The following is a condensed version of the story “The Mountain”

He walks down the graves, shaking dirt from his brown paper wings. The turned earth smells like bread. With fish eggs for eyes the Moth Man turns a dead gaze and does not smile. Move, and he vanishes.

I can tell of spooks and why we make them. Antlers talking on the wall, and such. Better that than the haunts that pad silent behind us as the itch to run sweetens our blood.

I look at my hands. Fatly veined, pale. The flour hides the rough red beneath. Maeve likes the flour. If I leave off washing up, just for kicks, I can come home and clap a puff of white over her head. Fairy dust, she says. The next morning I’ll be slapping her pillowcase as she shakes out her hair, tittering like a fox. Trouble, I think.

I hope. Trouble is a sure ticket out of town, and I’d like her to make it past the tree line someday, laughing at the rest of us stuck in the mud.

As the ovens wind down for the day, we bag the stale bread and burnt crusts to take home. Sop them in broth, and you won’t crack a tooth. Maeve will complain, Annie will hush her and Ben will come banging up the front steps. He’ll take his place in his undershirt, say grace and ask after the pepper. I fetch it as if I’ve forgotten to set it, and he plays along. He knows I like serving him, saying sorry without the words. He’d only reply, Don’t be sorry to me, and I wouldn’t know how to fix his guilt.

It’s a mercy Ben isn’t like other fathers. Where they might have booted me for the scandal, he took me in his arms like pieces just broken and charged himself with the cleanup, doubling down in coughing toil now that we’d have another mouth to feed. He did it with a goodwill that frightened me, having it somehow in mind that my disgrace was his mortal sin. As if the bruised apple meant the tree was rot.

With respect, Ben, don’t you grow weary? I’m tired of being your martyrdom.

Ingrate. Only in my reddest moments would I think such a thing. When cornered or down or simply ashamed—because this isn’t our first rodeo.

It was one thing to have gotten knocked up. Another gotten twice off the same gypsy joe. What can I say? A better woman might have guarded the hurt of the two years he’d spent drifting and dealt him a swift kick in the pants for daring to show face with a sorry smile and a knot of daffodils. And yet, hadn’t I known the boy I’d fallen in love with? Couldn’t I dig out a vase and thank him for the visit? It’d be false of me to pretend anger when spotting his car out the window I near woke the house whooping for joy.

He was the same shock of curls and sinewy forearms, but an inch or two taller and nicked in one tooth. His voice had grown richer and he smelled of sweet pea motel soap and seat leather. I wondered what I looked to him. Soft and gray, I figured. Small.

He brought stories of the coast, which should’ve made me boil for the adventure he had and I hadn’t. But I could only whine and wag like a hungry mutt after the scraps: boardwalk brawls and sunrises, gas prices county to county, odd jobs in seedy joints, the kindness of strangers. A life past the tree line.

Come with me, he’d said. I’ve got it figured this time.

That night I curled up on his strange, hardened chest and listened for the ocean. I heard only the night through my other ear. The robins and the clothesline. The wind through the shingles. Ben asleep in the next room, his breath filling, resounding.

I kissed Danny until he stirred and silent as the grave we made love knowing we’d already thrown our lots. He’d go, I’d stay—nothing figured, nothing changed. I’ll always want a life with him, but there’s no use begging what won’t do well. Much as I love Danny, he is no husband. He’s a prince of air come down on a moonbeam, wisping off when the wind stales. Sometimes I wonder he has a skin to contain him. Let him come, let him go. I will not have him shackled and drunk to put up with a life he can’t handle, sawing at his ankles in a fever to fly. I don’t see how that’s a respectable living.

Danny needs a tribe, people who won’t hide him on a headful of whims—which to him aren’t whims, but flickers. Echoes. They come from the wider world, teasing us out. Danny hears their summons. I only imagine I do, but I understand if they drive him to the hills like a mustang on fire. I’d pray he doused quick and found his way to peace, or else expired with grace like the game on the end of Uncle Oz’s rifle.

As the bakeshop closes, I hang my apron and think on those kills. How Oz and I’d crouch in the bushes and hush after the thump of a warm body, like that of the cut stag whose bloodspots betrayed it; how against the blue snow it lay steaming from the chase; how the ghost of it sucked through the whistling pines and into high purgatory, almost unheard: Goodbye, foe. Goodbye, doe. I die.

* * *

It was seeing him off today that got me on the issue of Danny.

He made it a few weeks before going stir-crazy, down about the town that never changed. He had driven up in coat and tie, a teddy for Maeve and a baby blanket for me, after the last two-month hiatus. He’d gotten his mother Willa’s calls and wanted to roll up his sleeves and dig into fatherhood as if a new kid—never mind the first—would sift him of the echoes and flickers that ruled him. I made Ben promise to say not a word while we waited for Danny to come to come to his senses. To bore, itch and fly.

