SATURDAY, AUGUST 20

Tomato juice. Worcester sauce. Onion salt. Celery. Clare sat the ingredients on the counter and retrieved her big glass pitcher from the cupboard. She banged through the swinging kitchen doors and headed for the foot of the stairs, trying not to favor her right ankle. She was working to rebuild its strength, and limping around babying it wasn’t going to help.

“You want a virgin Bloody Mary?” she yelled up the stairs.

“God, no. Just coffee. I hate tomato juice.”

“More for me.” She snagged the vodka off the drinks tray and carried it into the kitchen. She removed a package of paper-wrapped sausages from the freezer and started them defrosting in the microwave while she mixed up a Bloody. She glanced at the clock hanging over her bare pine table. Glanced at the pitcher. It was noon in Nova Scotia. Close enough. She poured herself a tall, stiff one, swizzled it with a celery stick, and drank half the contents in one pull.

She smiled as she heard the shower go on. Russ had arrived unexpectedly last night, late from patrolling. Woke her up, despite the sleeping pill she had taken. Woke her up again at dawn, his hands moving over her, slow, intense, the two of them gathering like storm clouds over the mountains until they exploded: heat lightning and rolling thunder. She had dropped back into a deep, dreamless sleep, not surfacing until close to eleven. She stretched, snapping her spine. Lord, she loved Saturdays. She’d never really appreciated them before.

She threw the sausages into an enameled pan and started the coffee brewing in her press. Switched on the radio and refreshed her Bloody Mary. Pulled a carton of eggs from the icebox and turned around. She saw the face through the kitchen door at the same time she heard the knocking. She shrieked, clutched at her robe, dropped the eggs.

The door swung open. Anne Vining-Ellis burst into the kitchen. “Oh, Clare, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you all right?”

Clare felt something wet and viscous against her bare foot. She looked down. Three broken eggs were oozing across her cheap pressed-vinyl floor.

“Oh, God, I did startle you.” Anne snatched a dishcloth off the rack and turned on the cold water. “I should have—”

“Clare, are you okay? I heard—” Russ came though the swinging doors before Clare could say anything. At least, she thought stupidly, he was wearing a towel slung around his waist. She had discovered that wasn’t always a given.

“—called first.” Anne’s voice was faint.

Outside, birds caroled and chirped in the rustling trees. On the radio, the audience of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was laughing. A puff of hot August air rolled into the kitchen. From somewhere deep within her, Clare’s southern upbringing rose to the occasion. “Russ,” she said, “I believe you know Anne Vining-Ellis.”

Russ’s lips twitched. “Clare, why don’t you shut the door.”

She did so, leaving a trail of egg-white droplets across the floor. Anne abruptly twisted the running water off. She squeezed the dishcloth into the sink. “Um.” She waved the cloth toward the egg carton. “Better get that up before it dries.”

Russ looked at Clare. “Is it all right if I go get dressed?” She nodded. “Okay. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He sniffed. “Whatever you’re making, it smells great.”

Clare and Anne both watched in silence as Russ disappeared through the swinging doors. Clare listened to the thump and creak of his footsteps going up the stairs. She turned toward Anne. Chair of the stewardship committee. Important donor to the church. Parishioner. Friend. She hoped. She took a deep breath. “Well…”

Anne shook her head. “Oh. My. God.”

Clare’s heart sank.

“He is totally hot. Even with the bullet scars.”

“What?”

“What is he, fifty? He’s got to be close to my age, right?” She fanned herself. “Let me tell you, my husband sure doesn’t look like that in a towel.”

“What?”

Anne dropped the wet cloth on the counter and crossed to Clare. She hugged her. “Oh, Clare. It’s not exactly a surprise. I mean, yeah, seeing him here half naked was definitely a surprise, but the fact that you’re doing more than meeting for lunch at the diner isn’t.” She released Clare, grinning. “Besides, everyone knows priests and ministers don’t have sex. So I’ll just assume his shower is broken and he was borrowing yours.”

Clare buried her face in her hands. “I think I need another drink.”

“I’ll join you.”

Clare took down a second tall glass and filled it to the brim while Anne mopped up the broken eggs. “So.” She stood and traded the eggy cloth for a Bloody Mary. “Is this a new thing? I mean, since you’ve been away for a year and a half.”

“When I found out I was being deployed, we…” Clare made a vague gesture. “We only had two weeks, though, and everything was crazy, with me trying to take care of all the details at St. Alban’s and get ready to go and all.” She looked into her drink. “This feels very new. I mean, we’ve known each other for how many years now? But we’ve never actually been out on a date.”

“What are you using for birth control?”

“Good Lord.” Clare could feel her cheeks turning red.

Anne pulled out one of the ladder-back chairs and sat at the pine table. “I’m a doctor. I’m concerned.”

Clare swallowed a large gulp of her Bloody Mary. “I’m on the pill.”

“That’s foresighted of you.”

“I’ve been on for years. Erratic periods and army flight schedules don’t mix.” She dropped into another chair and covered her eyes. “I cannot believe I’m discussing this with you.”

“Then make an appointment and go talk about it with your regular doctor. I know you have this thing about medical treatment, but—”

“Anne, what did you come here for?”

Anne paused. “Sorry.” She took the celery stick out of her drink. Tapped it on the rim of the glass. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk about other people’s issues than your own.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Anne looked up at her, smiling a little. “I just bet you do.” She laid the celery stick on the table. “It’s about Will.”

“What about Will?”

“You … know what happened to him.”

“Yes. I’d heard. I haven’t seen him since I’ve been back, though.”

“Of course you haven’t. No one has. He doesn’t go anywhere. He doesn’t do anything. He lets us drag him to physical therapy and to the orthopedist, but he refuses to go anywhere else. Remember how he loved to play his guitar? We’ve encouraged him to get back together with his old band. We’ve offered to pay for shop classes over at ACC—you know how he was always fooling around with cars.”

Clare nodded.

“Nothing. He won’t do anything.”

“Is he acting depressed?”

“No! I mean, not to my face. If he has to interact with anyone, he behaves as if everything’s fine. He cracks jokes, he carries on a conversation, but it’s all an act. When no one’s around … I can hear him, in his room. Just sitting there. No music. No movement. Like a machine that’s been turned off.”

Clare laid her hand open on the table. Anne took it. “I’ve tried to talk to him about seeing a psychiatrist, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Can you place him in treatment? Without his consent?”

“Only if he’s a danger to himself or to others. And I’m afraid—” Her voice broke. “I’m so afraid that by the time he shows he’s a danger to himself it will be too late.”

“How can I help?”

“Will you come talk to him? Not officially or formally. Just come for dinner and then, you know, casually talk to him.”

“Of course, but Anne, I’m not a trained mental health professional. If you think he’s suicidal—”

Anne shook her head. “I don’t think it’s his mind. I think his soul has been wounded, and souls are your profession.”

Clare held out her other hand, and Anne squeezed both of them, hard. There was a polite throat clearing at the doorway. Russ stood there, barefoot, in jeans and an untucked shirt. “Am I intruding?”

“No.” Anne released Clare’s hands and stood up. “I am.” She smiled at Russ. “I’ll leave you to enjoy your brunch, Chief Van Alstyne.”

“I think you ought to call me Russ, all things considering.”

“You got it. Clare? Tonight? Six o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

Anne opened the door, letting in another puff of warm air. “Thanks. Sorry for the eggs and all. As for you”—she pointed to Russ—“if you’re going to eat this woman’s food and run up her water bill, the least you can do is take her out on a date.”

