Purgatory Ridge

“Your Aunt Rose was right.” Jo headed to the refrigerator, opened the door, and leaned into the cool air that flowed out.

“What happened?” Jenny asked.

Jo felt weary, so weary she could barely stand. She took nothing from the fridge, closed the door, and leaned against the big appliance. “It appears that someone tried to kill Karl Lindstrom.”

“With a bomb,” Annie stated. “We heard it was a bomb.”

“That’s right.”

“But Dad saved him.”

“Did you hear that, too?” Jo asked.

“Sort of,” Annie said. “He did, right?”

“Apparently.”

“And he’s okay?”

“Yes, Jenny. He’s okay.”

Rose took a plate full of crumbs to the sink. “Where is he?”

“He had some business to take care of.”

“Police business?” Annie asked.

“He’s not a police officer anymore, damn it.”

Jenny’s blue eyes grew huge. “Whoa, Mom. Chill.”

Stevie came into the kitchen, in his pajamas, looking sleepy. “I woke up.” He shuffled to his mother and leaned against her hip.

Jo put her arm around him. “We’ll get you back to sleep.”

Annie and Jenny exchanged a glance across the table.

“Is it okay if we go out for a little while, Mom?” Jenny asked.

“To the marina,” Jo guessed.

“Please. We won’t get in the way,” Annie pleaded.

“There’s nothing to see.”

“Then there’s no harm,” Jenny said. “We’ll just be wasting our time. We promise to be back by midnight.”

“Eleven,” Jo replied.

“Eleven-thirty,” Jenny countered.

“All right.”

The two girls left in a blur.

“You look beat,” Rose said. “I’ll be glad to put the little guy back down.”

“That’s all right.” Jo bent and hefted Stevie in her arms. “Come on, kiddo. It’s back to dreamland.”

She laid him in his bed and covered him with a sheet. She kissed his cheek. “Want me to stay a while?”

“Yeth,” he murmured.

That was fine by Jo. She sat down in the chair by the window.

“How about a song?” she asked, although she didn’t feel much like singing him a lullaby.

“‘Are You Sleeping,’” Stevie said.

The night-light was on and it bathed everything in the room in a soft, warm glow. Jo began singing quietly, “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John?…” Stevie closed his eyes. After a few rounds, Jo saw that he was breathing deeply. She closed her own eyes and wished someone would sing to her. Before she knew it, she was crying softly. She realized that what had happened-Cork’s retreat to Sam’s Place-was a move she’d been anticipating since the day, months before, when Cork had finally come back home. She remembered a statement she’d heard once about murder. After the first time, it was easy. Maybe all transgression was that way. Maybe once a marriage had been violated, it was forever flawed and at risk of breaking apart. Maybe it was inevitable.

She left Stevie’s room and found Rose waiting at the bottom of the stairway.

“Where’s Cork?” Rose asked. “Really.”

“Gone. Back to Sam’s Place.” Jo sat down on the stairs. “Damn it, Rose, I screwed it up.”

“Tell me about it.” Rose wedged herself in beside her sister.

“Nothing to tell. We said things. Lousy things.”

“I take it ‘I love you’ wasn’t one of them.”

“I don’t understand it, Rose. In front of a jury, I say something and it comes out exactly as I mean it to. I say something to Cork and even if the words are right, they seem to come out all wrong.”

“Maybe that’s because you know the rules in a courtroom. Look, Jo, I’ve never loved a man, so I could be all wrong, but it seems to me one of the most important rules in love is honesty. If you’re tripping up right now, maybe it’s because you’re trying to dance around something you need to say to Cork. Like, maybe, you don’t really love him.”

“Don’t love him?” She looked at her sister with astonishment. “Rose, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Have you told him that?”

“Not for a very long time.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid.”

“To say ‘I love you’? Why? You’re afraid he won’t say it back?”

“Why would he? All I’ve ever done is hurt him.”

“That’s not true, Jo. Talk to him. Now. Tonight. He can’t know what’s in your heart unless you tell him. And until you do, you won’t know what’s in his.”

“You really think I should?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think so.”

Jo considered, then finally blurted, “I’ll do it, Rose. Will you-”

Rose held up her hand. “Go. I’ll take care of everything here. You take care of the rest.”

Jo put her arms around her good sister. “You’re the best.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Moonlight spilled generously out of the sky. It flowed across the lake and dripped white as milk from the trees along the shoreline. No lights were on in Sam’s Place. Cork’s Bronco was not there. Jo knocked on the door, tried the knob. She turned away and looked at the grounds. The buildings of the Bearpaw Brewery just north beyond the chain-link fence seemed stark in the light of the moon, vaguely menacing. Jo realized she was alone out there.

Where was Cork? He’d put himself at risk, waded neck deep into whatever it was that was going on in Tamarack County. Was he in danger?