Seven

He was a deputy again, come to get the boy, who was sitting with Marguerite Deo on the sunny stoop, the two of them all dressed in their warm clothes and playing with a piece of string. He moved toward them without effort, floating above the snow, stood there looking down into the cat’s cradle that the boy had woven in his child’s hands. It was as intricate as a spider-web, and with each move they made—Marguerite’s fingers moving quickly, surely, the boy’s hands equally adept—it became more so. The boy seemed unaware of the deputy, and Marguerite spoke to him without meeting his eyes, her own eyes on the web they were spinning. “Fire or water,” she said. He didn’t understand. “Fire or water,” she said again, more loudly. It was a question. “I don’t know,” he said. “Fire,” she said. “So the soul can rise.” He nodded then. The boy looked up. His eyes were sky-blue. “Your turn,” the boy said, and put his hands out for the deputy to take the web. But the deputy fumbled; his fingers would not fit, and the web fell to the porch boards, a shapeless pile of string.

Just before midnight, the sheriff woke. At first he thought he was in his own bedroom; but no, he was in Linda’s apartment downstairs, in bed with her beside him, sleeping, one arm flung over her eyes against the light that came through the window, the other curled over her belly as if to protect the baby, her hair spilling across the pillow like a dark waterfall. He thought what a beautiful bride she would make when they got married in the spring; he thought what a beautiful mother she would make. He thought what an odd father he would make, gray-haired and grizzled. “You’re young for your age,” Linda always told him. Young for his age—not young. He hoped to live to see the child grown, to see him—or her—graduate from college. That was all he asked.

He thought about the image that had wakened him. When he drove up to fetch James Jack that day, they had been sitting in the sun, dressed in their warm clothes. Walking toward them, he’d rehearsed the words in his head, hating that he’d be the one to break the news. But Marguerite said they’d seen what had happened, and they’d been expecting him. “Here’s the deputy, James Jack,” Marguerite said. “Come here, let me spiff you.” She’d taken the boy in her arms, hugged him briefly, then straightened his hair and the collar of his jacket. “You go sit in the deputy’s car now,” she said. “I need to speak to him for a moment.”

James Jack had gone down to the car, the deputy waiting, respectfully, to hear what Miss Deo had to say. She stood and came down the steps to face him.

“I take it they’re all dead,” she said.

He nodded.

“Did they die in the fire or drown?” she said.

It was a curious question. “We don’t know,” he said. “I suppose when they find the bodies, there’ll be an autopsy.”

She nodded, impassive. “The boy,” she said.

“We’ll take care of him,” he said.

Now he sat up on Linda’s bed, groped on the floor for his clothes. Linda woke and turned on the bedside lamp. “What’s the matter? “ she said, sleepy-voiced. He leaned across the bed and kissed her. “I’ll be back,” he said. “I just remembered something I need to do.” “Sheriff stuff?” she said, smiling, and he nodded.

She watched him put his uniform back on. “I never understood that thing about men in uniform,” she said, “till now.” She got out of bed and helped him with his tie. Ran her hands down the front of his shirt. “A sheriff,” she said, touching the badge. “Imagine that.”

As silly as it was, he felt himself swelling with pride. He felt large and in control as he left the apartment. The smell of her on his hands, in his hair. The taste of her in his mouth. He didn’t care anymore what people would think—the sheriff marrying again, marrying his tenant, marrying a much younger woman. All he cared about was how good she made him feel.

The windshield was thick with frost. He started the engine and got the scraper from the floor of the backseat, and as he leaned over the windshield he saw Linda in the window of her apartment. She waved and pointed, and then in a second she was at her door. He left the car running and went back to her, stood below her on the steps. “I heard that men whose wives kiss them good-bye have fewer accidents,” she said, her face flushing just a little, and leaned forward to kiss him. He tugged the lapels of her robe together. “Don’t catch cold,” he said. He felt pleased that she had come out to kiss him good-bye. Glad that she would be there when he came back, keeping the bed warm. “I’ll leave the door unlocked,” she said.

