Heaven's keep

plane dropped from the sky. And he wondered, wondered deeply, wondered sadly where she’d come to rest. And he wondered if he would ever know.

They set down at the Hot Springs airfield, where Cork and Stephen helped Bolt transfer his equipment to his old pickup while Rude secured the chopper.

Bolt paused before he climbed into his cab to leave. He looked into Stephen’s eyes. “Son, I don’t know if I ought to be wishing I found something up there. But seems to me since I didn’t, maybe you still got something to hope for.”

“Thank you for trying,” Stephen said, and he shook the man’s hand.

As Bolt drove off, Lame Deer Nightwind came from where he’d momentarily parked his Super Cub. “I need to get back to my own place before the storm hits. Anything I can do, Cork, let me know.”

“You’ve already been a big help, Lame. Thanks for everything.”

Nightwind put his hand on Stephen’s shoulder. “I don’t say this to many men, but I admire everything about you, son. I wish things had turned out different.” He headed back to his plane and a few minutes later was airborne.

Rude stood in the gathering gloom of the afternoon. The first flakes began to fall, and he looked up at the sky. “Dewey’ll call off the search, at least until this passes.”

“He’ll call it off for good,” Cork said. “It’s what I’d do. Where haven’t we looked?”

Rude nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. You did everything you could. We all did.”

“You want to come over for dinner, you’re welcome to.”

“Thanks, but I think we’d like to be alone tonight.”

“Sure.” Rude reached out his hand one last time. “Take care, guys.” He got into his pickup and headed away.

Cork and Stephen stood alone at the edge of the airstrip. The snow drifted down around them like ash from a fire. It was quiet and the air was strangely still, but that would soon change. Cork could feel it. Even in the basin of the Bighorn River, where sometimes the storms didn’t blow, something big was about to hit.

“She’s gone,” Stephen said. He stared toward the mountains. “She’s really gone.”

He’d held his back straight through the whole ordeal, but now Stephen bent and began, quietly, to cry.

Cork put his arms around his son and looked toward the mountains. Up there the snow was already falling heavily, burying everything more deeply. Beneath it, the grass and flowers of the meadows would lie dormant until spring, when they would rise again. Beneath it, animals lay curled in holes and in mountain caves where they would sleep through the dark, cold months ahead, and wake in the spring. And beneath it somewhere, God alone knew where, lay Jo, who would neither wake nor rise.

“Come on, Stephen,” Cork said gently. “It’s time to go home.”

PART II

FOUND

EIGHTEEN

In the weeks and months after, as the details of Jo’s final hour became known to him, Cork cobbled together a scene, played out again and again in his mind when he lay alone in bed at night, or while waiting for the pancake batter to bubble on the griddle, or in a thousand unexpected moments when the image would fall on him suddenly like a thief intent on stealing his heart. Small details differed: what blew in the wind across the hotel parking lot; Jo’s private thoughts; the words exchanged between her and LeDuc, exchanges that Cork knew would have taken place but the subject of which-mending the rift in her marriage-came mostly from his own deep yearning. Some of the elements were, of course, true. What the shuttle driver had reported of the conversations in the van. The recording Jo left on voice mail. The final radio transmission from the pilot as he lost altitude. Cork never allowed himself to imagine beyond the start of that precipitous descent. He held himself back from going with Jo to her final moment. That was a place he knew his heart couldn’t bear to be.

And so time passed, and although there were many periods when Cork yearned deeply for Jo, his life went on. And nearly six months later, the time finally came when he realized that for a full day he’d forgotten to imagine his wife’s last hour. And he wept as if he’d betrayed her, though he knew it was not so.

“Stephen,” Cork called up the stairs. “If you don’t get a move on, we’ll be late.”

“I’m coming!” Stephen yelled back.

“That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago. What’s taking so long?”

Trixie came bounding down the stairs, and behind her came Stephen, tall and in a suit and tie.

“My God,” Cork said. “You look downright handsome.”

“I don’t care about handsome. I just want to look nice.”

“You look stunning, buddy.”

“You don’t look half bad yourself,” Stephen said and gave his father a playful punch. “What time is Hugh picking us up?”

Cork glanced at his watch. “Should be here any minute.”

“I’ve never ridden in a limo,” Stephen said.

“Just a big car. I’m guessing that when you look back at all the firsts in your life, a limo ride won’t even make the top twenty.”

Stephen went to the window and checked the street. “How long do you think this’ll take?”

“Couple of hours, maybe. Why? Got a hot date?”

“I’m going fishing with Gordy Hudacek. We’re taking his dad’s new boat over to Grace Cove to do some fishing.”

“That’s the cigarette boat with the twin Merc engines, right? Give me a break. That boat’s all about speed. You’re going to run it over to Grace Cove just to see how fast it’ll get there.”

“Well, sure, that’s part of it. But we’re going to fish, too.”

“Middle of the day? Grace Cove?” Cork shook his head. “You won’t even get a nibble. You want to catch something, you should be dropping a line off Finger Point.”

“Dad, I’ve been fishing Iron Lake all my life. I know what I’m doing.”

“Make you a deal, then. You catch anything in Grace Cove, I’ll fry it up tonight, along with my special potatoes O’Connor, and I’ll throw together some coleslaw. You come back empty-handed, you’re responsible for dinner.”

“Deal,” Stephen said with confidence. “Is Hugh eating with us?”

“Haven’t invited him. Should I?”

“Yeah. And tell him you’ll be serving walleye.”

In the long winter months following his mother’s disappearance, Stephen had done his grieving. He’d arrived finally at a place of acceptance and, in truth, had reached that place before his father. Cork believed that partly this was because, having gone to Wyoming, Stephen felt he’d done all he could for his mother. And partly it was because Henry Meloux had worked with Stephen to help him come to this understanding and others about death. And partly it was because Stephen still had his whole life ahead of him and so much of Cork’s life felt gone. And partly-the worst part-it was because when Jo left she’d left in anger and Cork had never had a chance to make that right. He’d held a memorial service for her, and all the family had gathered. On one of the two plots in the cemetery that he and Jo had chosen together, he’d placed a simple granite stone that said “Beloved Wife and Mother.”

Cork glanced out the window. “Limo’s here,” he said.

They headed down the porch steps and into the fine sunshine of a warm May morning. Hugh Parmer slid out of the limo and stood grinning at them. He was dressed in a brown western-cut suit, white shirt, and bolo tie. He held a tan Stetson in his hands. Or a cowboy hat of some kind, anyway. To Cork, all cowboy hats were