“A handful of ibuprofen before I go to bed and I’ll be fine.”
“These men, they sound perfectly awful.”
“How do I tell Henry?”
“Be straight with him. Anything else and he’ll know you’re not being truthful.”
“It might kill him.”
“I don’t think so. I think it was the not knowing that hurt him. But how a good man like Henry could have fathered a son like this Wellington, I don’t know.”
I looked around the living room. “Where’s Walleye?”
“In the backyard, sleeping in the tent with Stevie.”
“Stevie knows Walleye will be going home tomorrow?”
She nodded. “He took it pretty hard, poor little guy.” Everywhere I looked, nothing but disappointment.
“So,” I said. “Jenny.”
“She’s confused, Cork.”
“How long has she known?”
“A few days. Her period is usually regular as clockwork. When it was overdue, she did one of those home pregnancy tests.”
“No chance the test was wrong?”
“She repeated it. Different brand, same result.”
“Does Sean know?”
“Yes.”
“What does Jenny want to do?”
“Go back in time and make different decisions would be my first guess.”
“Don’t we all. Really, what’s she thinking?”
Jo hesitated. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I heard.
“When she and Sean went for that drive to Lake Superior yesterday, it wasn’t a pleasure trip. They went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Duluth.”
“An abortion?”
“She didn’t do anything, Cork. She just wanted information.”
“Oh, Jesus, Jo. This has got to be so hard for her.”
“I’m glad you understand that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I looked at her, didn’t hide that I was hurt. “She poured all this out to you because she’s afraid of me, is that it?”
“She’s not afraid of you, Cork. But she is afraid of what you’ll think of her. You have no idea how much your respect means to her.”
I felt exhausted and empty. I laid my head against Jo’s shoulder. “I have to talk to her.”
“She knows that.”
“And we have to talk to Sean. His folks, too. Do they know?”
“He was going to tell them tonight. We’ll probably be calling them tomorrow about the same time they call us.”
“Guess this is the end of Paris.”
“It doesn’t mean their dreams will end, Cork.”
“No, but it’s one hell of a detour off the yellow brick road. What do we do?”
“What can we do? We tell her how we feel, we listen, we pray, we hope, and whatever she decides, we’re there for her.”
“Couldn’t I just spank her and send her to her room?”
“You never spanked her.”
“Maybe it’s not too late.”
She kissed the top of my head. “Ready for bed?”
“Let me check on Stevie and Walleye, then I’ll be up.”
I wandered out to the tent in the backyard. My son was in his sleeping bag, snoring softly. Walleye lay beside him. The old dog lifted his head when I peeked through the flap, and his tail brushed the tent floor.
A boy and his dog. Only, the dog belonged to someone else and would be going back when the sun came up.
I wasn’t looking forward to morning. To wresting from my son his very good friend. To telling Meloux the truth about his own son. To listening while my daughter and the father of her baby tried to sort out what the hell their future might be.
I stood there in the dark of my backyard thinking that sometimes life sucks and that’s all there is to it.
FOURTEEN
I was up early. Stevie walked into the kitchen from the backyard while I was making coffee. He rubbed his sleepy eyes.
“Hungry, guy?” I asked.
He nodded. “But I should feed Walleye first.”
From the pantry, he took the bag of dried dog food we’d bought and went back outside. Through the kitchen window, I watched him fill the bowl-he’d insisted we buy a special dish for Walleye-then he sat in the grass and petted the dog while it ate. I saw his lips move, talking to his friend. When Walleye was finished, Stevie returned to the kitchen and put the dog food back in the pantry.
“After breakfast, you want to go with me when I take him to Henry?” I asked.
He looked dismal. “Okay.”
We had raisin bran and orange juice I’d made in a pitcher from a can of frozen Minute Maid. I drank coffee. We were rinsing our dishes in the sink when Jo came in, wearing her white robe.
“We’re off to see Meloux,” I told her.
“We have to take Walleye back,” Stevie explained, sounding brave. Jo sat down and motioned Stevie to her. She hugged him. “I’m sure Henry misses him. He’s all alone out there.”
“Yeah.”
You could tell he understood, but it didn’t make him want to do cartwheels.
“How about you get Walleye into the Bronco,” I said to him. “I’ll be right there.”
When he was gone, Jo looked up at me and said, “I didn’t realize this would be so hard on him.”
I poured her a cup of coffee. “He’ll be fine.”
“You know, a turtle’s not much of a pet.”
“Don’t start, Jo.” I handed her the coffee. “I thought I heard Jenny upstairs.”
She took a sip. “She’s throwing up in the bathroom. I think she’ll go back to bed for a while after that. As soon as you get home, we should all talk.”
I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll come back in a gentle mood, promise.”
Stevie was quiet in the Bronco. He kept his arm around Walleye, who sat between us, tongue hanging out, watching through the windshield. Walleye had always seemed to possess much of the same reasonable sensibility and patience as Meloux, but I’d never had much experience with dogs and didn’t know whether it was common for pets to resemble the personalities of the people who kept them.
We drove north along Iron Lake past cabins and small resorts nestled among pines and spruce and stands of paper birch. At the north end of the lake, we turned off the paved highway onto the gravel county road that serviced the last of the resorts before the reservation began. It had been a dry summer, and the Bronco kicked up a thick tail of dust that hung a long time in the still morning air. A quarter mile along, I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw an SUV swing off the highway and plow into the cloud I’d raised. I felt a little bad throwing up all that dust, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Another mile and I pulled to the side of the road and parked near the double-trunk birch that marked the trail to Meloux’s cabin. Stevie opened his door and Walleye leaped across him eagerly. The dog’s tail was going crazy,
