May and Jeffrey settled in. Monday morning, they’re going to meet with some social service types, see what they can do for them. I’ve got some clothes, too, that we can drop off. And linens, stuff like that. I’ve got clothes I could give May, but I don’t know what size she is.”
“You’re pretty close,” I said. “Why not throw some stuff in, we’ll take it over. I’ve got some old
“You look tired.”
“Yeah.” I slipped my arms around her, and for a moment or so, I cried.
She made me a bacon sandwich. As I sat at the kitchen table eating, my seventeen-year-old son, Paul, breezed through long enough to grab a Coke from the fridge. “Hey, Dad,” he said, and disappeared. The phone rang while Sarah was out of the room, and I grabbed it. It was Angie, calling from the library at Mackenzie University, working on that second year of her psychology major.
“Oh, hi, Dad. I didn’t know you were back. Everything go okay up at your dad’s place? Mom didn’t say a lot.”
“Pretty much.”
“Is Mom there? I need to ask her something about what to get for a friend of mine who’s getting engaged.”
“Hang on.”
“Oh, and Dad? What do you think about us getting a dog? Paul and I were talking. We think it would be neat.”
I called Sarah to the phone and took my sandwich upstairs to my study, fired up my computer, and started writing. Ninety minutes later, I had it done. The broad strokes. The Wickenses, what they were planning, how it went wrong.
Nothing about Bob Spooner.
I phoned the city desk and said I was e-mailing them the story.
I recalled that this had all begun with a phone call while I was having lunch with my friend Trixie Snelling, and how it had seemed, up until the moment when I got word that there was a very good chance my father had been eaten by a bear, that she’d had something important on her mind. Something she was working up to telling me.
So now that my story was filed to the office, I felt I needed to make amends. I went into the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. Sarah came up to me, hugged me from the side, leaned her head into my shoulder. I gave her a squeeze back.
“You’ve filed?”
I said yes. “I figure I’ve got about a half hour before they start calling with stupid questions.”
“At the outside,” Sarah said.
“I’ll take advantage of the lull before the storm to give Trixie a call.”
“She called, while you were away, to ask about your father. To see if he’d really been eaten by a bear. I set her straight.”
“Good.”
“Zack?”
“Yes, hon?”
“Promise me. No more of this. This is not our life.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I nodded and glanced at the clock on the wall. Saturday night, eight o’clock. There was a very good chance Trixie might be with a client, but if she didn’t answer, I’d just leave a message.
I went back into the study, dialed Trixie’s personal number. She picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” I said.
“Zack,” Trixie said. “How’s your dad?”
“He’s okay.”
“Sarah said. But she said there were some other problems. Did everything go okay?”
“Things…are okay. If I weren’t so tired, I’d tell you all about it now, but as they say in the newspaper biz, you can read all about it tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Listen,” I said. “I kind of had to rush off when we were having lunch Tuesday, and maybe I’m wrong, but I had the feeling there was something you wanted to talk to me about.”
It was quiet at the other end of the line.
“Trixie?”
“Yeah?”
“If I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, tell me. You just seemed, I don’t know, like there was something you wanted to get off your chest.”
Another long pause. Finally, she spoke.
“I’m in trouble,” Trixie said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks, as always, to my agent, Helen Heller, and the Bantam Dell gang, particularly Irwyn Applebaum, Nita Taublib, Micahlyn Whitt, and Shawn O’Gallagher. And to Neetha, Paige, and Spencer, best gang ever.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