The door clicked shut behind her. In the kitchen, the coffee press whistled faintly and the sausages popped in the skillet. Russ looked at her. “No more sleeping over.”

“Noooo!” She stood up, nearly knocking over the remains of her Bloody Mary.

“Yes. We’ve gotten away with it for eight weeks. That was too damn close for comfort.”

Clare flung an arm toward the door. “Anne’s fine with it! She’s happy for me.”

“Dr. Anne’s fine with it because she’s your friend. What if it had been one of the conservative guys on the vestry, like whatsis-name, with the scarf?”

“Sterling Sumner.”

“How do you think he would have reacted? What if it had been Elizabeth de Groot?”

Clare winced. Her deacon, who was tasked with keeping Clare on the straight and narrow, had a serious thing for clerical reverence and priestly authority. “She’d be on the phone to the bishop right now.”

“Damn right she would—and I don’t think his reaction would be ‘Fine, I’m so happy for you.’” He reached out and pulled her into his arms. “Would it?”

She shook her head against his chest. “It’s not fair.”

“It’s your organization, darlin’. I may not be a member, but I know we gotta play by the rules.”

“But I sleep better with you here!” It was true. She had used prayer and sleeping pills and warm milk and brandy, but the only thing that centered and settled her was Russ. Curled against the warm solidity of his back, she could let down her guard. She was safe.

When did it stop being safe to fall asleep? She shuddered.

He tightened his hold on her. “Just for a while.”

“It’s not going to stop being an issue.”

“It will if we’re married.”

Married. He had asked her once, the night they had found out she was leaving for Iraq. It was a spur-of-the-moment proposal, an age-old instinct to seize the moment when war was howling outside the door. She had turned him down, gambling that they would have a second chance. Confident that when he truly put his wife’s death behind him, they would both be ready.

“Clare?” His lips were curved slightly, but his eyes were wary. He was, she realized, unsure of himself. It wasn’t an expression she was used to seeing on Russ Van Alstyne’s face.

“It’s just … we haven’t talked about that. Marriage.”

He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets. “We have to be realistic. Living together isn’t going to be an option.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She was barefoot, wearing her old summer pajamas. Sausages sizzled and popped in the skillet. NPR had moved on to Car Talk. Even at her most down-to-earth, this wasn’t what she envisioned when she thought of a proposal. “I mean we haven’t discussed the issues. The details. Marriage is a big, huge deal.”

His mouth quirked. “Believe me, I take marriage very seriously.”

She flushed. She of all people had reason to know “divorce” wasn’t in his vocabulary. Which, when you got down to it, was the reason for the sinking feeling in her stomach. The fact he was mentioning marriage for the first time after being caught with his pants down smelled unpleasantly like shotgun wedding. With her vestry, instead of her father, holding the 12-gauge. Russ loved her. She knew that. She just didn’t know if in some deep well of emotion he was still choosing Linda over her. “Maybe this isn’t the time or place for a big ‘what do we want out of marriage’ discussion.”

He got that expression again. The uncertain one. “Is there that much to discuss? ’Cause I can tell you what I want in under five words. You as my wife.” He shrugged. “The rest of it, I figure we’ll make up as we go along. That’s pretty much how it goes, in my experience.”

“Why do you want to get married? I mean, other than the sex thing.”

“There has to be more than sex?” He grinned. “It’s not because I’m chomping at the bit to be the preacher’s husband, I can guarantee you that.” She laughed a little. He ran his hands up her arms and rested them on her shoulders. “I want to be married because I like those easy-to-understand, boring definitions. Husband. Wife. I want to be married because life is short, and I want to spend whatever I have left of it with you, every day, every night. I want to be married so that everything I have and everything I am is yours, and everything of you is mine. And I want to be married so I can lay you out on the dining room table if I feel like it and have you six ways from Sunday in the middle of the afternoon and if one of your parishioners walks in on us, it’s tough titties for them.”

She started laughing.

“I’m not a complicated guy, Clare. I keep trying to dress it up with flowers and stuff, but that’s what it all comes down to with me.”

She touched his cheek, smooth from his morning shave. She was afraid her heart would break open from feeling too much. “I told you. You don’t ever have to dress anything up for me. Just be yourself.”

*   *   *

The phone hanging on the wall between the door and the window rang before he had the chance to ask her the same question. What did she want out of marriage? Specifically, marriage to a guy fourteen years older, who thought God was a myth and whose job could get him killed.

Clare sighed and crossed the floor. “Hello?”

Maybe he was pushing it. She didn’t talk about Iraq, but he had held her while she thrashed around with bad dreams. He had seen the fatigue on her face as she tried to be everything for everybody in her church. Of course, that might argue for the two of them getting married as soon as possible. He knew he’d do a damn sight better job of drawing boundaries than she did.

Maybe he should just ask her right now. Get the damn thing settled. But Christ, the ring was back at his mother’s house, and she deserved something special. Memorable. Not him blurting it out before breakfast. Maybe he could make an excuse to swing by his mom’s place. He could take her on a picnic. Picnics were romantic, weren’t they?

Clare looked at him oddly. “Um. Certainly.” She handed the phone out. “It’s Harlene, for you.”

“What?” He took the receiver as if it might be booby-trapped. “Van Alstyne here.”

Clare went to the stove to check the breakfast. “Sorry to bother you and the reverend,” Harlene said.

“That’s all right,” Russ lied. “What’s up?” Clare drew a long meat fork out of the utensil canister and started pricking sausages. He tried to remember if the IGA sold picnic lunches.

“Eric’s called in sick, and Noble’s gone up to Tupper Lake for the weekend. We’re short and we need coverage.”

“Have you tried Paul?” Russ watched Clare take down a glass bowl and open the carton of eggs. They’d need sunscreen—and bug dope. Bug dope definitely wasn’t romantic.

“Well, I’m sure I could get ahold of him, but he’ll be on overtime. You want me to try him anyways?”

The magic word, “overtime,” brought his full attention back to Harlene. “No. No. I don’t want to give the alderman anything else to complain about.” He pointed at the egg Clare had picked up. He shook his head. Don’t bother. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. And call Duane to see if he’ll be available just in case. Last weekend before the holiday, we might need him for traffic and parking.”

“Let’s hope he remembers to turn his darned phone on so I can at least leave him a message. Unlike you.”

He slapped the front pocket of his jeans and drew out his blank, inactive cell phone. “Sorry.” He thought for a second. Did he want to know? “Harlene? Why did you call Clare’s number to reach me?”

She laughed in his ear. “I may be old, but I haven’t forgotten what it’s like. I figured you two would be making up for lost time.”

“Oh.”

“And Erla Davis mentioned to me that she saw you walking down her street and getting into your truck real early last week when she was headed out to open up the diner.”

Oh, shit. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll see you soon.” He hung up. Clare raised her eyebrows.

“Eric’s called in sick, and Harlene can’t raise Noble. I’ve got to go in.”

“How did she know you were here? Did you leave word at the station?”

“Are you kidding? No. She called my cell, and when that didn’t go through, she called here next. Seems the waitress from the Kreemy Kakes diner spotted me picking up my truck a few mornings ago.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess I’m not as good at sneaking around as I thought.”

Clare laughed. “Don’t look so grim about it.” She crossed the floor and wrapped her arms around his midsection. “I’m not complaining.”

“God. I’m sorry.” He pressed his lips against her hair. Over the aroma of the sausages, he could smell her, vodka and tomato juice and Clare. “I’ve got to go. If it’s anything like last weekend, it’ll be crazy today. I don’t want you to feel like I’m running away from this conversation, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back.”

