Red Wolf's Return

Blinking, she focused on his portrayal of her son and Randy Leland. They weren’t bad kids, just teenagers striving for independence. That’s what she kept telling herself.

She studied the female figure, back to the viewer, sitting on the boulder where Ethan claimed to have discovered the raptor.

A small jolt darted through Meg. It’s me. He’s drawn me at seventeen.

When her hair had been long enough to touch her belt, when innocence colored the future.

Why? she wondered. Why would he include her in a present-day time line? And suddenly she understood. She, sitting on that megaton rock, offered directions to the scene of the crime.

Oh, yes, he knew she’d recognize the boulder. They’d sat there for hours as kids, and he’d kissed her a thousand times, touched her breasts while, over lake and mountain, they had observed a pair of adult eagles seek prey to feed their offspring.

More than that, on that rock, she and Ethan had dreamed of the home they’d build together, of the children they’d raise. Years of life and love wending into the future from that base point. So many plans.

Oh, Ethan. You never forgot.

Admit it, Meg, neither have you.

Simply put, she’d been bullheaded about burying the key that locked her heart. But looking at her younger self, remembering the emotion in his eyes back then, remembering those eyes today harboring secrets, she wondered what he would say about her secret.

The scarred one under her shirt that said she’d been cancer free for seven years.

Chapter Two

Fifteen minutes after Ethan left, two more complaints were called in, the first involving five overturned headstones at the Sweet Creek Cemetery to which Meg sent Gilby. Then Beth Ellen Woodley carped about a Ford Bronco parked on her lawn with Ulysses McLeod snoring off an all-night drunk behind the steering wheel.

By the time Meg eked out an hour of free time, it was nearly ten o. “Sal, I’m going to Blue Mountain for a written statement from Ethan Red Wolf.” She strode past the dispatcher to her private office for her notebook and digital camera. “Hopefully it won’t take long, but if something—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sally grumbled, typing at the speed of light. “If the town floods or an earthquake happens, call your cell.”

Chuckling, Meg grabbed one of the sesame bagels Gilby had bought at Old Joe’s. “You know me well, Sal.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Yes, Mom.” Her step lighter, Meg headed out the back door where the police SUV waited.

But by the time she had cleared the town’s outskirts, sweat dotted her skin and two fingers tapped nervously against the steering wheel. She’d be talking with him again, twice in the same morning. Okay, on official business, but still. Six years, and they had barely nodded across the street or spoken ten words in one sitting.

She’d heard he renamed his grandfather’s place. Instead of O’Conner’s Fishing Dock, it was now Private Property. Meg smiled. Simple and to the point.

No, she thought. Nothing ever had been simple about Ethan Red Wolf. The man was as complex and intriguing as his ancestry. Even his name Ethan resembled the word Earth, a word suited for a man at one with his environment.

Turning down Lake Road—a strip of asphalt carving a path above the pine and rocky shores of the small mountain lake—Meg wondered again what Ethan had cataloged with those keen, dark eyes in those moments back at her office.

Certainly he’d noticed the stress lines between her eyes, the gauntness of her cheeks, that her hair was bobbed short and careless—all signatures of her job and current life.

In the sketch, he drew you with long, wavy hair.

Well, those days were gone. Today he had the longer hair.

Contemplating the comparisons, she nearly missed the turnoff leading on to his forty-acre property. Shadowed by pines and golden quaking aspen, the single-lane dirt trail wove a half mile down an easy incline to spill into a delta of newly laid gravel.

He had been busy. Davis O’Conner’s rectangular house sported a fresh coat of terra-cotta paint that highlighted the reddish tint of aged pine needles on the ground. Ochre window shutters and a matching door offered a splash of vividness under the sweep of a roofed porch.

As Meg shut off the cruiser’s ignition, she surveyed the area. To the left of the house, the squat, slant-roofed building the old man once used as an equipment and canoe shed glimmered with fresh green siding. To the right, a hundred-foot grassy trail fed into the trees to another green structure. Ethan’s photography and art studio?

Over the years she knew he’d forged a name for himself with his environmental photographs, sketches and paintings. Paintings composed of swirls and shapes in brilliant, bold colors. Two summers ago, she had perused several in a Billings art gallery, and more recently bought calendars printed with his creations from Sweet Creek’s grocery and drugstore.

