Jenny had always loved Duluth, its hills, its great mansions, its sense of grand history, its cultural crazy quilt, its location there against the largest and most beautiful freshwater lake in the world. When she was a girl, she and her mother used to drive from Tamarack County and spend the day doing what girls did together—shopped, ate, strolled through Canal Park. They bought ice cream cones at the DQ and stood licking them at the edge of the ship channel, while they watched the Aerial Lift Bridge rise and the huge boats pass beneath. Sometimes when they were in the city, they visited a spa or had their nails done, just for the fun of it.
For the girls helped by Nishiime House, Duluth was a different place, and what they did there gave them no pleasure. After Bea Abbiss opened her eyes, Jenny realized how blind she’d been. The city seemed terribly different to her from what it had been before. She felt wounding all around her. She felt deceit, menace. And she might have succumbed to a sense of hopelessness in what they were attempting if it hadn’t been for the indomitable spirit of Henry Meloux. She loved that old man.
The visit to Nishiime House had unwound Louise. Though all the activity of that day had clearly been exhausting, she’d held herself together well. When they left the brownstone, she was silent. She labored into the truck with Daniel and Henry and sat staring ahead, a distant look in her eyes. Jenny leaned in the window.
“You okay?”
“She’s with the devil,” Louise said in a small voice. “My girl is with the devil.”
Which, in its way, was promising, Jenny thought. Promising because it meant Louise still held to the belief that Mariah was alive. Which was a tough thing for Jenny to do. In her own mind’s eye, she couldn’t help seeing Mariah’s little body draped, like Carrie Verga’s had been, across the broken rocks of Windigo Island.
“We’ll find her,” Jenny said. “We’ll find her and take her from the devil.” Then she repeated those wonderful words Henry had spoken. “One kind thing is the seed from which a great goodness grows. We have that seed now, Louise.”
Louise gave a small nod and managed a smile.
They drove back to Canal Park and sat at a table in a little café on Lake Avenue. None of them seemed very hungry, but they ordered something to drink. Jenny ordered coffee, regular. She knew it would keep her awake that night, but she wanted to be alert. She stirred in cream and added Splenda and asked, “So what now?”
“We wait,” her father said. He drank coffee, too. Regular, black.
“For what?” she asked.
“Something to break. Someone to call us. The dawning of an idea that hasn’t occurred to us before.”
“That seems so . . . impotent.”
She knew immediately it wasn’t the best choice of word in the presence of men, and she could tell that it needled her father.
“Do you have a better idea?” he asked, a little sliver of iron in his voice.
“I could try talking to the women on the street,” she suggested. “I’d be less threatening than you or Daniel.”
She could see that didn’t sit well with him. She also saw something in Daniel’s expression, but it didn’t seem so much criticism as concern, maybe for her safety. She was beginning to like him, quite a lot. He was beautifully Shinnob. His cheeks were high. His eyes were the color of pecans. His skin reminded her of doe hide, soft and tanned. He was quiet, but when he said something, it was well considered and worth listening to. She was glad he was a part of this investigation, though she had no intention of telling him that.
“I think we risk word getting back to Windigo,” Cork said. “And that strikes me as a bad idea on lots of levels.”
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t it, like, flush him out?” Jenny had never been a hunter, but she heard herself use that hunting phrase—“flush him out”—as if what they were looking for was a quail or something. It sounded stupid, even as she said it, but she was trying to relate to her father on his terms.
It was Henry who answered. He said, “There are two important rules in hunting, Jennifer O’Connor. The first: you always stay downwind of your prey. The moment a hunted thing catches your scent, it will disappear. Or worse, if it is also an animal of prey, it may turn on you, and the hunter becomes the hunted.”
He paused, and Jenny waited. But he simply continued to stare at her placidly, until finally she blurted, “And what’s the second rule, Henry?”
“Patience,” he said with a wry smile. “That is the second rule. It is also a hunter’s best friend.”
Louise came to her rescue. “The longer we sit, the more chance this Windigo might hurt Mariah. Or worse.”