“I’ll be at the Ellises’ tonight anyway.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Sunday.”

He groaned. “I’m in the seat all day Monday, but I’ll be free by dinnertime.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got a premarital session at six and a building and grounds committee meeting at seven.” She slanted her eyes up at him. “You could sneak over later that night.”

“No.” His voice was stonier than he intended. Probably because the idea was so damn appealing.

Clare growled with frustration and pushed him away. “Go. Finish getting dressed. While you’re at it, consider that I’ve been taking it easy on summer schedule. The Sunday after Labor Day is Homecoming Sunday, and everything starts up again: adult ed and weekly community suppers and all the committees. I’ll be twice as busy as I am now.”

He stumped upstairs, worrying about how much of herself she was going to pour into those meetings and suppers and lessons. Wondering how long after he asked her they could get married. Assuming she said yes. He was pretty sure doing it at lunchtime in Judge Ryswick’s chambers was out of the question.

When he returned, feet in boots and his less than pristine uniform blouse tucked into his jeans, she handed him a paper sack. “I’ve put a sausage in a bun for you.”

He grinned.

“Don’t say it,” she warned.

He took it with a quick kiss instead of a joke. “I’ll call you.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s what they all say.”

He thought about it all the way to the station. He hadn’t set the scene very well. Hell, he hadn’t set the scene at all. She hadn’t gotten any courtship, just awkward years of being the semi-sorta Other Woman, followed by hush-hush sex. Maybe he ought to put on the brakes and do the dating thing for a while.

But dammit, he didn’t want a girlfriend. It was ridiculous, for a man his age to have a girlfriend. He wanted a wife. He wanted a house with both their things in it, and joint bank accounts, and someone saying, “Hi, honey,” when he got home at the end of the day.

He just had to come up with a decent time and place to ask her.

*   *   *

The first thing he saw when he arrived at the station was Lyle MacAuley, coming through dispatch from the squad room. “What are you doing here?” Russ asked.

“Paperwork for a shoplifting bust.” Lyle shook his head. “Used to be, you’d show up at the Super Kmart, and it’d be some kid with a CD jammed down his pants. Now it’s professionals. You should have seen this pair. Slits sewn in their jackets and everything.” He followed Russ into his office. “Don’t need a fence anymore. Sell the stuff on eBay.”

Russ picked up the BOLO sheets Harlene had left on his desk and leafed through them. “Hmn. Anything going on I should know about?”

“Not particularly. Anything going on that I should know about?”

Russ’s head came up. “What’s that mean?”

“Oh, I dunno.” Lyle crossed his arms over his chest.

“You overheard Harlene, didn’t you?”

Lyle dropped his arms and his pretense at casualness. “Reverend Fergusson’s had to deal with a lot of gossip around this town over the past few years. Now, when she went away to Iraq, it all sort of died down. So I can’t figure why you seem hell-bent on making her the subject of conversation again.”

“What are you, her father?”

Lyle splayed his hands on Russ’s desk and leaned forward. “Whyn’t you just ask the lady to marry you? God knows why, but she seems pretty fond of you. Just make an honest woman out of her before talk spreads. If it was anybody else, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference, but she’s a minister, Russ. What are the people in her church going to think when it comes out you’ve been spending your nights over to her place?”

Russ threw the sheets on his desk. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”

Lyle opened his hands and raised his bushy gray eyebrows.

“I was ready to ask her the day she got back. There just didn’t seem to be a good time to do it.”

“It’s been two months already. I think you’d be able to find five minutes somewheres.”

Russ glared at his deputy chief. “Clare’s had too much to deal with, readjusting to civilian life.” He pushed away from his desk and walked to one of the high windows overlooking Main Street. “She’s not sleeping well. She’s drinking too much.” He rapped against the glass pane, and a startled mourning dove flew off the granite windowsill. “She’s trying to be there for her congregation, and it’s sucking the life out of her. I didn’t want to put one more thing on her plate.”

“Give the reverend some credit. Near as I can tell, she’s never shown any reluctance to tell you to go soak your head.” Russ let out an involuntary laugh. “If you’re crowdin’ her,” Lyle went on, “she’ll let you know.”

The intercom buzzed. “You two done in there?” Harlene’s tinny voice asked.

“Yeah,” Lyle said. “You can stop pretending not to listen now.”

“I got the manager from the new resort on the line.” Harlene sounded tart. “Says she’d like to speak with Chief Van Alstyne, if he happens to be available.”

Russ looked at Lyle. “She asked for me?”

“Maybe she knows you’re gonna be in the market for a reception hall.”

“Not if an asteroid hit and it was the last building left in New York.” The resort might be the fanciest spot in three counties, but as far as Russ was concerned, it was the open vortex to hell. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the place had been built atop an Indian burial ground, like in the horror movies. “Put her through, Harlene.” He punched the speaker button. Lyle moved a stack of old circ sheets off the wooden chair on the other side of the desk and sat down. “Van Alstyne here.”

“Chief? This is Barbara LeBlanc, at the Algonquin Waters. Look, I have a problem here that I think is one for the police, but I need it to be handled sensitively.”

“Okay. What’s up?”

“A man came in about an hour ago, looking for one of our bookkeepers. The front desk associates told him she didn’t come in during the weekend, and he parked himself in the lobby and said he’d wait. They were a little nervous, because it seemed, well, very stalkerlike behavior, so they called me, and I went to talk to the man and told him the lobby was for the use of guests only and if he’d like to leave a message for Ms. McNabb he could—”

“Wait a minute. Did you say McNabb?”

“That’s her name. The bookkeeper.”

“Tally McNabb?”

“That’s right.”

Russ glanced at Lyle, who pursed his lips thoughtfully. “What does this man look like?”

Barbara LeBlanc paused. “He’s, um, maybe five ten, very muscular, um, in his late twenties or early thirties…”

Russ sighed. He knew when someone was tiptoeing around. “Is he black?”

“Yes!” she whispered. “How did you know?”

“I’ve met him before. Go on, what happened?”

“When I told him the lobby was for guests only, he insisted on renting a room! He said he’d stay here until Ms. McNabb showed up, even though I gave him my word we didn’t expect her until Monday.” She dropped her voice again. “We’re a public accommodation, Chief Van Alstyne. We have to have an iron-clad reason to refuse someone’s trade. This whole waiting-around-for-a-woman-to-show thing makes me very nervous, but I was afraid turning him away would just open us up to a potential lawsuit.”

“So you rented him a room.”

“Yes.”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Where is he now?” Rousting Quentan Nichols out of a room at the hush-and-plush Algonquin Waters was going to be problematical.

“He’s still sitting in the lobby.”

Okay. One thing going right today. “You did the right thing by calling me, Ms. LeBlanc. I’m heading over now. I’ll talk with him.”

“He is a stalker?”

“He was here looking for Tally McNabb two months ago. There was some trouble. I don’t have any reason to think she wants to see him now any more than she did then.”

“You’ll be discreet?”

“I’ll keep things as low-key as possible.”

She sighed. “Thank you so much, Chief. I’ll see you in about half an hour.” A dial tone replaced her voice.

Lyle looked at him. “This that guy who got up that fight at the Dew Drop?”

“One of ’em.” Russ shook his head. “God knows what he’s doing here now. I can’t believe he got leave again so soon.”

“That’s right. He’s military police, isn’t he? Like you and Eric.” Lyle pushed at the arms of his chair and stood. “Well. Let’s get going.”