Noticing his pickup parked in front of the new green structure, she headed in its direction—and saw what the house blocked.

A thirty-foot weeping willow, its leaves aged gold, stood like a sentinel beside a partially renovated wooden pier, on which Ethan crouched, tool belt around his hips, hammer in his hand.

As she came around the rear of the house, he rose slowly, lifting his red cap to scrape back loose strands of hair before settling the visor low over his eyes again. A rottweiler she hadn’t noticed climbed to its feet and trotted down the dock.

“Lila.” Ethan’s low tone carried across the distance. “Be nice.”

Halting, the dog watched Meg walk forward. “Aren’t you the prettiest lady?” She kept her voice gentle as the wary animal sniffed her proffered fist. “Bet you’re a great watchdog.” Carefully, she stroked the animal’s broad head and finally received a hiney wriggle of welcome.

The peace of the place curled around Meg in soft measure: the breeze towing the leaves, a chickadee’s trill, Canada geese grousing their route southward—and everywhere the fundamental scent of mountain, water and earth assembling for winter.

And Ethan.

Ethan in work boots, ragged denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt, waiting motionless, a somber expression on his face.

“Ethan,” she said, stepping onto the pier.

“Meggie.”

For the moment she’d let the name stand. The year Doug had sent her the divorce papers she’d become Meg, a name with maturity. Only her family still called her Meggie, though her sister-in-law called her Meg. In the past two years, she and Rachel had become sisters; Ash’s wife understood Meg’s requirement for emotional strength and distance from the woman she had been once.

But Ethan lived in the past, saw her as the girl she’d been in another life. His sketch told of his memories. Memories she’d buried aeons before.

“I need to take some photographs of the spot where you found the eagle,” she said. “Do you have time to come along?”

He studied her. “You know where it is.”

She did; the boulder glared like a thumbprint in his diagram, and from the dock where she stood, she could see a section of beige rock across the water. “I’d like you to walk me through the scene, explain what you witnessed, a sort of reenactment.” Her gaze settled on him. “I’ll also need a written statement, Ethan.”

For the first time, the edges of his mouth lifted and amusement sparked in his eyes. “Can’t use the visual in court, huh?”

She felt a grin threaten in response. “Not when the judge knows you’re well-read.” He had been in high school.

He stared across the lake. “Will you catch the guy?”

The guy. Though he’d alluded to Beau in her office, his words indicated he didn’t consider her son the culprit. Relief slipped down her spine. “I’ll do my best.”

Unhooking his tool belt, he stepped past her. “We can take my truck around to Ted’s Landing, then walk in from there.” Turning, he eyed her uniform shoes. “Got hiking boots with you?”

“I do.” She’d learned early in her career to keep a change of clothes in her vehicle.

“Good. You’ll need them.”

About to say, “I grew up around here, remember?” she clamped her mouth shut. Within the tranquil ambiance, the comment seemed crass, and besides, he was heading for the shed carrying his tools, intent on her request.

Starting for her car, Meg glanced again at the house. How had she not noticed the broad cedar deck off his kitchen door? Deep planters and a trellis swaddled in leafy vines enclosed the platform, rendering it cozy and secluded. A pair of wooden Adirondack chairs painted green looked out toward the water, mountain and low hills.

What she wouldn’t give to sit in one of those chairs on an evening and just let the world…vanish.

She needed a vacation. Far away. On some bleachedsand beach. With drinks in tall, dewy glasses.

Meg frowned. Yeah, right. Like she had time to sit dawdling away time at some commercialized resort.

With a last look at Ethan’s Eden, she returned to her PC, changed her footwear, then retrieved camera and notebook from her duty bag. Move it or lose it, Meg.

She ignored the double entendre at the sight of Ethan heading for his truck. Was she prepared to reestablish their friendship, or would she let him go…again?

He drove with the window down, left arm on the sill, shifting the gear shift effortlessly on curves and hills. She watched his booted feet work the clutch and gas.

