Purgatory Ridge

Cork caught the concerned glances the two girls exchanged. Jo was the worst cook on the whole Iron Range. Jenny pulled in the Closed sign. “We’ll stay.”

“You’ll go home with me,” Cork said.

Like a couple of condemned prisoners, his daughters set about the work of closing up.

Cork drove home slowly, taking in the beauty of a town he knew as well as he knew his own face. On Center Street, he passed businesses that had been there forever-Lenore’s Toy and Hobby Shop, Tucker Insurance, Mayfair’s Clothing, Nelson’s Hardware Hank. He knew all the men and women behind the glass of the storefronts. Almost every corner brought together some convergence in his life. The smell from Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler-the Saturday-night barbecued rib special-had been the same smell every Saturday night as far back as he could remember, and it never failed to carry him instantly across almost forty years to the days when his father was still alive, still sheriff, and Johnny’s on Saturday night was practically a family ritual. Cork knew that if you lived in a place long enough, you understood it as a living thing. You knew it had consciousness and conscience. You could hear it breathing. You felt its love and its anger and its despair, and you cared.

“You’re driving like an old lady, Dad,” Jenny said.

“I love this town.”

Jenny shook her head. “Me, I can’t wait to leave.”

“When you’re gone, you’ll miss it.”

“Yeah, like I’d miss the clap.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Just an expression, Dad.”

With Rose looking over her shoulder, Jo had surprised even Cork and done a fine job of preparing the food. Although the fare was simple-meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and Jell-O with bananas-it had been so long since they’d sat down together as a family, the meal felt like an occasion. Cork couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Jo laugh so much. Midway through the eating, Rose lifted her water glass and said, “A toast to the best family an old spinster could ask for.”

“What’th a thpinthter?” Stevie asked.

Annie fielded that one. “A woman who’s too smart to marry.”

Rose laughed. “For that, you’re relieved of dish duty.”

After dinner, Cork said, “Dishes are mine.” No one argued.

Jo helped him. Then they sat on the porch swing together, watching Stevie play catch with Annie in the front yard. The ball, as it lofted, caught sunlight for a moment and glowed as it passed from the hand of one child to the other. In a very short time, children from other houses on the block had joined them, and Annie began to organize a game. Cork waved to his neighbors across the street, John and Sue O’Laughlin, who’d stepped onto their own porch to enjoy the evening.

“This has been the best day I can remember in a long, long time.” Cork laced his fingers with Jo’s.

“I wish…” Jo began. She stopped herself.

“What?”

“I wish you weren’t going to the Quetico tonight.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s Karl Lindstrom who’s taking the chance. It’s probably a good thing you’ll be out at Grace Cove tonight.”

Grace Fitzgerald was to have met with Jo at her office that morning, but Jo had lingered at Sam’s Place with Cork and had called to reschedule. Grace was due to go out of town on Monday, so Jo offered to drop by that evening.

“Still no idea what she wants to talk to you about?”

“None.”

“And even if you did, you couldn’t tell me.” He glanced at his watch. “Time I was going.”

Jo wrapped him in her arms and kissed him. There seemed something a little desperate in her grasp, in the press of her lips.

“What’s that all about?” Cork asked.

“I don’t know. I just… I’m a little afraid for you.”

“I’ll come back. I promise.”

“And besides, I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

He weighed her words, her tone, decided it was not censure he had heard but concern. “If you really don’t want me to go, Jo, I won’t.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You’d never forgive me.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No.”

“Well?”

“Go. It’s what you need to do.”

“Thanks, Jo.” He brushed her cheek with his hand.

He let the swing rock a few more times, listened a bit longer to the song of the children’s laughter, watched a few more tosses of the dirty baseball that, arching through the evening sunlight, was turned to gold. And he thought that although life was far from perfect, it offered moments of perfection, and this was one.

Jo walked him to his Bronco.

“You take care,” she told him.

“I will.”

“I’ll wait up for you.”

They held one another. Their separation would be only a few hours, but it had the feel of a long parting, and Cork remembered happily, This is love.

“‘Bye, Daddy,” Stevie yelled and ran to the curb.

As Cork drove away, he leaned out the window of his Bronco and called out to his children a father’s wish and a father’s blessing: “Be good.”