Mary Forbes - Red Wolf's Return

Blinking, she focused on his portrayal of her son and Randy Leland. They weren’t bad kids, just teenagers striving for independence. That’s what she kept telling herself.

She studied the female figure, back to the viewer, sitting on the boulder where Ethan claimed to have discovered the raptor.

A small jolt darted through Meg. It’s me. He’s drawn me at seventeen.

When her hair had been long enough to touch her belt, when innocence colored the future.

Why? she wondered. Why would he include her in a present-day time line? And suddenly she understood. She, sitting on that megaton rock, offered directions to the scene of the crime.

Oh, yes, he knew she’d recognize the boulder. They’d sat there for hours as kids, and he’d kissed her a thousand times, touched her breasts while, over lake and mountain, they had observed a pair of adult eagles seek prey to feed their offspring.

More than that, on that rock, she and Ethan had dreamed of the home they’d build together, of the children they’d raise. Years of life and love wending into the future from that base point. So many plans.

Oh, Ethan. You never forgot.

Admit it, Meg, neither have you.

Simply put, she’d been bullheaded about burying the key that locked her heart. But looking at her younger self, remembering the emotion in his eyes back then, remembering those eyes today harboring secrets, she wondered what he would say about her secret.

The scarred one under her shirt that said she’d been cancer free for seven years.

Fifteen minutes after Ethan left, two more complaints were called in, the first involving five overturned headstones at the Sweet Creek Cemetery to which Meg sent Gilby. Then Beth Ellen Woodley carped about a Ford Bronco parked on her lawn with Ulysses McLeod snoring off an all-night drunk behind the steering wheel.

By the time Meg eked out an hour of free time, it was nearly ten o. “Sal, I’m going to Blue Mountain for a written statement from Ethan Red Wolf.” She strode past the dispatcher to her private office for her notebook and digital camera. “Hopefully it won’t take long, but if something—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sally grumbled, typing at the speed of light. “If the town floods or an earthquake happens, call your cell.”

Chuckling, Meg grabbed one of the sesame bagels Gilby had bought at Old Joe’s. “You know me well, Sal.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Yes, Mom.” Her step lighter, Meg headed out the back door where the police SUV waited.

But by the time she had cleared the town’s outskirts, sweat dotted her skin and two fingers tapped nervously against the steering wheel. She’d be talking with him again, twice in the same morning. Okay, on official business, but still. Six years, and they had barely nodded across the street or spoken ten words in one sitting.

She’d heard he renamed his grandfather’s place. Instead of O’Conner’s Fishing Dock, it was now Private Property. Meg smiled. Simple and to the point.

No, she thought. Nothing ever had been simple about Ethan Red Wolf. The man was as complex and intriguing as his ancestry. Even his name Ethan resembled the word Earth, a word suited for a man at one with his environment.

Turning down Lake Road—a strip of asphalt carving a path above the pine and rocky shores of the small mountain lake—Meg wondered again what Ethan had cataloged with those keen, dark eyes in those moments back at her office.

Certainly he’d noticed the stress lines between her eyes, the gauntness of her cheeks, that her hair was bobbed short and careless—all signatures of her job and current life.

In the sketch, he drew you with long, wavy hair.

Well, those days were gone. Today he had the longer hair.

Contemplating the comparisons, she nearly missed the turnoff leading on to his forty-acre property. Shadowed by pines and golden quaking aspen, the single-lane dirt trail wove a half mile down an easy incline to spill into a delta of newly laid gravel.

He had been busy. Davis O’Conner’s rectangular house sported a fresh coat of terra-cotta paint that highlighted the reddish tint of aged pine needles on the ground. Ochre window shutters and a matching door offered a splash of vividness under the sweep of a roofed porch.

As Meg shut off the cruiser’s ignition, she surveyed the area. To the left of the house, the squat, slant-roofed building the old man once used as an equipment and canoe shed glimmered with fresh green siding. To the right, a hundred-foot grassy trail fed into the trees to another green structure. Ethan’s photography and art studio?

Over the years she knew he’d forged a name for himself with his environmental photographs, sketches and paintings. Paintings composed of swirls and shapes in brilliant, bold colors. Two summers ago, she had perused several in a Billings art gallery, and more recently bought calendars printed with his creations from Sweet Creek’s grocery and drugstore.

Noticing his pickup parked in front of the new green structure, she headed in its direction—and saw what the house blocked.

A thirty-foot weeping willow, its leaves aged gold, stood like a sentinel beside a partially renovated wooden pier, on which Ethan crouched, tool belt around his hips, hammer in his hand.

As she came around the rear of the house, he rose slowly, lifting his red cap to scrape back loose strands of hair before settling the visor low over his eyes again. A rottweiler she hadn’t noticed climbed to its feet and trotted down the dock.

“Lila.” Ethan’s low tone carried across the distance. “Be nice.”

Halting, the dog watched Meg walk forward. “Aren’t you the prettiest lady?” She kept her voice gentle as the wary animal sniffed her proffered fist. “Bet you’re a great watchdog.” Carefully, she stroked the animal’s broad head and finally received a hiney wriggle of welcome.

The peace of the place curled around Meg in soft measure: the breeze towing the leaves, a chickadee’s trill, Canada geese grousing their route southward—and everywhere the fundamental scent of mountain, water and earth assembling for winter.

And Ethan.

Ethan in work boots, ragged denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt, waiting motionless, a somber expression on his face.

“Ethan,” she said, stepping onto the pier.

“Meggie.”

For the moment she’d let the name stand. The year Doug had sent her the divorce papers she’d become Meg, a name with maturity. Only her family still called her Meggie, though her sister-in-law called her Meg. In the past two years, she and Rachel had become sisters; Ash’s wife understood Meg’s requirement for emotional strength and distance from the woman she had been once.

But Ethan lived in the past, saw her as the girl she’d been in another life. His sketch told of his memories. Memories she’d buried aeons before.

“I need to take some photographs of the spot where you found the eagle,” she said. “Do you have time to come along?”

He studied her. “You know where it is.”

She did; the boulder glared like a thumbprint in his diagram, and from the dock where she stood, she could see a section of beige rock across the water. “I’d like you to walk me through the scene, explain what you witnessed, a sort of reenactment.” Her gaze settled on him. “I’ll also need a written statement, Ethan.”

For the first time, the edges of his mouth lifted and amusement sparked in his eyes. “Can’t use the visual in court, huh?”

She felt a grin threaten in response. “Not when the judge knows you’re well-read.” He had been in high school.

He stared across the lake. “Will you catch the guy?”

The guy. Though he’d alluded to Beau in her office, his words indicated he didn’t consider her son the culprit. Relief slipped down her spine. “I’ll do my best.”