Today's Reading
PART I
No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.
—Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly
CHAPTER ONE
"I'll buy the test tomorrow," Stacey said from the sofa. She had kicked off her moccasins and stretched out across the cushions with her stocking feet inches from the woodstove, and she had a book of Rick Bass's essays tented on her chest. "But honestly, I'm not that late."
"You said it's been two weeks."
"Which has happened before. I've never had the most regular cycles in the world. And the odds of my being pregnant—"
"But you switched up your birth control after our honeymoon."
Stacey had long brown hair and almond-shaped green eyes that made some people wonder if she might be Eurasian. She'd always been rail thin, and lying down, her body looked the same as ever.
"And we were extra careful during that time. Mike, I know you hate not knowing. But we'll have an answer tomorrow. Besides, I thought we agreed we wanted kids."
"But now doesn't seem like the ideal time."
"There is no ideal time. All my friends have told me that. Besides, I'm sure this is a false alarm. I don't know why you're freaking out."
"I'm not freaking out."
At which point, Shadow glanced up from the rug with his sulfur-yellow eyes and growled at me. It was not a sound I took lightly from the 145-pound wolf dog. Hybrids are unpredictable, which was why I had a special permit to own this coal-black brute. I was under no illusions about the wildness lurking in his unknowable heart.
That said, Shadow had been getting more indoor time since Stacey had moved in. Prior to our marriage six months earlier, I'd kept the half-wild animal in a fenced pen with supervised visits inside the house and occasional sleepovers if he was well behaved. But some ineffable quality in my new wife seemed to soothe the savage beast. Frankly, I was a little jealous of how quickly they'd bonded.
"Well," she said softly, "Shadow seems to think you're 'exercised a mite,' as my dad might say."
I did my best to calm my voice. "Sorry about that, buddy. Everything's chill here."
It was a lie, of course. Because I was indeed freaking out at the possibility of Stacey being pregnant—in my experience, anyone who claims not to be freaking out is, by definition, freaking out.
I'm not even sure I should have a child, based on my own warped upbringing.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I was prevented from blurting out my cri de coeur by the ringing of the phone in my home office, down the darkened hall.
* * *
My state-issued cell identified my caller as the game warden assigned to the Rockwood district—a remote area of commercial timberland and nature preserves northwest of Moosehead Lake. Brandon Barstow was twenty-six and had recently graduated from the Advanced Warden School. I was the investigator who'd done his background check prior to his hiring.
"Hey, Mike," he said. "I think I might possibly have a missing person case maybe."
Might? Possibly? Maybe?
"That sounds serious, Brandon. Should I marshal the entire search and rescue team?"
I hadn't bothered to turn on the desk lamp. I listened to the downpour outside. It had rained all through April and now into the first week of May. The raindrops were coming down as hard as hailstones.
"You're being a wiseass," he said after a pause.
...
