No wonder he’d looked so tired.
Confronting him was bad timing on my part. I started to send a text to Nate. But I was never sure what to say in a message like that. What exactly are “condolences”? “Sorry for your loss” was so … generic. Even worse was “sending positive thoughts your way.”
I had no words of comfort for people who’d lost a friend or family member. Not even myself.
I changed my clothes and took Luke for a run. He deserved a good one after being cooped up all day, so we ran for five miles. I was sitting on the grass outside my apartment, stretching, when my phone rang. I looked, and it was Susan Lewis, director of Battlefield. I assumed she was calling to give me information about Beth’s funeral. I figured I hadn’t known Beth well enough to attend, so I let the call go to voicemail.
After my shower, I returned her call.
“I wanted to share with you,” she began, “that I’ve received a complaint, a question, really, about your fitness for SAR.”
A hot flash ran through me. “What? Who complained?” I began pacing in my apartment, my anger at full throttle.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
I closed my eyes. I could picture her with her little, shy border collie. Soft dog, soft handler. I ramped up my argumentation. “What exactly am I being accused of?”
“It appears there’s been some concern about your reticence to deal with HRD.”
“Was it Nate? Is he the one … because I shared some things in confidence—”
Susan cut me off. “Oh, no! Not Nate. Certainly not Nate.”
What? I stopped pacing.
“In fact, he defended you strongly. He’s a big fan, let me tell you!”
A flood of guilt washed through me. It was like standing on the beach as the sea washed away the sand beneath my feet.
Susan continued. She used words like “grit” and “superb” and they swam around in my head, little yellow ducks bobbing on my ocean of despair. All the supposed truth I had conjured in my mind was wrong. I could feel myself sinking, sinking, helpless and weak. I sat down hard on my couch.
“Bottom line is, Jessica, based on what Nate said, I think you’ll be fine. But if you ever do feel like the stress is getting to you, please let me know sooner than later. We can always arrange a break.”
By the time she finished and we hung up, I was in tears. I’d been such a jerk. To Nate of all people.
I curled into a fetal position on my couch and wept. Luke came and laid his head next to me. I patted him and he lay down with a sigh, right next to the couch.
Over the next hour or so, out of the swirl of emotions inside, came clarity. For years I’d been searching for some kind of star to steer by, something outside my own head, that I could use as a guide.
Maybe I was searching for an authority figure. Maybe I was searching for my dad. My former partner had come close, but then he was gone. Dogs provided some of what I was looking for, at least in terms of love. Then Nate came along.
Nate’s steadiness, his soft speech, his country manners, his gentleness and kindness, combined with his knowledge, had become a safe spot for me, a rock on which to crawl when the slime became too hard to deal with.
And now I had shattered that rock with my own hand, just as I had smashed other rocks before.
I wanted to call him. I could not move. I was frozen, paralyzed, heartsick.
After a while, I fell asleep and slept until just before six. Luke nudged me when I stirred. I sat up and realized I’d slept for ten hours.
Luke was developing an elephant’s bladder by necessity.
I grabbed a quilt and took him outside. I sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs Nate had made for me and watched the sun slowly rise over the trees to the east, a “fine stand of mixed oaks and poplars,” Nate had said. Red oak. White oak. Post oak. Chinkapin oak. I heard a pileated woodpecker and a Carolina wren and an Eastern bluebird. These were all things I’d learned from Nate. He knew more about nature than anyone I’d ever met.
He knew more about life. And he was helping me see the world in layers, dimensions I had never noticed before.
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I got up, called Luke, and went inside. I didn’t have Nate’s address, but hey, I knew how to find people. It’s what I did.
I pinpointed his location in fifteen minutes. I fed my dog, showered, got dressed, and left.
His house was only twenty minutes away. I found his mailbox and turned down through the woods, down a long, rutted gravel driveway, across a small creek, and up again until I came upon a clearing. There, perched on the side of a hill, sat a small log home. I could tell it was kit-built, and I could imagine Nate constructing it himself, piece by piece over time. It was that kind of home.
I saw his Tahoe parked off to the side and an old pickup in the back near a shed next to cords and cords of stacked firewood. The house faced south. In front and to the left was a huge garden with row upon row of vegetables emerging from the soil. He had edged the garden with bright yellow and orange flowers and fenced it to keep the deer out.
I rolled down all the windows and heard Sprite barking. Not until I got out of the car did I see Nate, standing on the front porch, his pipe in his hand.
I raced toward him, tears blurring my vision. At first, he stood still, but then I saw him move quickly down the six porch steps. We met at the bottom and melted into each other’s arms.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” I whispered.
He squeezed me and kissed the top of my head, just as my father had done when I was six and chucked a rock at a boy and broke my dad’s car window. Was the universe sending me a sign?
He kissed my head again.
My tears flowed freely. He released me and pulled an old-fashioned handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to me. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “I accused you of something you didn’t do. I am so sorry. Please forgive me! Please!”
“It’s all right,” he said.
Sprite’s barking drew our attention. We both turned. She was at my car jumping as high as she could, trying to see Luke.
Comic relief.