A small waterfall streamed through her abdomen at the sight of his bare brown calves and knees, forearms and biceps. She imagined their strength, the texture of compact muscle, how his skin—the color of dark-roast coffee with cream—would contrast against the paleness of her own.

Snapping around, she viewed the tiny lake skimming through the trees beyond the side window. What was she doing, thinking of skin and muscle and color—of Ethan Red Wolf—this way? She had trained herself never to think of men sexually, not for seven years, not since Doug Sutcliffe and before him…

Ethan.

Young and stupid, that’s what you were back then, believing you had what it took to entice a man. Believing that, no matter what, a man would see you as a woman.

Laughable, was what it was. Laughable because here she was in what much of the world still deemed a man’s job, toting a gun, wearing a mask of authority. Hiding.

Losing a breast to cancer tended to make a woman a tad more self-conscious. Especially when the man she’d married—the doctor she’d married—saw her as an altered person postsurgery.

And she would bet her badge, if Ethan knew, he wouldn’t draw pictures of her with silk locks and youth on her side. He would not remember moments from an era long dead.

And he damn well wouldn’t be glancing across the cab of his pickup with those eyes that embraced the secrets of the earth, and set her pulse off-kilter.

Well, to hell with him. To hell with them all. She’d gotten this far, hadn’t she? Did her best to raise her son, create a secure and loving home for him, whether or not he appreciated those aspects in his hormonal, independence-seeking stage. Hadn’t she?

Damn it. She just needed to stop smelling the man beside her, needed to quit inhaling the scent the sunwarmed breeze brought through the window: that musk of hard work cleaving to skin.

You’re sniffing like a dog, Meg.

God, she needed a life.

Eight minutes later they arrived at Ted’s Landing, a dilapidated pier so called because it had once anchored the float plane of Ted Barns—until Ted sold the plane and relocated to Kentucky.

Ethan brought the truck to a stop, dug out two iced water bottles from the glove box. After handing her one, he shoved open the door and climbed down. “We walk from here.”

“I know,” Meg retorted, uncapping her bottle and following him around the hood.

Did he think she couldn’t recall the rugged topography around Blue Lake? And that Ted’s Landing and a couple of other isolated flat acres were the only areas upon which people had built cottages and cabins? Before Ted’s Landing existed, this very spot had been hers and Ethan’s place to park, their spot to begin hiking two miles through dense bush to their boulder.

She stared across the miniature body of water that was more lagoon than lake. On its opposite shore, a bounty of autumn robes sheathed the rugged hills. Softening her voice, she asked, “Do you come this way often?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I circle the lake four or five times a week with my camera and sketchpad.”

Almost twenty miles on foot over some of the roughest geography within the county. But then, he’d always been a man at home in the outdoors, capturing beauty others missed. In her home office, Meg had hung this year’s calendar, printed with his photographs. September offered her favorite, a ladybug on a single blade of blueeyed grass sprouting amidst a cluster of river stones.

Evidently done with talking, Ethan cut through the tumbling rock and willows edging the lake, and Meg, focusing on his back, hurried into the woods after him. Twenty minutes later, hoping the sweat under her arms lay invisible on her gray short-sleeved shirt, she followed him into blue-sky sunshine once more.

The first thing she detected was how much the place had retained its identity over the past decades, and the countless details he’d sketched in the interview room. The elephant-sized boulder still nudged the shoreline, though cattails now led the way into the water. Behind the big stone, the cliff caught the late-morning sunshine, while willows and shaggy shrubs ascended the rock-embedded bank to the ledge that housed an immense eagles’ nest. From this angle, Meg had always thought it resembled one of those behemoth ladies’ hats popular in the 1920s.

“That thing must weigh a ton,” she remarked, staring up eighty feet. “Do they still come back every spring?”

From under the bill of his ball cap, his eyes were mystic. “It’s not the same pair, Meggie.”

That had been here when they were teenagers. Kissing on that rock.

“Of course not. I was just wondering if this spring’s pair returned the way the others did.”

“The nest was empty for a lot of years with the shooting range so near. This spring is the first I saw a pair return to nest.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan. I know how much you loved the eagles.”

His eyes were fathomless under the cap’s visor. “So did you.”