“No need,” he said, and smiled. “I’m the landlord. I have a key.”

The snow had long since stopped, the sky had cleared, and the winter darkness crackled with stars. The wind was calm for a change. The plowed road had that dry, frozen feel. Every sound was small and contained. Like organ notes with the damper pedal pressed. The cedars along the lake road seemed to be holding themselves back, pulling into their own shadows, hiding from his headlights. He got on the radio to let Gina know where he was headed.

It had been a busy day; he’d never had time to go back to the Deo place. But the memory had wakened in him his premonition of the morning, as well as a thought about where he’d find James Jack, if in fact Marguerite had died. Being sheriff, he had to follow up every lead. Even if it meant going out in the middle of the frigid night.

He drove past Doc Milton’s trailer. No lights, the woman’s rental car gone. He drove on. To his left the lake was a vast white field, perfectly level, with the matte finish of new snow interrupted only by a few fish shanties. In the new moon the snow seemed to generate its own blue light. He peered into the distance. He had almost given up when he saw what he was looking for.

He parked the patrol car at the boat landing and took a few moments to pull on some extra clothes before heading out onto the ice. From the trunk he got a flashlight and the long-handled, three-pronged cultivator he used for gardening in summer, and then he went down to the water’s edge and stepped out. He’d never liked the ice, not since that day Homer Wright’s shanty had caught fire and gone through it, taking James Jack’s parents down. So he took the cultivator with him to test the ice and to pull him back onto it if he fell through. A simple precaution, that’s how he thought of it.

The snow squeaked under his boots. The flashlight spilled a yellow pool onto the undamaged snow but could not touch the blackness beyond. He kept the light low so as not to spook whoever was out there. Kept his eyes on the yellow flicker in the distance, at first no bigger than a candle flame. Every so often, he swung the claw of the cultivator ahead of him, just in case.

The ice was utterly silent. He began to forget that it was ice at all; it felt like solid ground. But that was a dangerous illusion. He listened to his footfalls, felt himself growing farther from the shore.

The smell of wood smoke came to him first, and then the faint tinkling of music. He could see the flames now, spitting out of a darkness that slowly took shape as a barrel, next to which he now saw a man, sitting, bent over a fish hole. A transistor radio by his side spewed trebly lyrics. Oldies station. You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you . . .

The man was dressed in a black snowmobile suit with a hood, his face hidden by a ski mask. His hands and feet were oversized in gloves and boots; it was hard to tell, looking at him, who he might be or how big. The sheriff cleared his throat. “Evening,” he said, and the man looked up. With one mittened hand he pushed the ski mask up onto his forehead, and the sheriff saw that it wasn’t James Jack, but Warren, the bait man. “Hello, Warren,” he said. “Evening, Sheriff,” Warren said, peering at him. “Cold night for gardenin’,” he said, and broke into a grin.

The sheriff looked down at the cultivator. “Suppose so,” he said. “Cold night for fishin’, too.”

Warren pursed his lips and shook his head. “Never too cold. Not if you dress right,” he said. “And bring some heat.” He nodded toward the fire burning in the barrel, flames visible through rust holes in its sides.

“That burn barrel looks less than legal,” the sheriff said.

“Arrest me, then,” Warren said, jiggling his rod confidently.

“I will,” the sheriff said, “unless you’ve got something hot you can give me to drink.”

“Ah,” Warren said, “so you’re the kind that takes bribes.”

He got the sheriff some cocoa, gave him a bucket to sit on. They sat looking out at the lake stretching before them, bounded on two sides by the black shoreline and at the top by the black sky. The last time the sheriff had been out on the lake at night, it had been summer, and he had been in the little motor-boat he and Alma had when they were first married, and she had been with him, and it had been the Fourth of July, and a dozen other boats had floated around them, voices oohing at the fireworks that bloomed above them. Nothing could be more different from this black, silent stillness.

“You’re not out here for fish,” Warren said, jiggling his line again. “Far as I know, you’re not a fisherman.”

The sheriff shook his head. “I’m looking for James Jack,” he said.