“Who said you’re going along?”

“It took Hadley and Kevin both to stop him last time, didn’t it?”

“I’m just going to talk with the guy.”

“Yeah? That’s your intention. You don’t know his.” MacAuley let his half-smile drop. “Seriously. The only young MP I know is Eric McCrea, and I’ll tell you, if I had to go pick him up for something, I sure wouldn’t do it without backup.”

Russ nodded. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”

“I usually am. It’d save us a lot of time if you’d just start from that premise.”

They took separate cruisers to the resort. If everything went according to plan, they’d split up afterward, Lyle heading back to Fort Henry, Russ taking the Cossayuharie loop. Of course, not much had gone according to plan today.

They parked in the wide drive curving through the portico. As Russ stepped out into the shade and the mountain scent of balsam and juniper, his stomach turned. The world had been howling white with snow the last time he had been here. The polished oak-and-brass doors, open to the August air, had been draped in plastic sheeting. The oriental rugs and leather chairs of the gleaming pine lobby had been covered in paint-spattered tarps, and the people descending the stairs to the spa below had been electricians and carpenters, not tanned, toned matrons.

Linda had been alive.

Funny how he always thought of her by name these days, instead of as “my wife.”

“You okay?” Lyle’s voice was low in his ear.

Russ gestured toward the swags of lined and slashed fabric framing clerestory windows beneath the arching cathedral ceiling. “Linda made those.”

Lyle slapped his upper arm. Gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“I’m all right.” Russ coughed to get the thickness out of his throat. “I’m fine,” he said in a more normal tone of voice. He brought his attention back to the lobby. There was a pair of white-haired gents in candy-colored pants swapping newspaper sections with each other, and a mother and daughter reading the daily activity board, their identical golden blond heads close together, but no Quentan Nichols. “He’s not here.”

Lyle nudged him. A slim brunette emerged from a door behind the granite reception counter. She had a flat walkie-talkie clipped to the waist of her short skirt, and a name badge pinned to her expensive-looking silk blouse. She crossed toward them, her heels clicking on the pine floorboards. “Chief Van Alstyne.” She held out her hand. “Good to see you again.”

“Ms. LeBlanc.” He shook her hand. “This is Deputy Chief Lyle MacAuley.”

Lyle straightened his spine and expanded his chest. He held LeBlanc’s hand a second longer than necessary.

“The chief and deputy chief. I’m honored.” Her wide mouth stretched into a smile that didn’t quite make her eyes. “Or should I be worried?”

“Don’t you worry about a thing.” Lyle radiated confidence, with just a hint of amusement that anyone might think he couldn’t handle a heavily muscled thirty-year-old MP. Russ had to admit, he was good. “Where is Mr. Nichols right now?” Lyle asked.

LeBlanc gestured toward the almost empty lobby. “He went up to his room about fifteen minutes ago.” She held up a plastic card attached to a card- and key-heavy ring. “I put him on the top floor, as far away from anyone else as I could. Just in case.”

“Good thinking.” Russ glanced at Lyle. “See if we can get him back down here?”

Lyle nodded. “Be a lot less messy, if he doesn’t want to come with us.”

“Oh.” LeBlanc lowered the card. “I’m sorry. I should have tried to keep him in the lobby.”

“No,” Russ said. “You did exactly the right thing.”

“We’re the ones with the law enforcement experience,” Lyle reassured her. “Not you.”

“Years of experience,” Russ said. “Years and years.”

Lyle shot him a look.

“Could you get him on the phone?” Russ said. “Tell him there’s been some difficulty with his credit card and that you’ve got to swipe it again.” He thumbed toward the far wall. “We’ll wait between the elevators and the stairs. Whichever way he comes down, we’ll have him surrounded before he has a chance to kick up a fuss.”

LeBlanc nodded. She headed back to her office, giving them a chance to appreciate the view as she walked away. “Mm-mm,” Lyle said. “That woman could rent me a room anytime.”

“She’s a little young for you, isn’t she?”

“Oh, I dunno.” Lyle slanted him a look. “I figure her to be about Clare’s age.”

Russ shut up. They crossed the lobby, Lyle gawking at the antler chandeliers and the stone fireplace, big enough to roast an entire cow in. He gestured toward the wide, carpeted stairs.

“It only goes as far as the second floor,” Russ said. “Then it’s your standard interior staircase up to the fifth.”

Lyle craned his neck to see to where the lobby angled into a hallway past the bar. “What about that side?”

“The offices. There’s a fire door, but it’s alarmed. No exterior fire escape. The night of the fire, all the guests exited out the lobby or the alarmed door.”

“Sounds easy. Just the way I like it.”

Russ positioned himself at the edge of the elevator bank, where, if he leaned forward, he could see all four elevators. Lyle propped up the wall next to the stairs. Russ tried to look relaxed, but there wasn’t any way to disguise two cops hanging around waiting for someone to show. The blond mother-daughter pair stared as they gathered up their tiny purses and headed for the door. Lyle waggled his fingers and winked. Jesus. That guy would hit on anything.

The elevator dinged. He tensed, but it was only an elderly couple, who looked at him warily and sidled past him before heading downstairs to the spa. He resumed his watch. He envisioned Nichols collecting his wallet and his key card. Maybe putting his shoes back on. Leaving the room. Walking down to the elevator. Pressing the button. Waiting. Waiting.

The elevator dinged again. The far set of doors opened, but no one stepped out. Russ strode toward the car, slapping his hand against the side of the door to keep it from closing, but there was no need. The thing was empty. He glanced over at Lyle, who ducked around the corner of the stairs. He reappeared a few seconds later. Shrugged.

Russ crossed the expanse of lobby again, making for the manager’s office. LeBlanc met him at the door. “Did you reach him?” he asked.

“Yes, right after you and I talked. He said he’d be right down.” She glanced at the thin gold watch on her wrist. “He should have made it by now. Do you want me to try him again?”

“No. Can you shut down the elevators for a few minutes?” She blanched, then nodded and disappeared into her office. When she came back, she dangled a rectangular metal key from her ring. “Follow me,” he said. “He’s not coming down,” he told Lyle.

“Stairs or elevator?”

“I’ll take the stairs. Ms. LeBlanc”—he turned to the manager—“I want you to shut down every elevator except the one Deputy Chief MacAuley is using. Got it?”

“I’m coming with you.” Before Russ could object, she went on. “I’m the manager. What happens here is my responsibility.”

He compressed his lips. “All right—but stay behind Lyle, and do what he says.” She nodded. They headed for the elevator bank. Russ hit the stairs.

If it had been ten years ago, he would have taken the steps two at a time. If it had been two years ago—well, no, two years ago he’d been in a bed in the Washington County Hospital, recovering from two .357 bullets in his chest and one in his thigh, but the rehab and the PT and the exercise program his therapist had put him on had left him in the best shape he’d been in since leaving the army. His heart rate was up, and his knees twinged, but he could make five stories without breaking a sweat. As long as he wasn’t trying to carry Clare at the same time.

The interior stairwell terminated at the fifth floor, which was just what he wanted to see. No way to go but down. He pushed through the heavy door into the hallway, in time to see Lyle and the manager walking toward him. Lyle’s face was grim. “He’s flown.”

“How?” He frowned at LeBlanc. “Could he have cut the door alarms downstairs?”

She shook her head. “They’re wired into the electrical system, not after-market add-ons. We’d have to have a complete power failure to turn them off.”