“Unless he feels threatened, there’s no reason for him to do anything to Mariah,” Jenny’s father said.
He spoke as if it was an obvious truth, and Louise seemed to accept this perception. She closed her eyes, and Jenny could see her face melting into exhaustion.
“Should we think about a place to stay tonight?” Jenny said. “Because it doesn’t appear that we’re going to finish this business any time soon.”
Cork said, “We’re an hour and a half from Aurora. We could drive back and wait there.”
“No.” Louise’s eyes popped open, and her voice was strong. “I don’t want to leave here without Mariah.”
Cork showed no reaction. He simply said, “Fine. Then we should get rooms somewhere.”
Daniel nodded toward the north. “There’s a pretty good hotel next street over, on Canal Park Drive. You’re helping my family. The rooms are on me,” he insisted.
“All right,” Cork said without argument.
A short time later they found themselves checked in to the Canal Park Lodge. Cork, Henry, and Daniel shared a suite. Louise and Jenny took a room with two queen beds. It was early evening by then. Jenny stood at the window, looking out at the lake, which was only a stone’s throw from the hotel. Behind her, Louise lay on her bed, her wooden peg removed and propped against the nearby wall, along with her crutches. She’d given herself an insulin shot, then exhaustion had overwhelmed her. She was already sound asleep. Jenny had called Rose and had talked with little Waaboo. He said he missed her. He wanted to know if she had found the girl who was lost and when would she be home. “Soon,” Jenny told him, which was purposely vague, and what did soon mean anyway to a boy who couldn’t tell time and kept no track of days?
The color of Lake Superior was changeable, and not just with the weather. Henry Meloux believed, and Jenny did, too, that everything had spirit. Kitchigami wasn’t just a great hollowed bowl of rock filled with water. It was a living thing and had moods. She’d seen it silver and calm, black and angry, nearly turquoise and coquettish. That evening, under a sky laced with ragged clouds, it was like fabric washed so many times the blue had faded to almost white, and the lake seemed tired. In her hand, she held one of the copies they’d made of Mariah’s photograph in order to show it around. She looked down at that young face, a child’s face, and felt a deep stab of fear. How could a child stand against the kind of man Bea had described that afternoon? What chance did she have? Jenny thought of Mariah’s Facebook postings, of her telling anyone who cared to read about it that she was learning to play her new guitar on the lakeshore of the Bad Bluff Reservation, telling of the eagle that had flown overhead, and that was a good sign, wasn’t it? She knew so little of the world then, but, oh, Christ, she’d had an education since.
You save her. That’s what Waaboo’s murdered birth mother had said in Jenny’s vision.
And now she thought of Waaboo and how she’d pulled him out of the reach of people as bad as Windigo, pulled him from the very hands of death. But she hadn’t saved his mother, who wasn’t much older than Mariah. Was that what she was supposed to do now? Save this child, this little girl in the photograph she held. Even if it was not what was meant in her vision, it was what she wanted. She wanted it for Mariah, and for Louise, whose exhausting fear Jenny understood so well, and for herself, too, because she cared so deeply now.
You save her.
“I will try,” Jenny said, as if someone were listening.
There was a knock at the door. Louise didn’t stir. Jenny opened up, and her father stood there. “We’ve ordered pizza,” he said. “It’ll be here in half an hour.”
“Thanks.”
“You two doing okay?”
She glanced back at Louise. “This is taking such a toll.”
“She’s strong,” Cork said. “She wasn’t, but she is now. She has to be.” He smiled, genuine and happy. “By the way, I got a call from Stephen and Annie. They took a walk today. Not a long walk but a real one. Stephen thinks he’ll be coming home within a week or so.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jenny said, a bit too loud. On the bed behind her, Louise made a sound but didn’t wake. Jenny whispered, “Let me know when the pizza comes. I’ll see if Louise is up to eating.”
Cork didn’t turn away immediately. He looked deep into her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve told you, but I should have. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re a part of this. At least for now.”
He kissed her forehead, turned, and was gone.