Annie shouldn’t have let it shock her when his car was gone this morning. I guess the haircut and the ease with which he and Maeve played together had convinced her he would claim Ben’s head of the table, now that he’d have two kids to Ben’s one.

But Annie had her own fancies and was glad nonetheless to find the curb empty. Danny and Maeve would have grown very close.

Maeve crawls around Annie’s lap while Annie rocks her to a lullaby that keeps changing rhyme. They’d be like Danny in that respect, little witches bending heads over a dandelion—everything a joke, everything a wonder. It keeps Annie young. She can’t go much longer with those hips, though. Getting down and up and down again with Maeve on the floor, Maeve in the grass, Maeve in the puddles. But Maeve will grow up and then Annie will have to. The full of her age will hit Annie at once, and she’ll shun spoons and mirrors, or fixate on them, and hide her spotted hands in her pockets for shame.

But let the children be children while they are.

Annie didn’t used to be this way. In the wedding album she has an arch to her brow, a sniggering grin. Every word had a bite, you just knew. I want to meet that Annie, but I won’t trouble Ben about her. Drudging the past upsets him. My only clue is the rocking horse. Oz made them a present of it, which I then christened when I came along. But it had been there before me and was painted blue.

I kick off my shoes and call the girls to wash up. The stomp of boots up the steps tells us Ben’s home.

He takes his place as the others hurry in. I take a dishtowel after the dust on his neck and he cracks a smile. Annie tells me to stop fussing, her palms already faceup on the table. We link hands and say grace, then dig in.

Maeve talks the whole time. She’s got on her fairy wings, a colorless set of wire and mesh loops that I pray get lost somehow. But it’s the teddy on her lap that makes me frown.

“We have to play Hide and Seek,” she declares.

Annie agrees with a hearty sip of tonic.

“Mommy’s gonna play with us.”

I snort. “I don’t think so, Maeve.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport!”

Spoilsport. Where in the world does she get this stuff?

Danny. I dip a puff of bread into my soup and swallow without chewing.

Ben butts sagely in. “You’re mother’s not in shape to be running around, Maeve.” Always the shining knight. I pat my belly. Strangely, sometimes, I forget about it.

With a thrust of her chin, Maeve redoubles on Annie. “But you can run. That means we have to play.” Simple as that.

I catch the sparkle in Ben’s eye. We’ve spoiled her, haven’t we?

“Sugarbear,” Annie says. “We’re not supposed to play because… until…” She looks to me to be the bad guy.

It’s an easy role after a day with the ovens. “When the ground dries,” I say, “then you can play. We’re not tearing up the yard again.”

Maeve kicks her chair leg and pouts. “I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry means you don’t do it again.”

“How do I know that?”

She’s a funny one. Talk too long, and Annie might get nervous, thinking about school and how many hours a day the house would be quiet. I don’t let myself pity her.

I know now the heartbreak Ben must have felt when I told him about Danny the first time. And Maeve, who hadn’t a name back then. Ben told me to get inside, he’d take care of everything. He carried my bag for me—I’d expected the worst when I told him I was pregnant—and left me at my bed. I sat listening to his pacing as the house went dark and hadn’t a clue who he was calling or for what. Then the front door banged shut, an hour or two passed, and Ben returned good as his word. We were all set.

I didn’t ask what that meant, but I didn’t like it. Not that I could question Ben, having shacked up with the town deadbeat and spit on years of Ben’s life spent at the quarry to pay for my schooling. He’d spend even more there for Maeve’s. And now for this baby…

I’d hid the signs, going early to work so I could vomit in the woods instead of the house. But Ben found me out. I expected the thunder, the belt. But that wasn’t his way. If anything he was angry at Danny, and angry at me for loving him. Wasn’t I raised better? And that was the real sting the first time around. It had pitched Ben into a funk such that he’d not talk to me out of guilt. He faulted himself for my feelings, which hurt worse than any punishment. Then Maeve came along, drudging the past behind that damned rocking horse, turning Annie into a babytalking loon, and Ben and I knew looking at his wife on the floor, in the grass, in the puddles, what it was to love a broken thing.

He asks me now if we have any pepper.

* * *

The service bell dings, and I’d bet you a dollar it’s a gang of teens having fun at the counter, out for trouble on a sunny day. It goes off again, though, and I wonder where Ida the cashier went. Probably out back on a smoke break.

I call, “In a minute,” and rinse off, then come through the swing door to take their order or tell them to beat it Or Else. It’s actually a kind of treat to watch them sober up quick at the threat of a call home. We all have demons, punks with their parents.

But they aren’t punks in the shop.

A couple of Boys. Just two, but enough to keep me well behind the display case.