With comical exaggeration, Warren looked around at the emptiness.

“What’s he done?”

“Nothing I know of,” the sheriff said.

“I see,” said Warren. “Well, last time I saw him was this afternoon. Came by for some minnows.” He put his rod between his knees while he poured more cocoa for himself and the sheriff. “It was right around here it happened, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” the sheriff said.

“Long time ago.”

“Yes,” the sheriff said.

“I was a boy then,” Warren said. He wiggled his fish line. “Ten years old. The ice was green that day.”

“Was it?” the sheriff said. “I don’t remember.”

“It was melting from beneath,” Warren said. “Still safe, though,” he said. “Except for them.”

“You saw it happen,” the sheriff said, “and here you are.”

“You can’t let things get up on you,” Warren said. “Things happen, or they don’t. If they happen, they happen, and that’s that. If they don’t happen, then you’re lucky, and that’s that too.”

“Story never bothered your wife?” the sheriff said.

“Mainlander,” Warren said. “Story she heard, but she didn’t see it. She makes me wear these, though.” He put the rod between his knees again and shook his hands: twin screwdrivers fell from his sleeves and hung there. “Handy if you fall through,” he said, tucking them away again.

“Doesn’t mind you night fishin’?”

“Doesn’t complain. That I know of, that is,” Warren said. “I think sometimes she just likes to get me out of the house.”

The sheriff nodded. “Wives do,” he said.

“Besides,” Warren said thoughtfully, “she’s got three kids and seven grandbabies that give her plenty of love and mush.” He jiggled his rod. “All women care about,” he paused to jiggle it again, “is love and mush.”

“Suppose so,” the sheriff said.

His own wife had changed after Marguerite took the boy away from her. After the tears stopped, after he’d suggested and she’d rejected adopting a baby or taking in a foster child, Alma had changed. She didn’t act unhappy, not the way most people would; that wasn’t her way. Instead she tried too hard to be happy. Smiling and cheerful. Keeping an immaculate home. Volunteering until she was the mainstay of the church. Cooking and sewing for others. Organizing a fund drive when someone’s kid was stricken ill or a house burned down or a farmer lost his arm in an accident. Thirty turkeys roasted for a Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless; food baskets delivered on Christmas morning. She won awards for her good works. And was always smiling and cheerful and sweet and kind and neat as a pin. That’s what everybody saw.

They didn’t know what it was like at home. That she rose every day at four to begin work. That even as she slept her hands were working. They didn’t know what it was like to live with someone who felt that God had forsaken her but would not forsake Him back. They didn’t know what it was like to live with someone who lived by the Bible even as she hated it. They didn’t know what it was like to have a wife who hated you because you’d done what you thought was right.

Once a month, as if he were a charity, she came to bed without her gown and gave herself up to him. But no matter how he touched her, she did not respond. Ashamed, embarrassed, he went to a mainland drugstore for the “female lubricant” he needed to make it possible to achieve his own satisfaction. She never complained, but he always felt ashamed, and finally he stopped.

To leave her would hurt her; to hurt her would hurt him more, and so he stayed.

The day before she died, she’d been making doughnuts. She was legendary for her doughnuts, which were feather-light and greaseless because she always got the deep-fat fryer to just the right temperature, so the dough hit the oil with a sizzle and cooked fast. They were never for him, although she saved him some—usually a dozen of his favorite, maple-glazed yeast, to take to the office. This time the church ladies had requested them for a Saturday bake sale.

But when he came home that Friday, the kitchen was dark. The bowl full of dough sat on the counter; the oil was cold in the fryer. He found Alma in the bedroom, sitting in a chair, her hands full of knitting. She looked up when he came in. He tried to put his arms around her. “I’m fine,” she said. She wouldn’t stop what she was doing, just sat in the chair and repeated herself. “I’m fine.” The needles clacking.

He went back out to get some dinner, coaxed her as far as the living room to eat it. They watched television. He thought fleetingly about calling a doctor to check her over. But he didn’t. He’d wanted her to be as all right as she said she was.

