Windigo Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

it like a girl alone somewhere, mistreated and scared and hopeless while people come up with metaphors for not caring.”
    Cork pulled onto the paved road that paralleled the western shoreline of Iron Lake. The cabins sheltered among the pines were full of summer people. On a sunny day, these folks would have been on the water or splashing on a beach, but the rain had driven them inside, and the lake was deserted, and Tamarack County felt empty.
    “Think of it however you want,” he said. “Just believe that I’ll do my best, okay?”
    He felt her ice-blue eyes considering him; then she said, “I’m sorry.”
    “You don’t need to apologize, but you have to understand that an investigation like this will probably take time. You may be away from Aurora for a while, away from Waaboo. Since he came to us, you haven’t been gone from him for more than a few hours in any day. Are you okay with that?”
    “If it’s what’s necessary. Dad, I’ve never had this sense before that I’m supposed to do a thing, that I’ve been chosen for it. I know you’ve been here before. And I know Stephen has, but not me. I want to honor this. I have to. Do you understand?”
    “I do.” He shot her a smile, though one on the grim side. “So tell you what. In this partnership, I’ll be the head, and you be the heart. Deal?”
    He offered his hand. Jenny looked at it, then at her father. She returned his smile, one not so grim as his, and accepted his offering.
    At Sam’s Place, the power had been restored. Except for Judy Madsen’s blue sedan and Marlee Daychild’s old Toyota 4Runner, the parking lot was still empty. Jenny explained the new situation and asked if Judy felt comfortable taking over for a couple of days.
    Judy snapped her fingers. “I could run this place blind and with both hands tied behind my back. You two go off and save the world. We’ll be fine.”
    • • •
    The house on Gooseberry Lane was an old two-story clapboard construction, well cared for, with a roofed porch across the front and a great elm in the yard. Cork had grown up in this house, and his children, too. If a man could have two hearts and one could exist outside his body, then that house on Gooseberry Lane was Cork’s second heart. Everything he loved was in or had passed through there.
    On the way home, the stoplights had come back on, and Cork could see lights in windows. Power had been restored in Tamarack County. But when he and Jenny pulled up to the house, they found that it was still dark. Inside, Waaboo was sound asleep on the living room sofa, clutching a stuffed orangutan he called Bart, one of his favorite toys. He had half a dozen other stuffed animals around him as well. Rose was in the kitchen, forming a meat loaf in a pan. She put a finger to her lips, and they talked quietly.
    “He held the flashlight and I read stories to him,” she said. “He drifted off a while ago. I left the lights off. It felt kind of right with the rain outside.”
    Rose Thorne was a remarkable human being. When Cork had first known his sister-in-law, she’d been a large, plain-looking, good-hearted woman who read tabloids. She’d helped raise the O’Connor children, and had the idea that when she was no longer needed in that way, she might enter a convent. As that time had approached, she’d had an amazing change of heart. She’d fallen in love with a man who was sliding away from his faith and out of the priesthood. Mal Thorne had, indeed, put aside his collar and his vows, but in a way, Rose had saved his faith. They’d married, and both of them looked at the love they shared as the blessingGod had always intended for them. Rose had slimmed down a good deal, dressed smartly these days, and wore her hair in a fashionable cut. But some things never changed. Her heart was huge, and her love for her sister’s family was depthless.
    Rose and Mal now lived in Evanston, Illinois. But that summer, Rose had agreed to return to Aurora and, in a