William Krueger - Tamarack County

“I run.”

“Cross-country,” Jenny said. “He’s good.”

Skye said, “Annie’s a runner, too. I admire the endurance it takes. Me, I like fast action.”

Stephen hated this, the pointlessness of this kind of conversation. He wanted to say, “Why? Why Annie?” No, he wanted to shout it. And he wanted to shout, “Get out of Annie’s life and leave her alone!” Instead, he sat and sulked while the two women carried on like old friends.

In a few minutes, the pizza arrived. Stephen had the dining room table already set, and Jenny had thrown a tossed salad together before she put Waaboo to bed. They ate, and Jenny and Skye drank more wine, and Stephen brooded.

“Always this quiet, Stephen?” Skye finally asked.

The question seemed to come out of nowhere, mostly because Stephen had been off for a while in his own head, having a stern imaginary conversation with this intruder from California.

Skye put down the wineglass she was holding and turned her whole self toward him. “Or is there something you’d like to talk about?”

It was so pointed an opening that he knew exactly what she meant. And although he’d been primed all evening for a confrontation, he said, “Nothing.”

Jenny said, “Stephen, it’s okay to talk about it.”

“In fact,” Skye said, “I wish you would. It’s easier if everything’s on the table.”

“There’s nothing easy about this,” Stephen shot back. “Who do you think you are?”

“Someone who loves your sister very much.”

“Annie’s a . . . a . . .”

“A woman?”

“A nun!”

“Not yet, she isn’t, Stephen,” Skye said gently.

“Not ever, if you have your way.”

“You must be pretty strong in your faith to care so much about Annie’s vocation.”

“It’s not about my faith. It’s about what we’re called to do. Annie was called a long time ago. She’s known since she was a little kid that she’d be a nun.”

“Or the first female quarterback for Notre Dame,” Skye said. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“This isn’t about her being a lesbian,” Stephen said. “Honest to God, that doesn’t matter to me. She could prefer polar bears for all I care. The thing is that when you’re called to a higher purpose, you don’t just turn your back when the first temptation comes along.”

Skye folded her napkin and set it beside her plate. She seemed to be considering her words carefully. “Stephen, I don’t think of myself as just some temptation.” She leaned nearer. “Is there a young woman you like a lot? Someone very special to you?”

Stephen thought instantly of Marlee and was ashamed that with the same thought came the image of those haunting breasts.

“I can see there is,” Skye said. “What if some guy made a play for her, tried to take her away from you? What would you do?”

“God’s not just some guy.”

“I’m not religious, Stephen, so to me that’s exactly who he is. And not just some guy, but a myth. Annie, on the other hand, is very real to me, and I love her with all my heart.”

“Then you won’t try to interfere with what she’s doing out at Crow Point.”

“What is she doing, Stephen?”

Jenny, who’d been quiet in this long exchange, said, “I can tell you that, Skye. We had a long talk today. She’s struggling, struggling like she never has before. She’s told you about the school shooting here?”

“School shooting?”

“It was headline news five years ago. When Annie was a senior, her best friend was killed by a kid on a rampage at our high school. He was going to kill Annie, too, but God intervened. At least, that’s how Annie has always seen it. That experience turned her from trying to be a quarterback at Notre Dame to spending her life in the service of others, and doing it as a nun.”

“You didn’t know?” Stephen said, making his voice purposely incredulous. “And you’re supposed to be so close to her.”

“It was an important turning point in her life,” Jenny went on. “ The important turning point. And she’s never doubted her journey since. Until now.”

Skye sat back, looking a little stunned. “I didn’t know.” But only a moment later, a defiant fire came into her eyes. “But I do know about your aunt Rose and her husband, Mal. Annie’s told me they’re very happy together, and that they don’t feel guilty at all that he left the priesthood to marry her. She said they both figure God had a different vocation in mind for them. So why not for her?”

Jenny said, “I can’t answer that. Only Annie can. I think Stephen’s point is that it’s a consideration maybe best done alone.”

“And I’m an interference?”

“A distraction,” Jenny said.

Skye said, “I think I’d better go,” and she stood up.

“There’s dessert,” Jenny offered.

Skye looked at them both, and although Stephen didn’t care for her presence, he wasn’t blind to the struggle he could see on her face. “I’ve never been in love like this before. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but if I decide I can’t let Annie go, I’ll do everything I can to keep her. And, Stephen, if that makes me a monster in your eyes, we’ll both just have to live with that.”

Jenny saw her to the door, and Stephen heard them exchange words, but too quietly for him to make them out. When Skye had gone, Jenny came back to the table and sat down. “In the end, Stephen, it’s Annie’s life. And you and me and Dad, we have no more right to interfere with her decision than Skye does. I think her question to you was valid, and one you ought to think about.”

“What question?”

“How would you feel if someone tried to take Marlee away?”

But Stephen already knew the answer to that. Someone had tried it, someone in a green, mud-spattered pickup. And, afterward, all Stephen had wanted to do was shoot the bastard dead.

For dinner, Stella Daychild heated up a couple of cans of Campbell’s tomato soup, made some grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta, and opened a bag of Old Dutch potato chips. For dessert, she offered Oreo cookies and vanilla ice cream, but Cork passed on that and settled for a cup of strong black coffee.

Marlee ate with them but seemed tired through the whole meal and said very little. When it was over, she laid herself down on the sofa, turned on the television, and was soon sound asleep.

“The painkillers,” Stella explained. “She’ll be dead to the world for hours.”

Stella wore a tight black sweater and tight indigo jeans. The whole evening, Cork had had trouble keeping his eyes off her, which made him uncomfortable on two counts. First of all, he didn’t think of himself as a guy who ogled women; and second, there was Rainy. He didn’t know what was going on with him, exactly, though loneliness was a part of it. Hormones, too, probably. And could it be, he wondered, that he was looking for a little salve to ease the sting of what felt to him like abandonment by Rainy?

Stella wasn’t oblivious to his interest. Carrying the dinner plates to the kitchen, she smiled back when she caught him eyeing her.

Cork did his best to keep things professional, and once Marlee was asleep, he turned the conversation to the issues at hand.

“How has Ray Jay been since all that hullabaloo about the Cecil LaPointe case?” he asked.

Stella shrugged. “The truth is I don’t see much of him. We didn’t grow up close. He keeps to himself. If he didn’t have Dexter, he . . .” She hesitated, decided not to complete that thought. “I guess the answer is that, as far as I could see, he was fine.”

“No threats that you know of?”

“If I knew about them, I would have told you by now.” She was about to sip from her coffee mug when she seemed to understand the thrust of his questioning. “You think someone killed Dexter because of what Ray Jay did twenty years ago?”