“Belle came this morning after you left. She and Stephen went to have coffee at the Broiler and talk over wedding plans. Annie and Jenny are giving Maria the grand tour of Tamarack County. Then they’re heading to Crow Point to pick up Waaboo.”
“I didn’t see Annie this morning. How does she seem?”
Rainy put down the bath towel she’d been folding. “Distant.”
Cork said, “Like she doesn’t really want to be here.”
“Talk to her,” Rainy said.
Cork gave a nod. “When I come back.”
As he turned to leave, Rainy said, “I wasn’t kidding. I’m not wasting a nickel to bail you out of jail.”
CHAPTER 8
Not much had changed in Tamarack County in the years since Annie O’Connor had left. She’d left initially to attend college and to prepare to become a nun. Life had altered her direction, and she’d ended up in Guatemala, working with the Indigenous Mayan people displaced by gang- or drug-related violence or by the long civil war in the years before she’d arrived. It had been, in a way, a flight during a time when she was terribly confused about who she was.
When she met Maria, it was as if her life finally found its meaning.
Maria loved monarch butterflies. She’d been raised in the mountains of Guatemala, one of the places where those beautiful creatures migrated from North America to winter. She grew up poor, as did so many native Mayans. But she had riches, she told Annie. The butterflies, for one. Her family, for another. Her small village. Her mother was a midwife, and Maria learned those skills from her. But her mother wanted more for her daughter, and with the help of a charitable organization called the Maya Educational Foundation, Maria went to the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City to study medicine and become a nurse. Because of the poverty she saw in the barrios of that city and the lack of basic medical services, she chose to stay to work among the urban poor.
“You’re too good to be true,” Annie told her often. It was said with love but also with a note of envy. Because Maria seemed so at ease with who she was and what she wanted and what, it appeared, God wanted of her. Annie struggled with all these things.
Maria wasn’t perfect. She couldn’t hit a softball to save her soul. American football confused her no end. Her literary tastes leaned toward gothic romances. And she had an inexplicable penchant for Peeps marshmallow Easter chicks. Still, Annie loved her with all her heart.
“How’re you doing back there?” Jenny asked as she drove her sister and Maria toward Crow Point. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
Annie came out of a fog of confusing thoughts. “Sorry.” She’d wanted Jenny to give Maria the grand tour, so she’d sat alone in the backseat. She leaned forward now and touched Maria’s shoulder. “What do you think?”
“I think this is a beautiful place. It seems to me a good place to have grown up.”
“It was,” Annie said.
Although the North Country offered enormous beauty and tranquility, she knew there was another aspect to everything in life, a darkness that no place, no matter how beautiful or tranquil, could prepare you for.
They parked at the familiar double-trunk birch and began to walk down the long path that led to Crow Point. The day was summer warm, the trail lined with wildflowers, the air filled with the hum of insects, the trees alive with the voices of birds. Jenny and Maria walked ahead. Annie was content to drift along behind them.
“It is magical,” Maria said. “So beautiful and so alive.”
“Wait until you meet Henry,” Jenny said. “He’s like no one else.”
“Annie has told me a lot about him. In my country, among my people, we also have those who possess great wisdom. We call them rishis.”
It had been years since Annie had stepped into the clearing on Crow Point, but the moment she did, she felt the power of the place. So many good memories here, so many lovely moments in the comfort of Meloux’s company.
Prophet greeted the women. Annie had been told about this enigmatic man who, two years earlier, had been hired to lead a group of deadly mercenaries into the Boundary Waters in pursuit of Henry Meloux and Rainy and a woman they were protecting. In the end, like so many others, he’d become a follower and defender of the ancient Mide. Prophet was not his real name. It was the name he’d been given in a dream. Annie knew that before he met Meloux, he’d gone by the name LeLoup. Wolf, in French. She felt immediately the restrained power in the man. But there was no sense of threat. Rather he gave off the feel of a guardian spirit.
“Waaboo and Henry are still gathering blueberries,” Prophet said. “But I expect them back any moment. Would you like something to eat or drink?”
“Miigwech, Prophet,” Jenny said. “But we’re fine.”
“Momma!”
They turned at the sound of Waaboo’s voice and watched him run across the clearing ahead of the old man. A bucket swayed back and forth in his hand. “We got a ton of blueberries!”
When he reached them, he proudly held out his bucket, which was three-quarters full of the small berries.
“Did you pick all the blueberries?” Jenny asked.
“Unh-uh. Mishomis made sure we left some for the other animals,” Waaboo replied, using the Ojibwe word for grandfather to indicate Meloux.
The old Mide came slowly, walking with the help of a staff. Annie saw that the head of the staff had been carved into the shape of an eagle’s head.
“Boozhoo,” Jenny greeted him. “And chi miigwech. Our little Waaboo has quite a prize.”
“He is well named. He hopped among the bushes like a rabbit.” The old man’s eyes took in Maria. “I do not know you.”
“Maria,” she said and gave the old man a respectful nod. “A friend of Annie.”
Now Annie felt the weight of the old man’s gaze fall upon her.
“You have grown,” he said. “In many ways. It is good to see you again.”
Prophet said, “What do you say we wash those berries, Little Rabbit? And then maybe eat a few?”
When Waaboo had gone, Meloux sat on the wooden bench outside his cabin, bathed in sunlight. He beckoned Jenny to sit beside him and indicated the ground in front of him for Annie and Maria.
“Did you talk to him?” Jenny asked.
