“Oatmeal, Jen?” Rose offered.
“I’ll just make toast,” Jenny replied sullenly. “I’m not very hungry.” She took a couple of pieces of whole wheat from the bread drawer and dropped them into the toaster. She crossed her arms and waited.
“After breakfast, would you be willing to take a short drive with me?” Cork asked.
“Where?”
“I’m going to visit a couple of hungry friends.”
“Some kind of Samaritan visit in keeping with the season? I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Just for a little while. I’d appreciate it.”
“You could order me to go. You’re still my father.” She was watching the toaster carefully.
“I don’t want to do that.”
Rose quietly wiped dishes at the sink. Stevie and Anne had gone to the living room to watch cartoons. The toast popped up. Jenny stared at it a moment.
“I suppose,” she finally agreed.
The drive was painfully silent. Cork tried to think exactly what it was he’d meant to say to her, but all the words seemed weak and self-pitying. Jenny stared out the window and sniffed.
“A cold?” Cork finally asked.
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“How’d your date go last night?”
She shrugged.
“What’s his name? Kubiak?”
She didn’t seem to think that deserved a response of any kind.
“Go out with him much?”
She waited a few moments, then said, “A couple of times.”
“Movies, huh?”
She swung her gaze toward him and gave him a look that made him feel as if a door had just been slammed in his face.
“Just interested,” he apologized.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” She looked away again, as if the all too familiar landscape of Aurora were far more interesting than anything her father could possibly say.
But Cork kept trying. “Still planning on reading Sylvia Plath at the Christmas program?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d talked it over with your teacher. Maybe she’d changed your mind.”
“She respects my judgment,” Jenny said.
“Good.” Cork nodded, trying to generate a show of enthusiasm. “That’s great.”
He pulled the Bronco up beside Sam’s Place.
“What are we doing here?” She gave the Quonset hut a look of disgust.
“Wait and see.”
The morning was bright and cold, the sunlight startling. Cork went inside and half-filled the bucket with dried corn.
“Going to try farming now?” Jenny asked when he came back out.
“Follow me.”
He led the way down to the open water. The geese glided across the surface, riding their reflections in the still, blue water, leaving gentle creases where they’d moved.
Jenny watched them, unimpressed. “Annie’s told me about these two. Dumb if you ask me. Just asking for trouble.”
“Spread the grain on the ground for them.” Cork pointed to the circle he’d cleared in the snow.
She frowned but did as he’d instructed, then stood expectantly watching the geese on the water.
“Why don’t they come? Aren’t they hungry?”
“They’re wild. They’re still more afraid of us than they are hungry. Let’s step over this way.”
Cork led her some distance away. The geese paddled to the shore and began noisily to eat.
“Why haven’t they gone south?” Jenny asked.
“See that one?”
“The male?” Jenny said.
“Good.” Cork was surprised she knew. “His wing is injured and he can’t fly. They’re kind of stuck here now.”
“She stays with him?”
“Some geese are like that. They mate for life.”
“I’m glad somebody does.”
“Could we talk, Jenny?” Cork finally asked. “About your mom and me?”
“What’s to talk about?” Jenny kicked at the snow. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do. That’s all there is to it.”
“Not quite.”
She glanced at him, her eyes full of suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t think I want to divorce your mom, Jen.”
She didn’t believe him. The stone look on her face told him that.
“But it’s not my decision alone,” he explained.
“You mean she wants to divorce you.”
“That’s kind of how it stands.”
“Why? What did you do?”
Cork watched the geese. They’d finished the grain and moved back down to the water. As they entered, they broke the reflection of the sun into a thousand fragments.
“I was gone from her too long.”
“You mean since you moved out?”
“Before that. Long before that.”
“You want to come back?”
“I miss home.”
“I don’t believe you,” Jenny said. She turned and started for the Bronco.
“I don’t blame you,” Cork said after her. “In your shoes, I wouldn’t believe me either. But, Jen, I’ve never lied to you. At least not intentionally.”
She turned back angrily. “You’re saying Mom’s responsible for the divorce.”
“I’m not trying to turn you against her, sweetheart, really. I hurt her pretty bad, I guess, and maybe all this is exactly what I deserve. I just want you to know that if I could, I’d put it all back together.”
For a while Jenny looked at the trampled snow between them, then at the geese. “I thought if you loved someone you were supposed to, like, forgive them. I thought that was what love was supposed to be all about.”
Cork shook his head. “Easy to say, harder to do.”
“So . . . what are you going to do?” Jenny asked quietly.
Cork risked moving to her. “I’d like to get your mother to talk with me. Tom Griffin—Father Tom—has offered to counsel us. I’m not saying we’ll succeed, but I’d like to give it a try. What do you think?”
She looked past him where the ice edged the open water and the signs warned of danger and the safety stations offered the help of ropes and life rings and sturdy sleds. What could he offer her that was as substantial?
“I think I’d like to go now,” she said.
