The William Kent Krueger Collection #4 by William Kent Krueger

Author:William Kent Krueger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2015-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

The cabin was several hundred yards east of the peninsula where the other buildings of the camp stood. They reached it by walking a narrow path, almost overgrown now, that ran among the birches along the shoreline. It was a small, isolated little structure built of logs, without electricity and with an outhouse off to one side. The great restless blue of the big water was visible through a wide break in the trees at its back. In the wind off the lake, the sound of the birch leaves rustling was like fast-running water. Cork thought it was a lovely spot.

“It’s pretty rustic, but Vivian and Lily seemed to be just fine with what they had,” Hornett said as they approached the place. “We were planning at some point to run electricity out here and put in indoor plumbing, but all our efforts for quite a while have been focused on our larger projects.”

The door was padlocked, but Hornett brought out a set of keys, undid the lock, and shoved the door open. He stepped inside, and the others followed.

The windows were closed and clouded with dust. Judging from the stuffiness of the room, they hadn’t been opened in a great while. There was a table, and there were two chairs and two small bunks. There was a cast-iron stove for heating. That was all. Nothing personal remained in the cabin, nothing that would have spoken to the nature of the two women, mother and daughter, who’d lived there.

“What happened to Lily’s belongings?” Cork asked.

“We’ve got them boxed and stored up at the camp, should anyone ever want to claim them. There’s nothing much, though. Clothing, a few pictures. Vivian and Lily lived a pretty simple existence. Took their food with the rest of us, washed their clothes in our laundry, bathed in our showers. They didn’t need much here.”

Cork recalled the cabin on the isolated island where Jenny had found the body of Lily Smalldog. It was a simple affair, too. Lily had been used to isolation, to making do by herself. As far as Cork could see, she hadn’t had much in her life, but what little she did have was apparently enough.

“Dad,” Stephen said.

He’d wandered away from the men and stood looking at the wall of the cabin above one of the bunks. Cork joined him and saw what he’d found.

“What is it?” Hornett asked.

“A word carved into the wood,” Cork said.

Hornett came and looked, too. “I can’t make it out. Looks like gibberish. But Lily wasn’t good with reading or spelling.”

“It’s an Ojibwe word,” Stephen said. “Gizaagin.”

“What does it mean?”

“I love you.”

Stephen stepped closer and looked down, then slid the bunk out a foot and pulled a folded paper from where it had been caught between the bunk frame and the wall. He unfolded it, studied it, then handed it to his father.

It was a drawing, simple pen and ink but really quite lovely, of a deer and fawn in a meadow. It was signed “Sonny.”

Cork handed it to Tom Kretsch.

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