He woke at dawn, briefly, and was surprised to find her still asleep. He touched the broad plain of her flannel back. She’d been alive then, he was sure of it.

But an hour later, when his alarm went off, she wasn’t.

It was as if some nut with a gun had come in and shot one of them at random. It was that sudden, that over. He felt death had missed its target, but only by a few inches. He felt that he alone had survived the disaster that had struck his bed.

The regular doctor was away. Doc Milton—that woman Faith’s father—signed the death certificate. Heart attack, he said. The sheriff nodded. But thought to himself: No. Whatever the autopsy says, she died from grief, and shame, and the lack of love. Took a long time, but it killed her finally.

And suddenly he was free. He’d sold the farm, bought the apartment building, met Linda, and started a new life. Just like that.

“You know,” Warren said, “I think I’d sooner have a divorce than have to give up fishin’.”

The sheriff stood, stiff with the cold, and handed back his empty cup. “If fishing is all it takes to make you happy,” he said, “I guess you’re a lucky man.”

“Guess so,” Warren said, jiggling his line. “But then again,” he said as the sheriff walked away, “I sure would miss my grandkids.”

The rental car was still in the drive at Marguerite’s place, where it had been that morning. All was quiet. A few lights were on—one upstairs that he could see, one in the kitchen, the outdoor light by the summer-kitchen door. Two sets of footprints led from the house and toward the barn. He knew he’d have to follow them. But first he knocked on the door, just to see. No answer, of course. He let himself into the kitchen. Two mugs of cold tea sat on the table, a saucer with cigarette ashes and one butt in it. He checked the stove; the fire was low but not out. They hadn’t been gone long. He threw on a couple of logs. After the ice, heat felt good. He took off his jacket and sat a moment, warming up.

James Jack had left a bad taste in his mouth that morning. He’d seen that shell-shocked look before, in the mirror last year after Alma died. Marguerite Deo was dead, he knew it. How she had died, he wasn’t so sure, but she was so old he wasn’t sure it mattered either. He did know one other thing, though: James Jack had taken care of her all his life, and he was taking care of her now. The sheriff just hoped he wasn’t doing something foolish.

He didn’t bother going upstairs. He went back out to the car and called in and told Gina what he was going to do but not why. “You need backup?” she said. He smiled at her use of the term; Gina loved to dramatize. He told her no, he didn’t think so. He just wanted her to know where he was and why he’d be out of radio contact for a while. “If anything comes up, you call Dicky,” he said. Dicky was his best deputy.

He got the flashlight from the trunk again, snugged his hat down and wrapped his scarf around his nose. By the thermometer outside the summer-kitchen door, it was close to twenty below. Who knew how long this would take. But as long as he kept moving, he’d be all right.

Behind the barn he found the truck. No surprise to him; he’d noticed the tracks that afternoon. Had figured that James Jack was there hiding, that the woman Faith was covering for him. Two mugs on the table. And she had known he knew. She was sharp, like her father. But she had chosen to play the game out, and he couldn’t help but find that endearing. Like two children, covering for one another. He hadn’t wanted to give her husband Marguerite’s number, but felt duty-bound to do so. Still, he hoped things would work out for James Jack. It was time he started a family of his own. That’s what the sheriff would have told James, if he’d asked.

The footprints went around the barn and followed the old road up the hill and into the woods. At one time, he knew, part of these woods had been Anna Deo’s orchard. As a boy, he’d come here to pick apples, sometimes for pay, sometimes for fun. The trees then had been low and well pruned, their arching branches hanging to the ground, the apples so large and so red he understood how Eve had been tempted, how the devil had used them against her, why God had forbidden them to be eaten in the first place. When you were picking it was hard not to eat them, and more than once he gave himself a bellyache. But oh the pleasure of sinking your teeth through the skin and into the crisp white flesh.

