Second Nature Part 18

When he brought it to the carriage house, Robin b.u.t.toned each b.u.t.ton carefully, smoothed out the wrinkles, then hung the coat in the hall closet. There had never been any question that she'd ever want anyone else, even Stuart and Kay had stopped trying to fix her up. But Connor still could not understand how his mother had accepted what had happened. He took loss personally, he fought it so hard that in medical school his friends had called him the ox behind his back, he just couldn't give up the burden of his patients. There were times when he didn't see his own apartment for weeks on end, when he stayed at a bedside long after a last breath had been taken.

And so, when he discovered the disk in the attic, there beneath the black coat in the bottom of a box, he felt a wild sort of hope. He'd kept his find to himself, then went off to the library at noon. Afterhe'd printed out the map, he rushed back to the carriage house, certain that his mother would be overjoyed. But when he presented Robin with the map, she refused to take it. She led Connor outside, into the garden where the roses would grow, so that his sister wouldn't overhear, and told him it would be best to throw the map away.

"Why?" Connor had said. "Don't you want to find him? Isn't that what you want?"

"What I want?" Robin had been surprised. "What does that have to do with it?"

Connor had stalked away, confused, and Robin had followed him.

She'd put her arms around him and told him to do whatever he wanted with the information he'd found, and that was what he was doing now.

When he got to Cromley he bought a backpack and some cans of food, as well as some overpriced oranges and apples. It was the last week of April, warm enough to wear jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt, but as Connor drove farther north he could see there was still snow in the mountains.

He stopped and had his lunch sitting behind the wheel. Peeling an orange, he felt a wave of homesickness, not for Boston but for the island. He usually went back four or five times a year, and he always visited during the first week of August, for his sister's birthday.

Last summer, when she turned nine, they'd had a party at Stuart and Kay's, since the heat was brutal and the little cottage Stuart and Kay had bought near the beach, after selling their old house, was always breezy and cool. Connor had given his sister a charm bracelet, and she loved it so much she hugged him and swore she would never take it off, not even if she lived to be a hundred. Roy had just arrived with the cake, and he'd tried hard not to laugh at this vow. He'd been a much better father to this little girl than he'd ever been to Connor. She stayed with him every other weekend, and on Wednesday nights he drove her to ballet lessons. They'd gone to Disney World together twice and were already planning another trip. When she ran to him to show off her bracelet, Roy had put the birthday cake down on the picnic table in order to give each charm his full attention.

After that party, Connor had gone off by himself. He'd had coffee at Fred's Diner, then walked back through the town green and along Cemetery Road, which now had sidewalks and streetlights and wasn't nearly as dark as it used to be. When he got to Mansfield Terrace, he went to stand outside the Alteros' house, although they'd been gone for years. They had moved to North Carolina the summer afterJenny was killed, and occasionally Robin got postcards from Mich.e.l.le, brief cheerful notes without any substance. The year after they'd moved, Connor had received a postcard as well. Having a tewible time Wish you were here had been scrawled on the card, but the postmark was fuzzy and he was never certain whether or not Lydia had sent it. Lately, he found himself wis.h.i.+ng that he could see her, maybe because of his impending marriage.

But the truth of it was, he and Lydia could have been in the same room and not known each other, they'd be searching for people who no longer existed.

If they ever shook hands they'd have to pretend they knew each other, they'd be puzzled and then embarra.s.sed by all they might have expected.

Now, as he traveled north, searching for the trapper his uncle had told him about, Connor kept one eye on the twisting dirt roads and the other on his map. An hour after lunch he found the place, a wooden house with a wide porch, a small barn, and a fenced-in kennel for the two dogs,which barked like crazy when Connor drove up. He got out of his car and waved when the old man came out to see what the ruckus was about. His nephew had up and moved to Detroit, where he'd worked in a factory and bragged about his great benefits until the place went and closed down on him. The old man's wife had died and he was living on his army pension.

He'd had a huge dish put up so he could get TV stations he couldn't even believe existed: movies all night, talk shows where people said things the old man wouldn't have even confessed to a priest.

"Hey," Connor called to him, "do you mind some company?"

The trapper waved him over and Connor walked past the barking dogs and up onto the porch, then followed the old man inside, where there was a pot of coffee already made. They talked about the weather, something Connor was completely comfortable with, considering the family he came from, and the difference between the rutted dirt roads the trapper was used to and the traffic in Boston, which could send any sane person around the bend. When it came up that Connor was a doctor, the trapper showed him two lumps on his wrist, which were probably benign tumors, although Connor suggested he make himself an appointment at the hospital in Cromley to have them looked at. At last, Connor asked about the man they had found years back. The old man put down his coffee cup and rubbed at his face.

"You don't remember?" Connor said.

The trapper smiled, and Connor made a note to himself to suggest a visit to the dentist as well.

"I remember it every day," the trapper said. He was now so old that ten years gone often seemed quite a bit closer than the day before. "I wish we'd never caught him. Or we should have left him there. Maybe he would have bled to death and maybe he wouldn't have, but I never felt right about sending him back to people when he'd never learned to defend himself from them."

He agreed to take Connor into the woods, but it would be slow going, and they'd have to put it offuntil morning. Connor spent the night on the couch where the dogs usually slept, and at dawn his cramped muscles woke him. They set off early and still didn't get close until after a lunch of crackers and cheese. The trees were so thick and so tall Connor actually felt dizzy, it seemed a sin to speak in a place as deep and green as this.

"This is probably the spot where we found him," the trapper said, but in fact he was certain of the place. He'd come here quite often. He always had a gun with him, but he rarely went after anything these days, just like those old men he used to scorn, who swore that deer could cry.

"Are there still wolves around?" Connor asked. Now that he was here, he wasn't sure what he wanted the answer to be.

"n.o.body sees them unless they want to be seen," the trapper said.

He pulled offhis gloves, slowly because of the lumps on his wrist, and reached into his jacket pocket for some chewing tobacco. "We had some fellow here from the National Park Service who reported back to Was.h.i.+ngton there wasn't a wolf left in Michigan, and just that morning I'd seen tracks, so you tell me who the fools are."

If there were birds in these woods, they weren't singing now. The ground was still covered by a few inches of snow, although the ferns were already unfolding. The trapper picked some fiddleheads that he'd cook with b.u.t.ter for supper."Do you ever see him?" Connor asked.

The trapper looked up and considered the patch of blue sky through the branches above them.

"Would I tell if I had?" he said.

Connor smiled and listened carefully. He held one hand above his eyes and gazed north. Up on the ridgetop nothing moved, at least not anything he could see. That was just as well. In no time the sky would be growing dark, and it was a long way back home.

the end.