“Go let him out. They can play and we can have some coffee,” Nate said.
I let Luke out of the car, and he and Sprite took turns chasing each other. She was little, but like most females, she didn’t hesitate to put him in his place if he got too rough. When it was clear they weren’t going anywhere, I climbed the steps to Nate’s porch, opened his front door, and yelled, “Can I come in?”
“Sure!”
I stepped into a great room with glistening, honey-colored logs stretching up to a cathedral ceiling. Shiny wood floors repeated that color. Two guitars and a banjo hung on one wall. A massive, river-stone fireplace and chimney flanked by tall, amply filled bookshelves dominated the end of the room to my right. I had no idea Nate was such a reader.
I walked past a brown-leather couch and matching recliner and across a stunning oriental rug, woven in deep red and beige with black accents. I touched the cool, smooth stone of the fireplace and wondered if Nate had built it himself. My eyes turned to the bookshelves, and I began reading the titles. I found books on dog training, dog first aid, dog breeds, dog food, and dogs in war.
No surprise there.
The next shelves included Bibles (four of them) and what must have been study books— concordances, commentaries, a Bible dictionary. Why would he need a separate dictionary? Next to them were books on Christian history and a whole string of books by C.S. Lewis. Then there were what I would call self-help books, with titles like, Desiring God, Where is God When it Hurts, and Suffering and the Sovereignty of God.
Nate must have spent a lot of time trying to come to terms with his injuries and losses.
I ran my hand over the titles as if I could glean some wisdom by just touching them. I went on to find books on science, nature, construction, philosophy, psychology, health, and then, to my shock, poetry and novels.
A
s I said, I had no idea Nate was such a reader.
“You hungry?”
His voice, coming from the kitchen area, surprised me. I turned. “Sure.”
I walked over to him, and he handed me a plate full of eggs, bacon, and toast.
“Let’s eat on the front porch,” he said. “It’s a fine morning.”
He brought out orange juice and coffee and napkins and set them on the rustic table I suspected he built. I waited while he retrieved his own plate. The dogs lay on the grass, chewing sticks in the sun. A hawk circled overhead, the only feature in the cloudless sky.
I sat quietly as Nate said grace, then I said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”
He nodded and began talking as we ate. He told me all about Beth’s death, about the music and the prayers and the Scripture verses, and about what he called a “great peace.” There was something about the telling of it that comforted him, I knew, and so I sat quietly, not commenting, not asking questions, not even rolling my eyes or gritting my teeth when he said things I didn’t buy.
His view of death was a lot different than mine.
I couldn’t deny, however, that sitting on that front porch with Nate settled my soul like nothing else had, not even running, for a long, long time. His home was a place of peace; he was a place of peace.
An hour later, as we carried our plates back to the kitchen, I heard his cell phone go off.
“Excuse me.” He answered the call.
I continued cleaning up, marveling at the small, but well-equipped kitchen, the open shelves, the gingham dishtowels. The window over the sink looked out into the forest behind the house. A hummingbird feeder hung just outside it. His house was much homier than mine, or even my mother’s.
I could hear Nate talking. When he came back into the kitchen, his face looked serious. “That was Scott Cooper.”
My heart thudded.
“Another young woman is missing up in the mountains.”
19
My peace shattered like a dropped plate. “Have we been called out?” Already I had pulled my phone from my pocket to check.
Nate shook his head. “No. Somebody from the Blue Ridge Trafficking Task Force contacted Scott. It’s not our case, not yet.”
“What are the details? Is she like … like the others?” Part of me wanted to know, part didn’t.
“Very similar. Small, blonde. This one’s got a little kid at home. Community college student. Never came home from her part-time job at Walmart.”
“Is Cooper going up there?”
“Not yet, though from the way he talked my guess is he’ll wrangle a way to get there.” Nate stretched his shoulders. “Speaking of community colleges, I’d better get to work.”
“Thanks, Nate. Thanks for everything. Breakfast … everything.”
“You’re welcome.” He gave me a quick hug. “Be easy on yourself, okay? Give yourself a little grace.”
I looked at him. There was that word again. I had no idea what he meant.
I drove home pondering the contrasts of the morning—the peace at breakfast, the jarring report soon after. Life, I thought, was surely crazy.
I had no idea just how crazy it was about to become.
Luke was tired out from playing with Sprite, so when I got home, I changed into work clothes, put him in his crate, and left for Richmond. A lawyer I’d never worked for before had given me a case. A woman wanted to know what her husband was really doing when he was supposedly working late at the office.
Sounded like my typical case. Except the husband was the lieutenant governor. And the wife was the daughter of a former governor.
Oh, boy.
I’d taken a lot of government classes in college, and I knew that in Virginia, lieutenant governor was a largely ceremonial position, almost a part-time job. Still, it was an important post. Politicians viewed it as a stepping-stone to the Executive Mansion, since Virginia is the only state that won’t allow governors to serve more than one term for four years in a row. A messy divorce would certainly derail Joshua Porter’s political ambitions.
Porter had a big car dealership in Albemarle County, near Charlottesville, and two houses, one in Charlottesville and one in the trendy Fan District of Richmond. I headed there now to start with his wife.