The forest had gone wild since then, and the apple trees allowed to grow up. Now they blended into the wild woods, visible only in early spring when they bloomed white and pink. The wormy apples fell and rotted on the forest floor. Marguerite Deo had let her mother’s orchard disappear, the same way she had neglected her father’s quarries. He supposed that since she didn’t need the money, she didn’t care about preserving what her parents had built. But maybe it wasn’t right to expect a child to be your extension into eternity. Maybe that wasn’t what having a child was about. He thought about Linda again, and smiled.

The flashlight caught something in its beam. Something that was not the white or gray or black of everything else. He hurried toward it, feeling the strain of the hill in his legs and his lungs. When he got there, he squatted, panting. It was a slipper, a pink slipper. The kind Alma had worn, what she had called a “mule.” Pink terry cloth, no back, no heel. Marguerite’s, maybe? He pushed it with the flashlight, rolled it over carefully, shone the light around the area to see if there was anything else. Nothing. If the slipper belonged to Marguerite, what was it doing out here?

He felt a sudden rush of pity for Marguerite Deo. No one had ever extended kindness to her, except—in a strange way—James Jack’s parents, who had been taking advantage of her at the same time. And Caroline Wright, when she let the woman keep the boy. But that had been an act of self-preservation as well as kindness.

In small ways even the sheriff had made her life difficult. He could not call what he had done harassment—for it had all been within the law—but he had taken more pleasure in it than he should have. Ticketing her whenever her truck was in the slightest violation—a broken headlight, a nicked windshield, tires not quite bald but still not quite legal. Visiting her house with a “friendly” reminder the one time her taxes were a day late. Using his position as an excuse to check on her, to make sure that James Jack was registered for school, had his shots, was cared for properly. He had been her conscience, or so he thought of himself, making her toe the line, watching out for James Jack’s best interests, if only from a distance. He told himself he did it for Alma’s sake, so he could report to her that the boy was all right. Even though Alma never responded to the news as if she cared. “Don’t be unkind,” she’d say to him if he criticized Marguerite, and he hated Alma for that. And then felt guilty for hating her.

Once, when James Jack was a teenager, the sheriff and Marguerite had almost come to blows. A bunch of kids had trespassed on Doc Milton’s land to have “a boonie,” a keg party in the boondocks. There was a rash of such parties that summer; the kids’d found someone to buy kegs of beer for them, nobody knew who, and they moved the party from site to site, weekend to weekend, so it was hard to track them down until the morning after, when some farmer would call in complaining about the mess. It’d been sheer luck, stumbling onto this one, finding the cars parked behind Doc Milton’s trailer, following the sound of faint music back into the woods. He’d been elected sheriff by then, had taken a deputy with him, but still they hadn’t been able to catch any of the kids, who scattered into the dark woods and went silent and invisible.

When the flurry of movement was over and the only sound was the tinny music from a portable radio, James Jack alone remained, standing next to the fire, roasting a marshmallow on a stick. He suspended the stick well above the flame and turned it slowly, so that the marshmallow browned gradually and evenly. Then he waved the stick toward the sheriff. “Like one?” he said. The sheriff shook his head, and started in with his usual speech about the dangers of drinking and driving, and the illegality of trespass and underage drinking. “My folks used to live here,” James Jack said.

“I know,” the sheriff said. Surprised, in a way, that James Jack remembered.

“I guess it’s still trespass, though,” James Jack said.

The sheriff nodded.

James Jack drew the marshmallow off the stick and put it into his mouth. For a moment he stood there as if in profound contemplation, gazing off into the trees. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well,” he said, extending his wrists, “I guess you better take me in.”

The sheriff hadn’t arrested him, of course, but had taken him back to the house, where Marguerite came to the door in her nightgown. She was in her seventies by then, her hair wild and gray over her shoulders. He was reminded of stories about how she played the witch on Halloween, and for a moment he felt intimidated.

“James Jack, go on in,” she said, and James Jack went.

The sheriff launched in. “Illegal drinking,” he said. “Trespassing.”

“Kids will be kids,” Marguerite said.

He had a notion then. “Marguerite, have you been buying those kids beer?”

She arched her brow at him. “Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” she said.