They walked back toward the Bronco. Cork saw sunlight glint off a tiny thread of a tear down her cheek. He wanted to reach out, to hold her as he had when she was small and the simplicity of Sesame Street had been her world. But he was afraid now. They walked without speaking, and they walked apart.
“Wait here,” he told her at the Bronco. “I’ll be right back.”
He took the bucket back into the Quonset hut. The place was still a mess, but it appeared as if nothing more had been disturbed in his absence. The cardboard was still in place on the kitchen window. The furnace hadn’t miraculously repaired itself.
“What happened?”
Jenny stood at the door looking shocked.
“Someone broke in,” Cork said.
Jenny took a couple of tentative steps inside. Stevie and Anne had visited Cork there before, but Jenny always found an excuse not to come. This was her first time inside Sam’s Place.
“A burglar?” she asked.
“Nothing was taken.”
“Why’d they break in?”
“I think they were looking for something they didn’t find.”
Jenny knelt and picked up a cushion from the floor. “What?”
“If I knew that, I might have a better idea who broke in.”
She hugged the pillow to her as she took in the spectacle of the disarray. “It’s scary.”
“It is a little.”
She looked at him suddenly. “What if you’d been here?”
“Maybe they wouldn’t have broken in.”
“Or maybe they would have hurt you.”
Remembering the warning the intruders had painfully delivered, Cork didn’t want to say anything more. There was no way Jenny—or any of his family—was going to be involved. “Come on,” Cork said brusquely. “Let’s go.”
The wind rose outside, a sudden body of air that passed over the lake and into the small woods where the old foundry stood. The snow rose and swirled as it passed, as if alive. Cork froze when he heard the voice in the wind.
“Dad, are you okay?” Jenny asked.
He stared at her, wondering if she’d heard. But he could see she hadn’t.
“Let’s go,” he said again, trying not to show how afraid he was. But Jenny looked at him and he saw that she knew.
“What is it?” she asked, frightened.
“Nothing. It’s nothing, Jen.” He put his arm around her and led her out into the sunlight, into the winter air that had become still again. He looked toward the trees and, as he’d expected, saw nothing unusual there.
As they drove away, Cork said, “Jenny, promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t say anything about this to anyone. Please.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Is it because you don’t want anyone to know you’re afraid?”
That seemed as good an explanation as any, so he nodded.
“I understand,” Jenny said. And she smiled as if she did. Perfectly.
17
AFTER LUNCH, Cork and Rose took the children and headed to the offices of Great North Development Company, where Jo had worked much of the morning with Sandy Parrant. Great North was housed in the old firehouse a block off Center Street. Built in 1897 of charcoal gray granite, the firehouse had been scheduled for demolition, but Sandy Parrant and the judge had bought it and had it remodeled as a home for Great North.
Before he disappeared, Joe John LeBeau had the contract to clean the Great North offices. He’d told Cork the old firehouse was haunted. He claimed that when he cleaned alone late at night, he could hear the boots of the long-dead firefighters clomping across the floor overhead. He swore that once he saw the ghost of Lars Knudsen, who’d become a local hero by giving his life trying to save the children when the old Freemason orphanage burned in ’09. Joe John told Cork these things in the time when he was sober, before he walked away drunk from his truck, abandoning his family and his livelihood, a thing Cork had never understood. But a man who heard ghosts was probably a troubled man to begin with.
Jenny and Rose stayed in the Bronco. Cork took Anne and Stevie into the old firehouse. Joyce Sandoval, a woman with white hair and half glasses, sat at a reception desk typing into a computer. She looked over the flat top of her glasses at Cork and the kids.
“They pay you a lot for working Saturday, Joyce?”
“They don’t pay me a lot, period,” she grumbled, but amiably.
“Why aren’t you out doing something with Albert?”
Albert Nordberg and Joyce Sandoval had been dating for a quarter of a century. Their courtship was an institution of sorts in Aurora.
Joyce took off her glasses, which were secured by a beaded cord around the back of her neck. “He says he’s buying me a Christmas present. He says he doesn’t want me to know what it is.” She gave Cork a knowing and hopeless look. “He buys me Wind Song cologne. Every year. I made the mistake twenty-five years ago of telling him it was my favorite.” She glanced at Anne and winked. “Men, huh?”
“Joyce, would you let Jo know we’re here?”
She lifted the receiver of her phone and pushed three buttons. “Cork O’Connor and a couple of elves are here for Jo.” She put the receiver down. “They’ll be right out. Why don’t you have a seat.” Joyce Sandoval went back to working on her computer.
Behind the reception desk, the area of the firehouse where the big engine had parked was occupied now by a dozen work spaces, all currently empty. Cork and the children sat on a brown leather sofa in a small waiting area. While they waited, Cork entertained them with ghost stories he’d heard from Joe John LeBeau. By the time the elevator doors opened and Jo and Sandy Parrant stepped out, Stevie’s eyes were huge with amazement.
Cork rose and offered his hand in greeting. “Sandy,” he said.
“Cork.” Sandy gave the children a warm smile. “Hi, kids.”
“Hello, Mr. Parrant,” Anne said politely.