Eleanor Porter was an auburn-haired former Miss Virginia, a graduate of Sweet Briar, a private women’s college. Dressed in a light-blue silk suit, perfectly coiffed and manicured, she sat properly perched on a beige wingback chair while we spoke.
I felt absolutely shabby, sitting across from her. Still, I managed to ask my questions and walk away with four leads and a hinky feeling ol’ Joshua wasn’t the real politician in the family.
How much weight did Eleanor carry with Daddy’s old political cronies? And had I just unwittingly enlisted in a coup attempt?
Focus on the question, I told myself. Was Joshua having an affair?
I knocked around Richmond for a couple of hours, hitting a coffee shop I knew catered to politicians, and later, a bar where they hung out. I ginned up an excuse to visit the office of a state senator who I knew was a crony of Porter’s, and I chatted up his secretary. The place was pretty empty—the General Assembly was only in session a few months a year—so I had a lot of freedom and the secretaries had a lot of time.
Gosh, people will talk. I was a stranger, yet soon I knew about a senator’s bourbon problem, another one’s lobbyist connections, and a kinky little affair a delegate had literally under the table.
By the time I left Richmond, I either had enough leads to sink Joshua Porter, or the script for a tacky, made-for-TV movie. I wasn’t sure which. One lead led me to a restaurant not far from Porter’s auto dealership in Charlottesville where I had arranged to meet Eleanor’s college roommate, Judith Randolph.
I should have recognized Randolph as an Old Virginia name, but I didn’t. Between the accent, the stylish blonde hair, and the pale-beige silk suit, I felt like I was in a scene from Gone with the Wind. Mrs. Randolph sat down, took off her gloves, ordered tea, and began talking.
She’d apparently seen Joshua Porter in various restaurants around Charlottesville with a woman “way too pretty” to be an associate. She’d followed them in her car on one occasion to the famous Boar’s Head Inn, a favorite of the Old Dominion’s elite. Once, she’d caught them in an embrace that was “more than friendly.”
Then Mrs. Randolph leaned forward. She looked like she was about to reveal her juiciest tidbit. I leaned forward to catch it. Then the door opened up behind her. And in walked Joshua Porter.
“Hold on,” I whispered urgently, but Mrs. Randolph continued.
“I saw them,” she said, “embracing …”
“Judith!” Joshua Porter not only saw us, he recognized his wife’s friend by the back of her head. “How are you, darling?”
Mrs. Randolph turned sixteen shades of red. “I … uh … I’m well, Josh.” She extended her hand.
He took it and kissed it. I sat frozen in my seat. “And you are …” he said, looking straight at me.
“A friend,” I said, “Alice Longworth.” Seriously? I had to choose the name of Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter?
Porter’s eyes told me he was on to me.
Note to self: Decide on an alias before you need it.
I turned to Mrs. Randolph. “I’ll be in touch about that library project. Thank you for considering it. Good day.”
Then I left the restaurant, my cover blown, the case against Porter in tatters.
I called Eleanor’s lawyer, told him what happened, and apologized. My most potentially lucrative case yet had slipped from my grasp.
I went to bed discouraged. Fortunately, I was distracted by a search-and-rescue callout at 2:00 a.m. A high school couple had not returned from a date. The boy’s car had been found at the end of a dead-end dirt road in the foothills near Sperryville. Searchers had fanned out in the woods, but there was no sign of them. Both were sixteen. Both should have been home by eleve
n.
I admit, I was still a bit shaky from the accident we’d all experienced just a week before. But I also knew I needed the distraction and so I agreed to respond. As I was getting ready, Nate texted me. He’d be my walker.
When we arrived at the incident command post and received the details about our subjects, I had to catch my breath. The missing girl was small, but she had dark hair. Thank goodness.
I was happy to be working with Nate. I knew automatically if the couple was dead, he’d do the body work, and I’d be able to back off and focus on the dog.
We got our assignment—a rough, ten-acre area extending up the mountain. Kevin and his Malinois had also responded, but there’d be another dog team between us and him, and I was glad of that. Kevin had taken the downhill search area, the more likely way for humans on foot to travel. The other dog team was following an old path that ran parallel to the ridge. Nate and I headed uphill, following a fire trail.
The temperature was in the 60s, perfect for a strenuous climb. Overhead, the clear night sky sparkled with a thousand stars. The fire trail was well-maintained, and I was thankful we didn’t have to crawl across the boulders I saw littering the forest floor.
But I should have known Luke wasn’t going to follow a straight path, and soon we were snaking through the woods. Nate had an easier time than I did crossing the boulder fields, so he took the lead and gave me a hand up at times. Wiry and tough, his strength amazed me.
We’d been hiking for about an hour and a half when the base commander radioed us. The couple had been found. Kevin’s Malinois had discovered them resting under a tree, two miles from the command post. They were fine, just lost.
That was good news. Nate and I began making our way down. At Nate’s suggestion, he went ahead and hid and I told Luke to “Seek!” and he “found” Nate and got rewarded. The idea was to give Luke a payoff, to keep him ready to play the game.
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