“Then he’s got to be hiding in the stairwell on the other side of the building.”

“Or he’s on one of the other floors.” Lyle’s face creased in frustration. “The two of us aren’t going to be able to smoke him out. We can’t cover all the exits.”

“The only way out is through the lobby or one of the alarmed fire doors. We can—”

“Oh, no.” Barbara LeBlanc slapped her hand over her mouth. “There is another way.” She shouldered through the stairwell door, kicked off her heels, and scooped them up one-handed.

“What?” Russ followed her.

“The second floor.” She hiked her already short skirt up and bounded down the stairs two at a time. Russ and Lyle clattered after her, their boots thudding and echoing up and down the stairwell. “We have a collection room there,” she shouted, already a flight and a half ahead of them. “So we don’t have to haul loads of dirty linens through the lobby.”

She was out the second-floor doorway before she could say any more. Russ burst though, Lyle right behind him. LeBlanc was pelting noiselessly down the hall, the thick carpeting absorbing even the vibrations of her passage. They caught up with her as she skidded to a halt in front of an unmarked door next to the elevator. She snapped the key ring off her waist and thrust a plastic card into the flat lock pad. The door clicked.

A teen in a maid’s uniform looked up from a rolling cart, her hands full of tiny soaps. The collection room was the size of a guest bedroom, lined with towers of toilet paper and gallon jugs of disinfectant. Canvas-and-steel cleaning carts jammed end to end, filling the center of the room. In the back corner, Russ could see white-painted double metal doors. A freight elevator.

“Kerry,” LeBlanc said, “did a man come through here?”

“Yeah. Just a few minutes ago. He said he was security.” She stared at Russ and Lyle. “Did I … should I have…?”

“Don’t worry about it.” LeBlanc weaved through the carts to the elevator.

“Where does this go?” Russ asked as she jabbed at the button.

“Broadway. The main behind-the-scenes corridor in the basement. It opens onto the kitchen, shipping and receiving, the employees’ lounge—”

“Could he get out from there?” Lyle asked.

“Yes. The employees’ exit and the door next to receiving are exterior-locking only. You can’t lock them from the inside.”

The elevator doors rattled open. Unlike the wood-and-mirror-paneled guest elevators, the service car was lined with hanging furniture pads. Russ and Lyle followed LeBlanc in.

“No alarms?” Russ said.

“No, of course not.”

Russ pointed to the walkie-talkie hanging off her waist. “Check in with the departments he might have reached from Broadway.”

The manager twisted the mike off its clip and triggered it. By the time the elevator shuddered to a stop, she had confirmed that no one had seen a stranger going through the kitchen, the receiving dock, or the spa.

“He must have split out the employees’ exit,” Lyle said. They stepped out into a concrete-floored corridor, inadequately lit by long fluorescent tubes high overhead, crowded on either side by crates and canisters stacked three and four atop one another. It looked like a pessimistic paranoid’s bomb shelter.

“I don’t understand how he found the collection room in the first place,” LeBlanc said. “There’s nothing to indicate it. It doesn’t appear on any of the hotel maps.”

“He was looking for it.” Russ didn’t like the level of thought and preparation that went into Nichols’s flight. In his experience, innocent men didn’t make escape plans.

“The employees’ exit is this way.” LeBlanc led them to where the corridor T-stopped at a set of steel doors. “This is the kitchen.” She pointed. “Employees’ exit to the right, stairs to the spa and the lobby to the left.”

“This place is blown,” Lyle said. “He’s headed for his vehicle.”

Russ nodded. “Get to your unit. Have Harlene send a car to Tally McNabb’s house. I’ll take the back way.” Lyle jogged toward the stairs. “Thanks, Ms. LeBlanc. I don’t think he’ll come back here, but if you spot him, let us know.” Russ turned toward the employees’ exit.

“It’s always exciting seeing you, Chief,” she called after him.

The employees’ way out was another nondescript door, marked only by a red exit sign and a litter of papers and posters taped on either side. Russ walked into blinding sunshine—no columned portico on this side—and found himself on a gravel path wide enough to accommodate a golf cart. It curved through manicured grass until it rose and disappeared into the trees that ringed the resort. The employee parking lot was somewhere back there, he guessed, tucked out of sight of the guests whose rooms overlooked the rear of the spa.

Would Nichols have stashed his vehicle there? He doubted it. Easier and less obtrusive to park in front. A quicker exit if things went south. He jogged up the walkway as far as the corner of the building, then struck out across the grass. He stayed tight to the hotel, avoiding the rock gardens and flower beds scattered across the lush lawn.

At the front of the hotel, a solid, waist-high yew hedgerow separated him from the looping drive. It was there he finally saw Nichols, in khakis and a polo shirt, a windbreaker in one hand, a leather-and-canvas attaché case in the other. The MP had crossed the drive and the crescent-shaped upper parking lot and was striding down the steps to the lower lot. Fast but not hurried. He looked like a businessman running late for a meeting at a Lake George marina.

“Nichols!” Russ spotted a break in the hedgerow a few yards away, where a crushed stone walk led into the gardens. “Police! Drop your bag and put your hands in the air!” He ran toward the opening. Nichols turned his head but kept walking. Russ skidded though the gap in the yew, stones flying, and spotted Lyle getting out of his squad car, headed for the upper lot. Russ ran in a straight line, ignoring the steps to his right and the concrete ramp to his left, picking the most direct line toward Nichols’s rapidly receding back. He bounded over low rock outcroppings and pounded across the ground cover, leaving crushed flowers and scattered wood chips in his wake.

At the upper lot, he lost sight of Nichols. He ran across the asphalt and paused, teetering, at the top of the next set of stone stairs.

“There!” Lyle, above him, pointed. “He’s behind the blue SUV.”

Russ leaped down the stairs, knees screaming, and broke for the SUV. He was maybe ten yards away, closing fast, when a late-model Crown Vic, anonymous in government green, reversed out of the space behind a blue Explorer. It lurched forward, straight toward Russ. Then Nichols slammed on the brakes. Russ could see the man’s face though the tinted windshield, see his lips moving, and had a heart-stopping second to think: Pull my gun? Or jump?

Nichols twisted in his seat. The Crown Vic exploded into reverse, screeching backward through the lot, bumping over one of the low rock curbs. It spun in a tire-squealing half circle and surged up the entry ramp the wrong way.

“Get in the car!” Russ yelled to Lyle. “Get in the car!” He turned, back up the stairs, across the upper lot and staggered up the second set of stairs in time to see Nichols’s car disappearing down the drive. He hadn’t gone through the portico, thank God, which by now had filled up with bellhops and parking attendants and wide-eyed guests. Lyle’s cruiser pulled forward into a tight U-turn. He rolled past Russ, pointing to where Nichols had gone. Russ nodded. Lyle punched his lights and siren and accelerated after Nichols. Russ yanked the door of his own unit open, hurled himself into the seat, and was rolling in the opposite direction before he had finished buckling in.

As soon as he was safely away from the crowd, he stomped on the gas. He tugged the mic off its clip. “Fifteen-thirty, this is fifteen-fifty-seven.”

“Got you.”

“See him?”

“Just dust. We coming out at the same place?”

“Yeah. The loop joins up about a mile above Sacandaga Road.”

“Will he head for town? Or south on Route 9?”

“Depends on what he’s carrying in that case.” It was damn small for an overnight bag, but there was plenty of room for a couple automatics and any number of magazines. “You get that car sent to Tally McNabb’s?”

“Kevin’s on his way.”