“Please, it’s Sandy,” Parrant said.
“Mr. Parrant,” Anne began, “I mean, Sandy. When you go to Washington, will you meet the President?”
“I already have, honey,” he said. “He’s a very nice man.”
Stevie picked his nose and looked unimpressed. He was watching the ceiling carefully.
“How’s it going?” Cork asked Jo.
“Like a three-legged horse,” Parrant replied for her.
Jo zipped the briefcase she carried. “Bob’s death complicates Sandy’s transition to Washington in a lot of ways.”
“Jo tells me you’ve got a furnace on the blink, Cork,” Parrant said, moving abruptly away from the subject of his father’s death. “I’ve got a good man who does a lot of work for Great North. I’d be glad to send him out.”
“Thanks, Sandy, but Art Winterbauer is coming on Monday. I’ll be fine until then.”
Stevie stopped picking his nose and asked suddenly, “Ith it really haunted?”
“Haunted?” Jo looked annoyed. “Who told you that?”
“Daddy.”
“I was telling him some of the stories Joe John used to tell me about the things he saw in this place,” Cork explained.
“I hate to disappoint you, Stevie“—Sandy Parrant smiled—”but I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in the stories of a man like Joe John LeBeau. He’d probably been drinking when he saw those things.”
“I think we should be going,” Jo said. “Sandy’s busy.”
Parrant wished them good luck finding a tree and saw them to the door. “Cork, if you change your mind about that furnace, just let me know.”
“I’ve got the situation under control.”
“Sure,” Parrant said. He watched them until they were all in the Bronco, then he stepped back into the old firehouse.
“He’s nice,” Anne said.
“Do you think so?” Jo asked.
“And he’s met the President,” Anne said.
“The President puts his pants on one leg at a time like every other man,” Jenny said, dourly unimpressed.
Stevie looked down at his own pants, confused. “I do ’em both together.”
The St. Agnes Boy Scouts had been given a corner of the Super Valu parking lot to sell their Christmas trees. Cork’s family spread out and called out their finds to one another. Finally they settled on a big white pine with needles soft as cat fur. Cork hauled it to the trailer to pay, and Arne Bjorkson, the scoutmaster, asked if he wanted a new cut on the trunk. Just at that moment, Cork caught sight of Darla LeBeau coming out of the supermarket with a cart full of groceries.
“Go ahead,” he said to Arne. “I’ll be right back.” He jogged away. “Darla!” he called after her.
She was clearly not excited to see him.
“What do you want?” she asked as she unloaded the sacks into her station wagon.
“I just wanted to ask about Paul.” He wheezed, trying to catch his breath, swearing silently to quit smoking. “And Joe John. I’m worried.”
“I’m Paul’s mother. And Joe John’s wife. I’ll worry.” She shoved a sack onto the backseat, pushed the cart away fiercely, and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Is something wrong, Darla?” Cork put a hand on her arm. “Is Paul in any danger?”
“I have to go,” she said. She pulled her arm away and closed the door.
Cork leaned his face close to the window, so that when he spoke, his breath fogged the glass. “I’m Joe John’s friend. I only want to help.”
She was intent on jamming the key into the ignition and didn’t answer.
She started the engine. Her tires spit snow and gravel as she drove away.
Cork stared after her and thought about some of the items he’d seen in the grocery sacks. Cheerios, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter, Fig Newtons, potato chips, Slim Jims. It was possible Darla LeBeau ate these things. But Cork thought they would appeal a great deal more to a hungry teenager.
They moved the sofa into the living room and set the tree in front of the big window that faced the street. Cork hauled the boxes of Christmas decorations up from the basement. Stevie helped him check the lights while Rose and Anne and Jenny put hooks on all the bulbs. Jo sorted through the albums in the record cabinet and pulled out Christmas music and put it on to play.
For a long time Cork had felt lost, but there was something about the tradition of decorating the tree that brought him home. When he unpacked the small box that held the last of the delicate blue bulbs from the first Christmas after he and Jo were married, Jo smiled, and it made him happy. Together they placed the bulbs on the tree, then the children tossed on the icicles. When it was done, they plugged in the lights and stepped back and all of them were silent. The bulbs blinked and the tinsel and garland sparkled, and although it was very much like every tree they’d ever had, this one felt special. Cork moved close to Jo and took a chance. He put his arm about her waist. She seemed a little startled, but didn’t stop him. Rose began to sing along with Andy Williams on the stereo, lending her fine soprano to “Joy to the World.” Pretty soon they all joined in. It felt like old times, almost as if nothing had ever happened to shatter their happiness.
The telephone rang. Rose answered. “It’s for you, Cork,” she said.
Cork took the phone. “Yes?” He nodded and said, “Uh-huh,” a couple of times; then, “Your office?” He glanced into the living room, where the others had begun to pack up the ornament boxes. “I’ll be there,” he promised, and hung up. He went back to the living room. “I have to go.”
“Will you be back for dinner?” Rose asked.
“I’ll call and let you know.”
“Do you have to go?” Anne moaned.
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