He knew she was taunting him, daring him to arrest her finally. He decided to sidestep the issue for the moment. “The boy needs a father,” he said.

Marguerite raised her finger like a gun and pointed it at his chest. “What would a father do that I don’t do?” she said, coming at him. “What would you do, Sheriff? You think if you had a boy, you’d be able to control him? You think you’d want to control him? Every creature has its nature, Sheriff. Let a child be a child till it’s time to grow up, won’t you?”

He stood for a moment looking down at Marguerite’s finger. If this old woman so much as touches me, he found himself realizing, I’ll hit her. But she did not.

“Sheriff,” she said, dropping her finger, “I am sorry that you and Alma could not have children. Truly I am. But this child is mine, and I will raise him as I see fit. And over my dead body will you take him away from me.”

The door had shut behind her like an ax falling.

At the time he found the exchange funny. James Jack Wright was no boy. He was seventeen years old, and with the looks and physique to pass for older. Old enough to leave home whenever he was ready. And the sheriff was long past hoping to take him away from Marguerite. Yet she had stood there defending him as if he were still a helpless child.

Later on the sheriff figured out that it was James Jack himself who was driving to the mainland with a fake ID and buying the kegs of beer for the parties, with money he earned on his first construction job that summer. So Marguerite had been protecting him. Would Alma have been that good a mother? Would Alma have known how to rise up against powerful forces and keep her child safe? He thought she might have, even though she and Marguerite were different as day and night—Alma like a bitter almond covered in milk chocolate, Marguerite like lemon candy, sweet and sour all the way through.

It wasn’t that story about her running off with the farmhand that had turned people against Marguerite. Islanders were forgiving of youthful mistakes. It wasn’t even that she’d come back citified, with airs—it hadn’t taken long for her to lose them. No, what it was was what she’d done to her parents: abandoning them, breaking their hearts, never so much as visiting, letting her father die alone. Dear people, good Catholics, they hardly seemed worthy of such treatment. Anna Deo had taught Sunday school; Marcel Deo had been a selectman many years running. It was they who brought the Catholic church to town, and the first real school, Ville D’eau Public School, called after their ancestral name. (These days, the kids called it Billy Doo, or “the watering hole” if they knew French.) They ladled soup at church suppers, gave Christmas parties for the small children; when they were very old, walked hand in hand down their road at sunset, tiny and hunched and surely harmless. Mr. Deo had a temper— everyone knew that from town meeting days past, like that once when he all but punched the moderator for not recognizing him to speak—funny, sad sight, the little old man strutting up to the table, fists flailing. But Mrs. Deo was sweetness itself, hardly spoke a word in public, and he couldn’t imagine what they could have done to make Marguerite abandon them.

Couldn’t imagine it, that is, until she told him the rest of the story.

He was standing next to Alma’s casket half listening to the priest when he caught sight of Marguerite at the edge of the crowd, her face craggy under a black hat. He looked around for James Jack, didn’t see him, and wondered how she had gotten herself there, how she was managing alone, old as she was. But then it was time to lower the coffin, and in the moment he forgot about her.

It seemed everyone wanted to talk to him afterward, wanted to take his hand and offer condolences. He understood that, and he stood it as long as he could, but then he had to get away and slipped off into the trees at the edge of the cemetery. Leaning against a trunk, he closed his eyes, and was surprised to hear someone say his name. It was Marguerite. “I’m sorry about Alma,” she said.

“I appreciate your coming,” he said to her, as he had to so many others.

“We go way back,” she said, nodding. “Do you remember the day you brought me home from the ferry?”

He hadn’t forgotten.

“You were just a boy. And the day James Jack’s folks died—you were there then, too.”

He nodded, peering into her face. The sharp eyes he remembered were rheumy now, faded—he thought her sight must have deteriorated—but they were looking at him with the same sense of purpose and determination they’d always had. “Are you just reminiscing, Marguerite?” he said. “Or is there something you want to say?”

She sat down on a stump. “Yes,” she said, reaching up and taking off the black hat. “Yes, there is.”

