Maybe it was the physical and emotional strain of the day. Maybe it was simply that a human being couldn’t hide a painful truth forever. Whatever the reason, all that she’d held back for so long behind a dam of fear and a desire to spare herself the pity of others and a deep sense of the hurt that the truth would bring to those she loved came pouring forth. She began to weep, and her father took her into his arms and listened as she pressed her face to his heart and told him everything.
Cork lay in bed, unable to sleep. Annie was dying. His beloved daughter was dying and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing anyone could do. Another medical opinion, he’d suggested. Mayo Clinic in Rochester. But she told him the doctor who headed the medical team in Mexico City, the best, she’d been assured, had trained at Mayo. She was finished seeing doctors. He’d made a promise to Annie to let her tell the others in her own time and in her own way. After the wedding, she’d said, so that nothing would interfere with the celebration. He’d sworn he wouldn’t even tell Rainy. Now this awful truth was an iceberg floating inside him, its sharp, icy edges cutting into his heart.
Glioblastoma. Brain cancer. This alien thing in her body, slowly killing her. A year, maybe, Annie had told him.
She’d been gone forever, it seemed, living her life in a place he could barely imagine, a crumbling barrio on the edge of a Central American city he’d seen only in the photographs she sometimes attached to her emails. He’d looked forward to her return for Stephen’s wedding with such great joy, the chance after too long to reconnect with this child who’d strayed so far from home.
No, not strayed. She’d chosen very definitely the course of her life. She’d always known her own mind, been a strong woman, a fighter in every way. When he’d come home that night, she’d held a baseball bat in her hands, ready to clobber an intruder. Then she’d put her face to his chest and wept as she told him the truth of this thing she could not fight.
He slipped from bed. Rainy lay sleeping soundly. She’d come home in the early morning hours with Stephen and Belle and Maria, all of them dead tired from the work they’d done helping at Spirit Crossing. There’d been injuries and arrests, at both the encampment and the crossing itself. Things were spinning out of control. She and Belle and Stephen feared there would be more trouble the next day, and they would be heading off early to do what they could to help. He looked down at his wife, this good human being, with whom he shared so much. But he could not share with her this awful truth in his heart. This awful sadness. Because he’d promised Annie, and he was a man true to his word.
He left the bedroom and went downstairs, opened the front door and slipped outside. He sat on the porch swing. The night had cooled a bit and a soft breeze brushed against his face. A lopsided gibbous moon hung in the black sky, showering faint silver across the lawn. Where the moon didn’t eat their light, the stars were a glittering sea of diamonds. It should have been a lovely night. Except that two young women were dead, another woman was missing, someone was menacing the O’Connors. And Annie was dying.
In that moment, it was too much. Cork bent his head and began to weep. Deep sobs broke from him, the only sound in the night. Everything was beyond his control. He wanted to rail at God, at the Great Mystery, at whoever or whatever was responsible for all the horror in the world. He lifted his tear-streaked face to the heavens and asked that eternal and unanswerable question: “Why?”
Except for the sound of one man’s grieving, the night was silent.
CHAPTER 27
Cork was up early the next morning, making breakfast. It had been three days since Waaboo had discovered the body that was almost certainly that of Fawn Blacksmith buried in Erno Paavola’s blueberry patch, and Cork was still struggling to understand what exactly had happened to her and to Olivia Hamilton and what, if anything, might tie the two murders together.
The night before, as he and Dross had returned from Cloquet, Cork had called Daniel’s cell phone and filled him in on what they’d found. Daniel had told Cork that Waaboo had agreed to return to the blueberry patch to see if he could once again touch the spirit of Fawn Blacksmith. Cork said he wanted to be there and to let him know when they left Crow Point.
As he was making oatmeal, he heard the thunk of something hitting the front door. He peeked through the living room window and saw that the street was empty, no media vans. On the porch, he found the morning paper. The front-page story in the Duluth News Tribune was the discovery of Olivia Hamilton’s body in the room beneath Erno Paavola’s cabin. The byline was Greta Hanover. She did give Waaboo credit for his sense of smell, which led to the discovery of the body beneath the cabin, but she made no mention of talking to a ghost.
Cork went back to making breakfast for everyone. They all had agendas. Stephen, Belle, and Rainy planned to head back to Spirit Crossing. Annie, when Cork told her about Waaboo returning to the blueberry patch, asked if she could be there, too. And wherever Annie went, Maria was sure to follow.
They ate together at the dining room table, discussing the intruder the night before. Breakfast was oatmeal with blueberries, sweetened with maple syrup.
“It had to be Lewis,” Stephen said. “Looking for some kind of revenge.”
Cork thought this over. “He was involved in security with a lot of cops. Suspended or not, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to get our address and phone number, I suppose. I’ll call Marsha and ask her to follow up on it.”
Belle added a few more blueberries to her oatmeal. “He’d have to be pretty stupid to try something like that.”
“He didn’t strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed,” Stephen said.
“Is it possible that whoever is responsible for Olivia Hamilton and Fawn Blacksmith knows about us?” Rainy said. “About Waaboo, I mean? And they’re afraid of what he might find out if he connects with the Blacksmith girl’s spirit?”
“Hard to believe someone coldhearted enough to kill two girls would be open to the idea of visions,” Stephen said.
Annie hadn’t eaten much. She never did anymore. “And Waaboo was barely mentioned in the news story,” she pointed out. “And nothing about the vision he had.”
“Maybe it was someone monitoring the chatter on a police scanner,” Rainy suggested. “That’s how Greta Hanover knew.”
“It’s possible,” Cork said. “That’s why Waaboo is with Henry and Prophet. I think that from now on, we never leave anyone here alone. Until all this is settled, we run in packs. We are, after all, Wolf Clan.”
Rainy, Stephen, and Belle left first for Spirit Crossing. Cork got the call from Daniel shortly after that, and he and Annie and Maria headed to Paavola’s cabin.
They arrived before the others. Cork got out of his Expedition and smelled the fresh scent of the pine in the morning air. If he didn’t know the truth of Paavola’s land and all that it had hidden, he would have thought it was just another part of the Northwoods, of the beautiful place he called home. He didn’t have Waaboo’s gift. He couldn’t sense the maji-manidoog, the devils. He had to rely on his all-too-human brain to sort out evil.
Annie and Maria left the Expedition and stood with him.
“Except for the yellow police tape, it just looks like any old cabin,” Annie said.
“It’s more than just any old cabin. It was going to be Paavola’s sanctuary come the apocalypse,” Cork said.
“He died alone here?” Maria asked. “This Paavola?”
“He did,” Cork told her. “It was weeks before his body was discovered. He kept a post office box in town. When he hadn’t picked up his mail for a while, our postmaster let the sheriff’s office know, and a deputy came out to check.”
“To die alone,” Maria said. “That is so sad.”
Which rang a dark bell in Cork, and he glanced at Annie.
She saw his look and she took Maria’s hand. “I won’t die alone, Dad.”
The ATV with Meloux and Prophet came up the overgrown dirt lane, followed by Daniel in his crew cab pickup with Jenny and Waaboo. Last to arrive was Monte Bonhomme. They all gathered and eyed the cabin.
“Has this always been a bad place, Mishomis?” Waaboo asked.
“Everything is born in innocence and beauty, Little Rabbit. But the spirit of a place, just like the spirit of a human being, can be poisoned.”
“Are you ready?” Daniel asked his son.
Waaboo gave a brave nod.
They walked in silence along the path to the blueberry patch. Cork noted that they all surrounded Waaboo as if to protect him. When they came to the clearing, Waaboo paused, and the others did as well.