She had. As teenagers, they’d hidden among the trees and between kisses observed the birds with telescopes and binoculars, recording hatching times and feeding times and behaviors of both parents and young.

Taking a swig of her water, Meg stepped toward the boulder. “Show me where you found the injured bird.”

They went through the procedure step by step, she clicking pictures and rewriting the statement, he describing again what he’d discovered, where he had spotted her son and Randy Leland shooting at the deadwood along the shore. She snapped close-ups of the splinters in the driftwood, then of the twenty-two shells strewn among the rocks.

When it was done she presented the statement of his verbal explanation. “Mind reading it over, ensure it’s correct?” She pointed below the last paragraph. “Sign at the X.”

He reached over, slashed his name across the bottom of the last page.

“You’re not reading it?” She had expected him to examine every nuance of what she’d written.

He pushed the notebook more securely into her hands. “I trust you, Meggie.”

How could she respond to that? Trust was not something she expected from men. Ethan hadn’t trusted her in the past when she’d needed him after the death of her best friend Farrah, and Doug hadn’t trusted Meg’s oscillating emotions after her surgery, and Mark, the man she’d dated four years ago…He had understood even less than Doug or Ethan.

“Call me Meg,” she said, focusing on the present, the tangible, the necessary, hoping annoyance would set in so she could have an excuse to leave. “I don’t go by Meggie anymore.”

He tilted back his head, took a swallow of water, eyeing her all the time. As he recapped the bottle, his mouth twitched. “You’ll always be Meggie to me. Meg is the cop. Meggie is the woman.”

A spear of heat pricked her stomach. She turned to go. “They’re one and the same. I’m not the person you knew back then, Ethan.”

His biceps brushed her shoulder as he fell in step beside her. “Can’t promise to remember that.”

“Well, try. By the way, thanks for coming here with me.” For giving me a statement I can file.

“I don’t think your son shot the eagle.”

“That remains to be seen. He’s been—” She cut off the direction of thought. Ethan Red Wolf was no longer part of her life, and she had no business burdening him with her woes about a teenager dipping his toes in dark waters.

“Been what?” Ethan prompted. His stride slowed to match hers across the uneven, tricky landscape.

She paused in the cool shadows bordering the timberline. Across the water a loon bugled its lonesome call. “Let’s just say Beau has a rebellious streak.”

“Normal for teenagers.” The flicker of fun resurfaced. “I recall us having a streak of rebelliousness when we were sixteen.”

“We weren’t irresponsible,” she retorted. We didn’t flick cigarettes out car windows or write graffiti on the sides of buildings. “If we had, our parents would’ve kicked butt.”

Beneath the cap, his eyes laughed. “Oh, Meggie. You forget so easily. What about the time we did doughnut spins in my old truck across old man Freeley’s hay field? And the time you drove your dad’s pickup to the drive-in without permission. He sent the cops looking for us.”

Her lips pursed to hide a smile. “That was different.”

“How so?”

“We did it for fun. Beau’s got ten miles of attitude. He does things with intent.”

Ethan frowned. “You’re talking like a cop, not a mother.”

“Maybe I can’t separate the two.”

“Like you can’t separate the cop from the woman?”

She walked away from him, into the forest. “This conversation’s over.”

“Why, because I hit a nerve?”

“Because my relationship with Beau is none of your concern.”

“What about the relationship between you and me?” he called.

“A two-hour reunion isn’t a relationship.”

Several seconds later his fingers closed around her forearm. A pinch of fear rushed through Meg. He’d come up behind her, quick and silent, and they were on a mountainside, but most of all she had no tool of comparison for this somber-eyed Ethan to the one she’d suppressed in the memories of her past.

Scowling, he released his grip and stepped back. “Christ, Meggie. You know I’d never hurt you.”

Shame warmed her cheeks. He always could read her emotions. “It’s not that.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Look, this is my point. We no longer know each other.”

“We have a history,” he argued. “A long history. Which you chose to throw away by running off and marrying some other man.”

“I did not run off or throw away anything. You chose not to understand.”