“Good.” At least she wouldn’t be surprised, alone, by Nichols wanting to “talk.” He heard a faint siren. “I’m coming up on the Y.” He took his foot off the gas. The last thing he wanted to do was broadside Lyle. The road was clear. He accelerated forward. “I’m through.”

“I see you.”

Russ glanced up at the rearview mirror. There was Lyle’s unit, lights whirling, sun sparking off the hood and grille. He shifted his focus ahead: narrow private road twisting through dense pine and hemlock forest. “No sign of him ahead.”

“Jesum. That guy drives like he’s at Watkins Glen.”

And he was headed toward an intersection that had already seen one fatal accident this summer. Russ hoped to hell Nichols was a better driver than Ellen Bain had been. The two squad cars flew down the remaining stretch of mountain road, Lyle a prudent six or seven lengths behind Russ. Approaching the roads’ T-stop, Russ took his foot off the gas again. He keyed the mic. “I’ll take east toward town. You head south toward 9.”

“Roger that.”

Russ slowed, slowed some more, and made damn sure no other vehicles were coming along the Sacandaga Road. He swung left, past the enormous carved and painted Algonquin Waters sign. Behind him, he could see Lyle’s cruiser pull into the road and head in the opposite direction. Before him, the road rose over a treeless peak. Russ sped up, crested, saw the fields and pastures spreading out below, green and gold and brown, like a ragged quilt stitched with stony brooks and sagging barbwire fences … and there, halfway to the horizon, a Crown Vic.

Russ tromped on the gas as he reached for the mic again. “Fifteen-thirty, this is fifteen-fifty-seven.”

“Go.”

“I got him.”

“I’m coming around.”

Russ signed off and immediately keyed the mic again. “Dispatch, this is fifteen-fifty-seven.”

“Go, fifteen-fifty-seven.”

“Be advised both units are in pursuit of late-model Ford Crown Vic, U.S. government plates 346-638, headed east on the Sacandaga Road.”

“Roger that, fifteen-fifty-seven. Do you require assistance?”

“Alert the state police. He may be headed for the Northway via Schuylerville Road.” Or he could take Route 57 into town. That was Russ’s fear. Seventy miles an hour along country roads was dangerous enough—speeding through Main Street on a Saturday afternoon during tourist season was a guaranteed disaster. “Harlene, make sure they know our guy is an MP. Resisting, evading, speeding. Possibly armed. Fifteen-fifty-seven out.” He punched the accelerator. The big-block Interceptor engine roared and the cruiser surged forward, pressing Russ into his seat, blurring the fences and fields outside, turning the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of his tires into a high-pitched yowl. He drove over another rise, the road curving farther to the east, and he saw Nichols smoking past the Stuyvesant Inn and out of sight again. His gaze flicked to the speedometer. Eighty-five. Jesus. His hands were steady, but his heart pounded, the adrenaline rush pricking under his arms and sparking up his spine.

He had time to think, This was a lot more fun with Clare in the car, and then he reacquired Nichols, popping over a hillock and disappearing again. Illinois driver’s license. He remembered that from Nichols’s billfold. He figured that meant crowded urban streets or country roads so straight and flat they made billiard tables look bumpy by comparison. Here in Washington County, you couldn’t find a level stretch of road running more than a quarter mile.

He hit the same hill he had seen Nichols going over, up and then down, down, into another rolling valley, and there was Nichols, Christ on a crutch, overtaking a tractor and combine so fast it looked like the farmer behind the wheel was going backward.

Nichols shifted into the other lane and blew past the tractor. Ahead of him, an ancient Plymouth wagon crested the opposite hill and descended straight into his path.

“Shit,” Russ said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Nichols jerked to the right, skidding half off the narrow blacktop, spraying dirt and grass before catching the road and straightening the Crown Vic out again.

Despite Russ’s lights and siren, the Plymouth still hadn’t pulled off the road. It continued to barrel toward the tractor, even as Nichols kicked his car into gear and began the climb up out of the valley. Russ was getting closer to the rear of the combine every second. “Get off of the road, you idiot,” he said to the Plymouth. He took his foot off the gas and feathered the brakes, slowing, slowing, watching helplessly as Nichols hurtled over the far rise and was gone again.

The Plymouth finally got the message and wobbled to the edge of the road, leaving just enough space for Russ to squeeze between it and the tractor without transferring the JOHN DEERE lettering onto his cruiser. The driver, who looked about ninety years old, eyed him disapprovingly as he inched by. As soon as he cleared the tractor’s grille, he hit the gas. His speedometer crept up. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. He remembered the stop sign at the T-intersection just as he crowned the hill.

He swore again. Hit the brakes, skidded down the road toward the stop. No sign of oncoming cars, thank God. Of course, no sign of Nichols, either. Russ had a half second to make his decision. West to the mountains? Or north toward town? He thought about Nichols at the resort. Scoping out his escape route as he was going up to his room. An old army maxim every grunt knew: Know how you’re getting out before you get in.

Russ heeled his cruiser north. Too bad none of the brass ever thought like that. He was damn sure Nichols wouldn’t get stuck in Iraq with no clear exit strategy.

His radio cracked on. “Fifteen-fifty-seven, this is fifteen-thirty.”

He grabbed the mic. “Go, Lyle.”

“Where are you?”

“Heading northeast on River Road.” One car, then another, then another, pulled to the side of the road as he roared past. “Traffic’s picking up.” The Crown Vic would have to get past vehicles that moved out of the way for a cop car, slowing Nichols down. Unless Nichols didn’t give a shit about who got hurt. If that were the case—Russ’s shoulders twitched. He had no reading on Nichols. None. He didn’t know if he had come back to town on a stupid romantic impulse and was panicking, or if he was hell-bent on murder-suicide.

Over the next hill, he spotted the fleeing MP again, a quarter of the way down the long slope that bottomed out at the intersection with Route 57. The light facing him was red. Along 57, a rusty pickup, an SUV, and a station wagon rolled southbound toward Glens Falls or the Northway. Russ trod on the accelerator. The pickup rattled through the crossroads.

“Get out of the way,” Russ said between clenched teeth. The SUV crossed the intersection, its driver’s head swiveling, trying to spot the siren source. “Get out of the way, get out of the way, get the hell out of the way!”

Then he saw it, a monster eighteen-wheeler, probably straight off the Northway, the trucker’s mind already in Millers Kill, finding a place for lunch. Driving north at a comfortable, legal fifty-five miles an hour. Straight toward the intersection. Straight toward Nichols.

Russ’s mouth went cotton-dry. He was close now, close enough to see the terrified face of the woman in the station wagon, close enough to make out Nichols’s head, bent, intent, looking neither left nor right, close enough to hear the drum-popping squeal of the Mack’s brakes as the trucker made a futile attempt to stop forty tons of steel before he reached the green light.

Russ stood on his brakes. The station wagon spun to the right, plunging nose-first into a culvert. The Crown Vic shot across the intersection an inch ahead of the eighteen-wheeler, which screeched and groaned and rumbled to a dust-plumed stop with its tail quivering.

Russ sat for a second, his mind wiped clean. Get out of the car. See if anybody’s hurt. It took him three tries to unbuckle his seat belt, his hand was shaking so hard. He stepped out of the unit, and there was snow under his boots, he knew there was, and there was a different truck, its driver sobbing and apologizing, and there was a rental car crushed into a ball of flesh and metal and Linda was dead. She was dead.

“Holy shit!” the woman said from across the road. “Did you see that? Did you see that? Hey! Are you okay? Is he okay?”