And she told him the story then. About the baby she’d lost. About the farmhand—Daniel was his name. About what her mother had said, and what her father had done because of it. The murder. Why she had gone away. She told it to him as if he were a priest, as if she were confessing—as if it were her fault, as if she were to blame. Told him about the day she’d found Daniel’s buried bones, told him what she had done with them. She’d kept it secret, he gathered, just because that was her way— because it wasn’t anybody’s business, what happened so many years ago. And because she hadn’t wanted the scandal, which might have cost her James Jack.

The story didn’t take long to tell. He could not tell if it was tears or cataracts that made her eyes shine as she spoke. “Does James know?” the sheriff asked.

“Some of it,” she said. “That I loved a boy and that he died. Not how.”

He nodded.

“I wanted you to know,” she said, rising from the stump stiffly, “because I want you to understand.” She put her hat back on and gave him another long look; he felt sure now that the water in her eyes was tears. “So that maybe you can forgive me,” she said, “for what I did, to you and to Alma.”

At first he thought he would not be able to say the words, but when he opened his mouth they came easily. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said.

She nodded and made as if to go. “Marguerite,” he said. He had a question to ask her, wasn’t sure how. Finally he said, “Is everything all right?”

Her gaze wandered toward the treetops. “I’m well enough,” she said, “if that’s what you mean. Of course, that’s the problem.” He waited for her to continue; he knew better than to press. “It’s long past time he had a life of his own,” she said. “But he won’t go. Says he wants to take care of me till the end.” She paused a second, smiled a crooked smile. “Which doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.”

“James is a good man,” the sheriff said.

“Yes,” she said. “Too good for his own good.”

“You raised him well, Marguerite.”

She suppressed a smile—he could tell she was proud to hear him say that—and gazed past him. “You hear stories now about desecration,” she said, lifting her chin toward the cemetery. “People disturbing Indian graves. Digging them up so fancy houses can be built.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t want that,” she said.

He followed her gaze to Alma’s grave, where people still clustered about. “I don’t think there’s much danger of it here.”

“Still,” she said, “better to go up in smoke.” Now the smile came, small and ironic, and she went off, moving slowly and with care.

Better to go up in smoke. If that’s what she wanted, if that’s what James Jack was up to, the sheriff thought, looking at the pink slipper in his hand, at least two laws would be broken. One: cause of death needed determination. It would look suspicious if it weren’t; might even lead to a murder trial; after all, James stood to inherit a pretty bit. Of course, the sheriff didn’t suspect that. But only an autopsy could tell.

Two: by law a body had to go through a mortuary for disposal. Stupid law, penalties not as great, but still, it was the law, and his to enforce.

Would considerations like that stop James? Stop Marguerite’s boy? No. James Jack resembled her that way, if no other. Just this side of wrong but always in the right.

He put the pink slipper in his pocket and started up the slope again.

The quarry road ended, narrowed into a path, and the tracks continued, but mussed up now—hard to tell coming from going, and they were filled in, as if something had been dragged over them. The hill was steeper now, but he kept going up, feeling his heart pound in his chest. He slowed down, paced himself. The new snow was not as deep here where the trees were thicker, but it was still rough going.

Finally the flashlight beam caught something else, up ahead. A building of some sort. An old cabin.

The door was ajar. He went in. There were a woodstove, a cot, some rudimentary shelves. The place did not look unused, but neither did it looked lived in. This was James Jack’s retreat, he thought, a place for him to get away. He followed the flashlight beam around the room, getting a closer look at things. Touched the stove as he passed it. Cold. The mattress was bare, sagging. He swung the flashlight across the foot of it, down toward the floor and back to the doorway. Then back to the floor at the foot of the bed. Something there. Pink.

He fingered the second pink slipper, put it in his pocket with its mate.

James Jack had brought Marguerite here, then had taken her away.

He left the cabin, walked around it. The only tracks led back the way he had come. He stood for a moment, thinking, then started down the slope. He knew now where they were; he realized now what Marguerite would have wanted.