“I understood full well. Your best friend committed suicide six days before prom night and you were so distraught all you wanted was to eradicate the memory. ‘Please, Ethan,’ you begged. ‘Help me erase the memory. Give me something else to put in its place.’ Well, sorry for not having the enthusiasm to take your virginity just so you could grab what I thought should be a sweet and tender first time for both of us, just to use it as a crutch in your grief. I loved you, Meggie. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”

From a far distance in her mind, the up-and-down motion of his chest registered. He breathed as if he’d sprinted a mile uphill. Resurrected, that night still bothered him.

Suddenly, she saw herself as he had. Walking away, crying and cursing him in the same breath. Without empathy for his broken heart, his gentle soul. Farrah had been his friend, too—along with Kell Tanner. Four kids growing up together. “Buds all the way,” they’d repeated on a thousand and one occasions, like a mantra.

Until Farrah made them a trio and life as they knew it died at the end of a rope in that closet with her.

As Meg stood looking up at Ethan, she remembered, too, the taunting words she’d said, words no better than those Linc Leland and Jock Ralston uttered years ago….

That night, after they’d changed from prom finery into jeans and sweatshirts, they had come here and she’d accused Ethan of letting them get to him, letting them victimize him. Like Farrah had been victimized.

Farrah’s death shouldn’t be the reason, he’d said. Shouldn’t be the reason to make love. To which Meg had responded, So, don’t let it scare you away.

And here she was, nineteen years later, the one scared away.

Scared of righting wrongs with Ethan. Of getting involved in a relationship. Most of all, most of all, scared of being a woman. A woman whose disease could return with a vengeance.

Oblivious of the turmoil in her head, Ethan stroked her cheek, a first in forever. “It’s long past,” he said quietly. His hand dropped. “Come on, let’s head back.”

She trailed him through the rugged, sun-speckled woods. And, watching the beacon of his white T-shirt amidst the shadows, she couldn’t help but think how once, long ago, she would have followed him into eternity.

Meg waited until Beau came through the back door after school, threw his backpack on a kitchen chair and strode for the fridge. Dark hair gelled, jeans low on his hips—but not so you could see his underwear—he hung onto the door, one high-top sneaker resting on the toe of its mate.

“Hey, honey.” She stood at the sink, grating carrots for a salad to go with the casserole she’d tossed together. “How was your day?”

He continued to stare inside the refrigerator. “Same.”

Translation: boring, stupid, wish-I-didn’t-have-to-go and I-hate-school.

Decision made, he hauled out a tub of yogurt, dug a spoon from the drawer, delved into the snack. Another time Meg would have reprimanded him for eating out of containers. These days she selected her battles.

The one about to occur was one of those diacritical choices.

She turned, set down the grater. He’d plunked himself on a kitchen chair. “Beau, I need to ask you something.”

“Wha—?” His mouth was full of yogurt.

On the towel hanging from the hook above the sink, Meg wiped her hands, gathered her thoughts. At times her moody son could be provoked to anger by the slightest word.

“This morning someone came in and made a complaint. Which concerned you.”

Flicking her way, his gray eyes, Doug’s eyes, told nothing. Did he know? She felt a cool finger tap her spine.

“Who?” he asked.

“Ethan Red Wolf.”

“The guy who took over Old Man O’Conner’s rifle range?”

“Mr. O’Conner to you, Beau.”

“Whatever.”

Pick your battles, Meg. “Have you been on his property?”

Beau shrugged. “Maybe.”

“When?”

“Can’t ’member.”

She didn’t like the smirk as he dipped his head for another spoonful of yogurt. “Let me refresh your recollection then. Labor Day and the last weekend of July.”

He slammed the container on the table hard enough to bounce a few blobs over the rim. “What am I, under investigation? If you’ve got something to say, Mom, then say it.”

“All right.” Meg shoved away from the counter and came to the table, where she sat down kitty-corner to her son. “Here’s the deal. Mr. Red Wolf saw you on his land on both those days. He spoke to you during the last meeting. Both times you were carrying a twenty-two.”

“So?”

“So first off, you know the rule about taking the gun without supervision.” Doug had bought Beau the rifle for his last birthday, something Meg had vehemently opposed.

“Big deal.”

“It is when you ignore my wishes, son. I’ll be taking the gun to the office in the morning. It won’t be returned until you understand the consequences for your actions.”