Lyle found him bent over the ditch, puking his guts out. He waited until Russ had wrung himself dry and then handed him a fistful of tissues. “Sorry,” Russ said, his voice clotted and harsh.

“So’m I.” They both looked at the intersection, where the woman was now shouting into a cell phone and the truck driver squatted by his near tire, checking something underneath his rig. Lyle hadn’t been there that day, but he had seen the reports. He scrubbed one hand over his face. “So’m I.”

Russ coughed. Spat. “Nobody hurt?”

Lyle shook his head.

“You contact the staties?”

“They’ll be looking for him. You want me to pull everybody out on patrol?”

“No. I want you at Tally McNabb’s.” Russ wadded up the tissues, started to shove them in his pocket, then thought better of it. “We don’t have the manpower to dragnet him. Protecting McNabb is our priority. If he shows up, you and Kevin will have him. If he doesn’t, let the staties have the sonofabitch.”

He stayed behind to clear the intersection and write up the accident report. The routine task helped settle his spasming stomach and aching chest. He drove back to the station expecting to hear at any second that Nichols had been captured, but the radio remained stubbornly silent.

“Anything?” he asked Harlene as soon as he was within earshot of dispatch.

“Not from the state police. Kevin called in to say Lyle’s over to Tally McNabb’s and that her husband’s being a pain in the ass. Says they don’t need any protection.” Russ grunted. “You got a call from some lawyer representing the new resort, complaining about you scaring off the customers with your”—Harlene picked up her message pad and read from it—“‘unnecessarily violent and confrontational approach to removing a guest who had manifested no threatening behavior whatsoever.’” She put the pad down. “He wants to know who’s going to pay for damage to a flower bed.”

Russ tipped his head back. “Anything else?”

“Roxanne Lunt called. Said she’s been trying to track you down.” Harlene’s face was as bland as vanilla pudding. “I guess she didn’t try the St. Alban’s rectory.”

Russ narrowed his eyes.

“She says she’s got someone interested in that piece of land on Lick Springs Road you were looking at, and if you want it, you got to make an offer now.” She ripped off the messages and handed them to him, wrinkling her nose as he stepped next to her. “What in the Sam Hill did you get into? You smell awful.”

The only thing that improved during the rest of the day was his odor; he washed up and brushed his teeth in the men’s room before changing into his spare uniform. The state police turned up nothing; he had a long conversation with Sergeant Bob Mongue, who managed to imply that Russ had overreacted and overexaggerated and maybe the MKPD needed some training in suspect management? His attempt at getting intel about Nichols from Fort Leonard Wood was met with “I don’t know, sir,” and “I can’t release that information, sir,” from a series of brush-off artists who became wordier and less informative as he ascended the ranks. No one showed up at the McNabbs’ house; when he arrived to persuade Tally to relocate to somewhere more anonymous, Wyler McNabb accused him of carrying out a vendetta against them.

“Has the husband done anything? Gone anywhere?” Russ and Lyle were standing in the driveway of the small house, conferring between the McNabbs’ Escalade and Navigator. The two hulking SUVs effectively isolated them from anyone watching from the house or its neighbor.

“Nope. He spent the afternoon working on his ATV. Kevin said he was trying to boost the performance so’s he could drive it faster. Dumb-ass.”

“Nichols hasn’t shown up yet—”

“He hasn’t shown up anywhere,” Lyle said. “He could be laying low until we clear out.”

“Are we looking at this wrong? You think maybe she was going to meet Nichols and we stepped in it?”

Lyle shrugged. “Hard to imagine setting up a love nest in the hotel where you work as a bookkeeper, but stranger things have happened.” He and Russ exchanged a look that said, To you and me both, brother.

Russ rubbed his lip. “They got guns?”

“Are you kidding?”

Russ kicked at the driveway paving. “Screw it. We’ll put the house on the patrol list and tell them to call nine-one-one if anything happens. It’s the best we can do.”

Lyle frowned. “I don’t like it.”

Russ didn’t like it, either. It gnawed at him while he drove back to the station, while he was filling out the remainder of his incident reports, while he watched Harlene close down her board and switch all incoming calls to the Glens Falls dispatcher. After he left, he drove back to Musket Way and cruised past the McNabbs’ house. They lived in one of the last of the 1960s neighborhoods put up by optimistic developers back when there were still a few good jobs to be had at the Allen mill or down the Northway at General Electric. Small houses with deep yards, the kind of neighborhood folks said was a good place to raise kids. He parked just up the street and watched the lights coming on in the small houses, a pair of boys running in and out banging screen doors, one guy trying to get the last of his lawn mowed before it was too dark to see. Two doors down from Tally McNabb’s house, a car pulled into a drive. A woman and a teenaged girl got out and went into the house. Five minutes later, a man came out, followed by the woman, who was twirling some long shawl-thing over her shoulders. They got in their car and drove off. Mom and Dad, out on one last date before school started up again.

God, he was lonely.

Lights were on at the McNabb house as he drove past again. The flicker from a wide-screen shone through a gap in the curtains. He shifted into gear and let himself roll away into the end-of-summer darkness of his hometown.

*   *   *

For Clare, dinner that night at the Ellises’ was surreal, like being in a play where one character had turned into a seagull and everyone else pretended not to notice. Dr. Anne told some amusing stories about the Glens Falls ER, and Chris described his latest furniture project, and Colin went on at great length about the odd tourists he encountered in his summer job at Great Escape, and the whole time Willem smiled and nodded and ate, a caricature of the cheerful, careless young man she had known.

Seeing him in the wheelchair made her heart ache. She knew prosthetics were highly advanced these days, she knew he would have every advantage his parents’ money and the VA doctors could give him, but dammit, he had been a tall, strong, athletic young man, and now he was cut down—literally—before he had even had a chance to flower. She wondered if any of the Ellises had given Will, or themselves, the space to grieve that loss.

She broached the subject when the rest of the family conveniently disappeared on assorted after-dinner chores, leaving her and Will alone in the dining room. “I haven’t seen you at church since I got back,” she said.

“Did my mom ask you to talk with me?”

“Yes.” She poured herself another glass of merlot.

“I don’t need a talking-to. I’m doing fine.”

Clare propped her chin on her hand. “Are you angry about losing your legs?”

He made a face. “At who? The Iraqi insurgents? My CO? The government?”

“For a start, yeah.”

“What’s the use?” He smoothed over his expression. “It’s done. I need to move on.”

“In the first place”—Clare ticked off a finger—“anger isn’t useful, or therapeutic, or rational. It just is, and when life hands you a shitty deal, you have the right to be angry.”

Will looked shocked. She almost smiled. Who would have thought she could scandalize a nineteen-year-old marine?

“Second”—she ticked off another finger—“we’re all so in love with the idea of moving on and growing through loss and making lemonade when life hands us lemons that we don’t take time to mourn. Before you can move on, you have to stand still and account for what’s been lost. Sometimes, you have to throw the damn lemon against the wall and yell, I wanted chocolate chip cookies, not this bitter fruit.”

Will hiccupped a laugh. “Yeah. Well.”

“You know, your mom is hoping I’m going to set you to rights over the dessert plates and biscuit crumbs.”

“’Cause you have the awesome power of God behind you. Like a double-magic throw in D and D.”

She smiled. That was the first thing he had said that sounded like the old Will. “She told me you don’t want to go to a psychiatrist.”

“No. No. Absolutely not. I’m not going to have somebody banging on about sibling rivalry and my parents’ expectations when what my problem is, is that I got royally fucked up in Iraq and I’m never going to walk normally again.”

