William Krueger - Northwest Angle

“If it’s women, I won’t be much help,” Mal said.

Aaron opened the screen door and stepped in. It was clear he was deep in thought, and when he looked up, he seemed surprised to find them there.

Anne said, “I’ll be back,” and she slipped past him and out the door.

Rose said, “I’d better get to that meat loaf.”

She went into the kitchen, but not so far away that she couldn’t hear what passed between the two men in the other room.

Mal said, “You look like a guy who could use a beer.”

“Thanks.”

“Rose, you mind bringing a couple of those beers out here?” Mal called.

She went to the big refrigerator in Bascombe’s kitchen and pulled out two bottles. When she took them in, she found Aaron sitting at the table with Mal. The look on his face reminded her of the thousand-yard stare she’d heard about in men suffering from shell shock. She set the beer in front of him.

“Thank you,” he said and looked at her with those vacant eyes.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Mal said.

She returned to the kitchen and began to prepare the meat loaf. All the while she kept an ear tuned to the conversation between Mal and Aaron.

“This beer’s Capital,” she heard Mal say. “Sounds like an endorsement, but it’s the name of the brewery. Out of Middleton, Wisconsin. You like it?”

“It’s fine, I guess.”

“One of my personal favorites. Speaks well of Bascombe’s taste that he keeps it stocked even out here in the middle of nowhere.” They were quiet in a way that made Rose uncomfortable. “Tough circumstances for meeting the family,” Mal finally said.

“Tell me about it.”

“We’ve heard a lot about you, Aaron. All good.”

“I’m not so sure you’d get the same report now.”

“People under stress sometimes say things they regret later.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not how they feel.”

“Maybe only how they feel in the moment,” Mal said. “We change, moment to moment, circumstance to circumstance. That’s what forgiveness is about.”

“Jenny said you used to be a priest, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Forgiveness was pretty big in your line of work, I imagine.” Rose heard the cynical undertone.

“I like to think it still is,” Mal replied.

For another long minute there was only a huge, looming silence from the other room. Rose peeked through the doorway and saw the two men on opposite sides of the table sipping their beer. She wasn’t sure it had been such a good idea to leave Mal alone with this responsibility.

But she could see her husband’s face, and she didn’t see any alarm or discomfort or unpleasantness there. He simply looked as if he was waiting.

And she remembered something Cork had told her about interviewing suspects, how silence was a pretty good way to get someone with something on his mind to talk.

And then Aaron said, “It’s the baby.”

“What about the baby?”

“Jenny wants to keep him. She’s been with him like two days, and she’s already thinking about him as if he’s her own. How crazy is that?”

“They’ve been through a lot together. She risked her life for that little guy, and is probably the reason he’s still alive. There are cultures that believe that kind of relationship binds people forever.”

“The deal is this, Mal. I didn’t go through any of that. I have no emotional attachment to this kid at all. And what kind of kid is he? Let’s be honest, he’s got a lot of strikes against him. Hell, I’m not even ready to take on the challenge of a normal kid. That baby—and how Jenny feels about him—scares me to death. Christ, and I thought the toughest thing I was going to face was meeting the incredible O’Connors.”

“Incredible?”

“That’s how Jenny talks about her family.”

“She loves them.”

“Well, bully for her.” The room plunged again into awkward silence. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“I know.”

“Mal, can Jenny forgive me, do you think?”

“Forgive what exactly?”

“Who I am?” Aaron said. “Or maybe who I can’t be.”

“I think that’s a question only Jenny can answer. Your beer’s getting warm.”

Jenny said, “He’s a selfish idiot.”

“Maybe. To me, he just seems really confused, Jenny. Who wouldn’t be?”

“I’m not.”

“What if you have to give this baby up?”

“I know I’m going to have to give this baby up.”

“Really? Because that’s not the sense I get from you at all.”

Jenny looked down at the child, who lay in the basket at her feet, awake now and staring up intently at her face. She said sadly, “Who’s going to take him?”

“I don’t know. I imagine a decision like that gets made by people with authority.”

“According to rules,” Jenny said bitterly.

“The rules are there to protect the children. You know that.”

She did, but it didn’t matter. Suddenly she was crying. It came over her in an unexpected flood, as if some flimsy dam had finally burst inside her. She leaned to her sister, who held her.

“I know it’s crazy,” she confessed. “Don’t you think I know that? But I can’t help it. The moment I saw him, I knew. It was like I was meant to find him.”

“It’s okay,” Anne said and smoothed her sister’s hair. “I understand.”

“I was so scared out there. Scared for him and Dad and me. I didn’t know if we were going to make it. All I could think about was that poor girl in the cabin and what had been done to her, and would they do the same to me, and, God, what would they do to him?” She drew away from Anne and reached down, pulled the baby from the basket, held him and went on crying.

“It’s all right,” Anne said. “It’s over, Jenny.”

“Is it? We don’t know who that man out there was or why he wanted the baby. Because it was the baby he was after. That much I’m sure of.”

“Okay. But we’re all here to help protect him. He’s safe now.”

“Then why am I so afraid?” She ran her hand along the baby’s soft cheek, then gave her sister a desperate look and spoke words that came out of some dark place of knowing deep inside her. “Can’t you feel it, Annie?”

“Feel what?”

Jenny clutched the child as if some terrible force were trying to wrench him from her. “It’s not over yet,” she said. “The worst is still to come.”

TWENTY-NINE

How far to Stump Island?” Cork asked.

“Another five miles,” Kretsch said. “It’s the last of the islands before you hit the big water, so it’s pretty far out there.”

The wind was against them, and Bascombe, at the helm, gripped the wheel and seemed tense as they bounced through the chop of the waves. They’d passed to the west of Massacre Island, which lay on the other side of the boundary line with Canada, and then Little Oak Island, and finally Garden Island, where the lake had opened up in front of them. On the horizon far to the south, Cork could see nothing. The big water, he knew. There was something about that vast expanse of looming emptiness that was a little frightening. He much preferred the sense of intricacy created by the tangle of islands behind them. Or better yet, the intimacy of the small, clear lakes of home, Tamarack County.

“What do you know about the folks who run the camp?” he asked Kretsch.

The deputy squinted against the wind, and lines cracked the suntanned skin of his face. “Not much. Not quite as accessible as the Baptists used to be. Keep pretty much to themselves, but no trouble. They have money, apparently. They bought the island outright with cash.”

“What denomination are they?”