the threshing crews. Ham and beef and salt pork, three kinds of potatoes, beans, squash, corn bread and biscuits, everything drowned in gravy. Her father died of a heart attack at fifty-one. By the time Bo joined the Thorsen household, Nell was cooking with an eye toward health. Meats were lean, vegetables profuse and al dente, potatoes served with butter sparingly. What she’d prepared for supper with Bo was chicken salad on a bed of lettuce accompanied by a section of cantaloupe and a croissant. She offered him iced herbal tea from a big pitcher moist with condensation.
The mantel above the fireplace in the living room was crowded with photos of the Thorsen foster children. There’d been nearly thirty in all. Occasionally when Bo visited the farm, he bumped into one of the others who happened to drop by. He was happy only Nell was there that day because mostly he’d come to be alone.
Nell asked about Tom Jorgenson and Annie and the First Lady. She mentioned the awful incident at Wildwood only to say that she’d got on her knees and thanked God when she heard Bo would be all right.
“I got the flowers,” he said. “They were lovely.”
“I’d have come to visit but my damn sciatica was acting up so I could barely move.”
Later, after he’d cleared the table and helped with the dishes, he took a walk alone along the creek. The summer had been dry, and the creek had narrowed to a thin trickle between flats of mud that had hardened and cracked. He’d spent a lot of time there when he was a teenager, wading in the water in search of crawdads and box turtles. Once he’d come out of the creek with a big black leech suckered to the skin between his toes. He was a kid fresh from the city then, and he had no idea what to do. He hobbled back to the farmhouse where Nell got the Morton’s box, covered the leech with salt, and simply plucked it off. He’d been impressed with her practical knowledge and her nonchalance.
He went back to his car and took out the book he’d brought with him, the one Kate had given him, then he went to the barn and climbed into the loft that was filled with hay bales. From there he could see a good part of the farm and beyond. In the pasture to the northwest, cattle grazed. Three miles south rose the water tower in Blue Earth. All around were other farms nestled among their own fields, neighbors all deeply connected by more than just those distant property lines, connected by the land itself and the life it dictated. When he’d lived with Harold and Nell, he often sat in the loft after his work was done. Sometimes he had a book and he read. Sometimes he just sat and drank in the beauty of the place. Sometimes Harold joined him and they talked. He’d been a gorilla of a man, a blond gorilla, with a chest that had seemed to young Bo big as the grille of a Cadillac. Mostly he was quiet, but when he laughed it was a huge sound, like the earth rumbling, and it always filled Bo with happiness. He’d never known his own father. The fathers of the other kids he’d run with in St. Paul were men careless in their parenting. Or worse, brutal. If it hadn’t been for Harold Thorsen, Bo would have grown up believing that being a man was a harsh and selfish thing.
“You up there?” Nell called from the bottom of the ladder.
“Yes.”
“Figured. I’ve got some coffee made if you’d like some.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Bo picked up his book and headed down.
Nell served the coffee on the porch where there was a small wicker table and two wicker chairs. It was a warm evening, early yet for mosquitoes.
“Were you reading in the loft?” she asked.
“Remembering mostly.”
“Good memories?”
“I was thinking about the time I stormed up there and threatened to run.”
“I remember that.”
“Harold followed me up. I figured he was going to-I don’t know-hit me or handcuff me or something. I told him he couldn’t keep me here, working me like a slave.”
“You weren’t the first he’d heard that from.”
“He sat down beside me. The sun was low in the sky, like it is now. I remember everything seemed very precise, either shadow or light. The fields were orange. The trees were black. But all I saw was red. Man, I was pissed.
“He didn’t say anything at first. We sat for a while. Then he said, ‘Give it a week. If you want to run after that, tell me where you want to go and I’ll take you there myself.’” Bo held his coffee mug in both hands and laughed softly. “Bet he said that to everybody.”
“Only the ones he was sure wouldn’t take him up on it.”
“I miss him.”
“We all do.” Nell lifted the book Bo had set on the table.
“A gift from a friend,” Bo said.
“Good?”
“I don’t know. She confuses me.”
“I meant the book.”
“Oh.”
“But tell me about the friend.”
“Nothing to tell.” Bo looked away. The sun lay on top of the cornfield, a red ball bleeding onto the green stalks. “She’s married.”
Nell put cream in her coffee and stirred. In the still air of evening, the spoon made little clinking sounds against the cup. “A blossoming bedside romance?”
Bo gave her a dark look.
“I live in the country, not outer space. We have tabloids at the checkout counters in Blue Earth, too. You wouldn’t believe the number of calls I’ve had from folks wondering if it’s true.”
“It’s not.”
Nell opened the book and read the inscription. “That’s a lovely thing for her to say, Bo. I’ve always liked her.”
She handed the book back, still opened to the page with the inscription. Bo looked down at the words, written in Kate’s beautiful, florid script.
Nell said, “Harold and I always hoped you’d find a nice girl someday. We just imagined it might be someone not married to the president.” She smiled.
In the elms around the house and in the cottonwoods along the creek, the cicadas began to sing. It was a one-note song, long and hypnotic. Just when it seemed the sound would go on forever, it suddenly died. Bo had been staring at the words written in the book, something almost coming to him for a long time. The moment the cicadas stopped singing, he had it.
“My God,” he said in the quiet.
“What is it?”
“Nell, I’m sorry, I have to go.” He stood up and wedged the book under his arm against his side. “Forgive me?”
“I could forgive you anything, Bo.” She gave him a parting kiss and stood on the porch, waving as he turned his car in the yard and headed back down the lane.
It was well after dark by the time he reached Wildwood. He’d called ahead on his cell phone, so he was expected. After he passed through security at the gate and parked his car, he hurried to the main house and knocked on the door. Annie answered.
“She’s upstairs with Nicole Green, working on First Lady business. She’ll be with you in a minute. It must be important if it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
“How’s Tom?” Bo asked.
“Tough. Alive. Thank God it was a mild stroke. It could have been worse.”
Bo thought how Minnesotan that was. It could have been worse. How often had he seen tragedy dealt with in that way, a stoic comparison to a greater possible harm. He’d watched a news report earlier that summer after a tornado had ripped through central Minnesota. They’d interviewed an old Finn standing in front of the rubble that had once been his home. “I’m lucky,” he’d said. “I got insurance.” Then he’d glanced behind him toward the lake shore where a small structure still stood. “Heck, coulda been worse. Coulda lost the sauna, too.”