He looked at her, challenging her to be offended by his vocabulary.

“You know what I think you could use? A veterans’ group.” She slid the black-and-white brochure out of her pocket and smoothed its crumpled edges on the tablecloth. “There’s one starting up at the community center the week after next. It’s not analysis. It’ll just be a few other guys who know what you’re talking about because they’ve been there, too.”

He picked up the brochure and rolled his eyes at the overearnest pictures of waving flags and solemn soldiers. “What, another bunch of cripples? No thanks.” He tossed the brochure back onto the table. “I did that at Walter Reed.”

“Will. There are a lot of us who came back wounded. Some of us just don’t show it on the outside.”

“Yeah?” He leaned forward, his muscular forearms contrasting with the flowered tablecloth. “Where were you hurt, Reverend Clare?”

When did it stop being safe to fall asleep?

“I didn’t mean me personally.”

“You said us. You said there were a lot of us.”

Her fingers clutched around the stem of her wineglass. “I’m fine. We’re not talking about me, anyway.”

“That’s what you want me to do, though. Talk about what happened. Talk about how I’m feeling. With other vets. Like you. So. Are you like me?”

“No! I mean, yes, of course I’m like you, but no, I’m not … I don’t have…” She thought about the noise in her head, the constant roaring tumult she tried to keep in check with booze and pills. For a moment, she could see it all, the dark tunnel vision, the brilliant explosions, the blood, the broken bodies—she picked up her wineglass and swallowed the entire contents in one gulp. She reached for the bottle and emptied it into her glass. “I’m fine.” And she was. There were stresses coming back into civilian life. Everyone knew that. There had been stress in the seminary, for God’s sake. Lord knows, she’d experienced stress as the rector of St. Alban’s. So she ran hard—when her ankle wasn’t wonky—and relaxed over a glass of wine and maybe used a sleeping pill to help get a good night’s rest. That was dealing with stress in a healthy way.

“You’re fine,” Will said.

She nodded. Smiled at him. Her heart rate was coming back down. She hadn’t realized it had been pounding.

“Then I’m fine.” He leaned back. Unlocked his wheel brakes. Rolled away from the table.

“Will, wait.”

“No.” He looked at her, his eyes hard. He looked, she realized, like a man, instead of the boy she always saw. “Either you’re telling the truth, and I’m some sort of freak who needs a blankie and a blow job to get over what happened to me, or you’re full of it, in which case, you’re dealing with it the same way I am. By keeping your head down and bulling through from one day to the next.”

“Will, just because I don’t think I need help—”

“I’ll make you a deal, Reverend. If you go, I’ll go.” He wrapped his hands around the edges of his wheels and jerked himself into a turn. “Do you remember what you said to us in confirmation class? You said we should accept ourselves as God accepted us. And if we did that, no person, or job, or experience could define who we were. Because we were God’s beloved. Remember?”

She nodded. “In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” The verse seemed to come from very far away.

“How’s that working out for you?” He rolled out of the wide dining room arch before she could come up with a response. “Dad,” he called from the other room. “I’m tired. Will you help me to bed?”

Anne poked her head in from the kitchen. Listened as Chris pushed Will up the hall, the wheelchair’s hard rubber tires rumbling over their wooden floorboards. She dropped into the seat next to Clare. “How did it go?”

Clare rubbed her hands over her face. “Not so hot.”

Anne pressed her lips together.

“I’m sorry, Anne.” She took another drink of wine to quiet the other, older noise, the one that named her a failure as a priest. “I thought we were establishing some rapport, but then I got him mad at me. He’s not really tired, he’s angry.”

Anne’s mouth dropped open. “He’s angry?”

“I’m sorry.”

Anne grabbed her arm. “No! That’s great! He hasn’t shown any anger in—God, I don’t know how long. Oh, Clare, I knew you could do it.” She threw her arms around Clare in an awkward hug. “Will you come and talk with him again? Soon?”

The dark tunnel reappeared outside the limits of sight. “Of course I will.” Clare swallowed more wine. “Of course.”

*   *   *

Chris Ellis gave her a ride home. She had planned on walking back, but it was a mile, and her ankle was wobbly—she thought it was her ankle, messing up her balance—and so she accepted the lift. He let her out in her drive. She waved as he drove away, feeling guilty for not finding the right words to reach his son. She limped up the kitchen steps and paused at her dark door, breathing in the scent of night jasmine and honeysuckle, listening to the mad chorus of crickets singing for love before the frosts came and mowed them all down.

She remembered something Russ had told her once. I was drinking pretty heavily then. Of course, I never felt drunk. Just numb. When would that happen to her? When would she get to stop feeling so bad?

She opened the door. Shut and locked it. Flicked on the kitchen light. “Don’t be alarmed,” Russ said from the living room. “I’m here.”

“What?” She limped through the swinging doors. She could see him, the outline of him, sitting in one of the chairs in front of the empty fireplace. “I thought we weren’t doing this anymore. Why on earth are you sitting here in the dark?”

He stood up. “You didn’t leave any lights on. I didn’t want to draw any attention.”

“Well, I’m here now.” She snapped on a lamp. She looked at his face, set in deep lines. “What is it? Is everyone okay?”

“I had…” He shook his head. “God. A day.” He looked down at his feet. He was still wearing his boots. As if she might not let him stay. He looked up at her. “I…” He opened his hands, palms out.

“Need someone?” She smiled a little. Stepped toward him, arms open. He embraced her with a force that startled her.

“Not someone,” he said into her hair. “You.” He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder. “Only you.” His lips were on her neck. “Always you.” Then he was kissing her, and it was a different kind of need, catching in her like a spark in dry pine needles, desire like a hot wind pressing them together, whirling them around and around, sending them staggering up the stairs, shedding their clothing on the way.

He flung her onto the bed and dropped on top of her with none of his usual careful control. He twined his fingers in hers, forcing her hands deep into the mattress and surging into her with a rough urgency that tore a cry out of her throat.

“Oh, God,” he gasped. “Did I hurt you?”

“Yes. No.” She gulped for air. Cried out again. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop!”

“I can’t. Oh, God.” His voice was like a raw wound. He pounded into her, stretching her open and more open, going deep, deeper, hard and harsh and unspeakably good.

She clenched his hands, shaking, all wetness and straining muscles. Her mouth was open, her throat working, but his ferocious battering left her breathless, wordless, mindless. She spiraled up, tighter, sharper, closer, until he groaned, “Oh, God, Clare, I’m going to—” and that was it, that was enough. Her head snapped back and it was the dark tunnel reversed, all white hot light and an explosion of joy that turned her inside out and left her trembling. Russ’s voice broke and he shuddered, once, twice, three times, then collapsed heavily on top of her, his face once more hidden in the crook of her shoulder.

She stroked his back while he worked for air, his rib cage rising and falling beneath her touch. He made a feeble attempt to push off of her. “No.” She tightened her grip. He relaxed then, sagging against her. She ran her fingers through his hair, watching the strands of brown and blond and gray catch around her knuckles, feeling the shape of his skull beneath her hand.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered.

“I won’t.”

“When I say don’t leave—”

“I know.” She pressed a kiss into the top of his head. “You mean don’t die.”

At some point, he fell asleep. She kept on stroking and smoothing his hair, watching her hand rise and fall, rise and fall, until she could admit to this exhausted, sleeping, damaged man what she couldn’t admit to herself. “I don’t think I’m fine,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’m fine at all.”