“It does take a bit longer to drive out here,” Lucy had said. “I’ll certainly understand if you’d rather stay in town, but I also would enjoy the company.” As if needing to reaffirm that she wasn’t simply being polite, she added, “I just put a batch of homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven.”
Now Maggie found the woman reading in the living room, a small fire crackling in the brick fireplace. The group of dogs huddled around Lucy all got up at once and came to Maggie, wagging and demanding attention, butting each other playfully out of the way.
Maggie sank down into the recliner opposite Lucy and petted each dog. She had never had her own mother wait up for her. Instead, Maggie—even as a twelve-year-old—was the one waiting up for her mother, who sometimes didn’t come home at all. Now suddenly she was struck by how good this place felt—warm, cozy, and safe. Not even twenty-four hours and it felt like home.
Lucy looked up at her over half-moon reading glasses and set her book aside.
“You look exhausted,” she said. “How are you?”
“Exhausted.” Maggie smiled. “But I’m okay.” Jake pushed his snout under her hand, asking to be petted and she automatically obeyed. The others had settled by Lucy’s feet again.
“Someone takes care of your dog while you’re away?”
“Yes.”
“Someone who takes care of you, too, when you’re there?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head and was immediately embarrassed that she had protested so quickly. At the same time she didn’t want to explain that her FBI partner, R. J. Tully—who was taking care of Harvey—was very much involved with her best friend, Gwen Patterson.
“But there is someone? Someone new in your life?”
Maggie stared at the woman, wondering how she seemed to have the power to look deep beneath the surface.
“Maybe,” Maggie said, still thinking about her conversation with Platt, how good it was to hear his voice. She loved the sound of his laughter. Just sharing with him the events of the last twenty-four hours had made her feel less alone in the world. “Trouble is I’ve gotten used to being on my own. I like scheduling my time without getting someone else’s approval.”
In her mind she added that being alone meant being safe. No one could hurt or disappoint you if you didn’t let them get close. The fact that she missed Benjamin Platt annoyed her. It felt like a weakness, a vulnerability. “Is that being independent,” she asked, “or selfish?”
“There always has to be a balance. It should never be all or nothing.” Lucy hesitated, deciding whether or not to go on. “You should never deny who you are to please someone else. If that’s the choice, then it’s not meant to be.
“My mother was full-blooded Omaha. She did everything she possibly could to deny it, to leave it behind. I think that’s why she married my father. He was the son of Irish Catholic immigrants. A railroad engineer who had dreams as big as a Nebraska sky. But he absolutely adored American history and the Indian culture. He was the one who taught me about the Omaha tribe and my Indian heritage. I think my mother finally learned to love it, through his eyes.
“Your independence, your time alone, when you find someone who loves those things as much as you do and wants them for you, you’ll find that those things no longer matter unless you also have that particular person beside you. A bit ironic, I suppose.”
Lucy didn’t push the matter. Instead she asked, “How’s the boy doing?”
Maggie had told her on the phone about the intruder and the attempt on Dawson’s life.
“He’s scared. But his dad’s with him and Skylar has a deputy outside his door now. Donny seems certain the stranger’s footprint is going to match the one we found in the forest. It has the same distinctive waffle pattern. Same size.”
“Even if it matches, it might not lead us anywhere. There must be hundreds of pairs of work boots in this area. Did Dawson tell you anything?”
Maggie shook her head. “Not really. They used the campsite to experiment with drugs. He did admit they had a camera.”
“And we didn’t find it. Could they have caught something on film?”
“I have no idea. What else is out there besides a bunch of trees and pasture?”
“The university has a new field house on one side and there’s the nursery on the other side.”
“Nursery?”
“The Forest Service grows their own trees. The forest doesn’t replenish itself. Trees don’t grow well in sand.” She smiled, then realized that wasn’t enough of an explanation. “It was an experiment at the turn of the last century—1902, if I remember correctly. Every tree was hand planted. About twenty thousand acres. Originally it was believed that settlers would come to the area if they were provided an easy supply of timber to build with. It’s been sort of an open-air laboratory ever since. When trees die, as many of those original pine are doing now, they have to be replenished.”
“Doesn’t sound very sinister.”
Lucy laughed. “No, I’m afraid not.”