They used to come by the house when I was younger, the Brewer Boys. They work at the distillery two miles uproad. It’s a massive compound with on-site logging, oak and hickory, and a showroom of black and white pictures that show brewers capped incognito and grinning through Prohibition. On a downwind the town proper smells that inky vanilla smell that every Boy wafts to the roots of his hair.

Ben used to work with them. At least, he’d shape the barrels while they tended the malting plant. He asked questions and chummed, wanting one day to have his own brew. The Boys got him moved into the plant and showed him the ropes. Trade secrets and Brewer Boy secrets.

He split quick.

It was around then the cops started sniffing around. They asked after the books, scouted the floor space against the blueprints, did home searches. Ben had nothing to do with either the investigation or the rumored basement, but he didn’t take risks as a rule. The Boys might have understood but, at the time, a flake was as good as a rat.

They stopped coming by for gravy and apple stack. They came for other things. The mailbox one night, whacked clean off its post. The propane. Mine and Annie’s underwear right off the clothesline.

The Boys cherish a grudge. It’s sport for them, yucking it up like peeves in the bushes. It goes like this: crash, hee-haw, mad scuttle. Ben plays along with a slow lantern sweep of the yard. Who’s there? The chokecherry shakes by the headless mailbox.

I figure half the time the Boys are toddling off their own mountain dew—alleged mountain dew, as we townspeople say—but you can never tell what’s booze from what’s pack mentality from what’s workingman mania.

But that much has died down after an incident with Annie on her way back from the store. A couple of Boys, staggering high, had flashed her and run. She came home in tears with a carton of cracked eggs and a fear of grocery shopping. Ben raised holy hell. He and Oz crashed the distillery and got them to suspend the offenders and call a truce. Since then the Boys no longer bother the house. I see them through the order window every now and again getting coffee and sandwiches, and that’s been it.

But not at this hour. Not with those curdling grins.

There’s Hank with the cheek wart and Death-Rattle Dylan. I keep an eye on the bat Ida hides under the register and welcome them through my teeth.

“Afternoon, Minnie.”

Hank knows he’s got my goat and slides two quarters over the counter for a pop. I trade the coke can for the change, knowing if I take the money first he’ll probably grab my wrist and fix me one of his sweet, sticky grins, teeth glinting like pikeheads.

He grins anyway and chugs his soda. I hear the fizzle down his gullet and turn bristling to Dylan. “And for you?”

Years ago he was good-looking. I’d sit at the foot of Grandma’s rocker like one of her cherub knickknacks and spin her yarn into perfect globes that I imagined he saw from the table and admired. He’s actually going to order something when Hank burps loudly and gets down to business. “Just tell us where he is.”

I blink. “He’s not at work?” If they’re looking for Ben they will have shook down the quarry already. And why wouldn’t he be there? And what did they want him for?

Hank laughs, stomping hysterical. “Your beau, working? Shit, Minnie. I didn’t peg you for dumb.”

My chest thuds. What does Danny have to do with the Boys? The thought of them hee-hawing over a cheap stout makes me taste sick. I swallow and say I haven’t seen him.

“Easy, girl. We owe him a visit is all. Thought we’d come by, see if you didn’t know where to find him.”

Dylan sniggers, catching a flea of phlegm in his throat and doubling in fits. I feel my lip curl. He took me once to skip bottle caps on the river. He said I had a mean arm and I felt like a princess. He wasn’t ugly then, and I can’t see what’s changed. But something’s eaten him inside, like a peach chock full of worms.

He had kind eyes, I realize. Now they’re hard, black dimes.

“He left yesterday,” I say. “I don’t know where to or how long.”

Hank pouts. “That’s not right, Mama. Dylan, what do you call that?”

“Indecent,” he says, rolling his neck. His eyes catch my belly and his lips twitch.

“Indecent. Now, as a sentimental guy, I thought Danny Boy mighta done you better. But some chimps don’t dance. He mighta left a number—No? Just as well. Hey, how much for the poppy loaf? Least I think Willa’s a poppy gal. It’d be rude to call on her empty-handed, but I just don’t remember.”

They watch me squirm. Willa can’t hold her own against a possum. She’s a stern churchwoman who cows to tall men. On back of her neck are these pearly pink nubs from years of looking humblelike at the floor. If the Boys come knocking, she’ll be the same sniveling mess as Annie, which might piss them off even more.

“Leave her out. If Danny’s gone,” I say, “he’s gone.”

And I’m never gladder that he is.

“Well, if you see him…” Hank points a finger for menace.

I wouldn’t wait up, I want to say, but I won’t rain on the Brewer Boys’ shakedown. They have tempers still, and there are two of them. Well, them two against my two. And Ida’s bat. I almost laugh.

“If I see him…” I echo, with all gravity.

Hank nods. “Good girl. Just like yours. Maeve, isn’t it?”

I stiffen, my face draining, giving him the satisfaction he’s after. He drops the almost done coke on the floor and walks out into the sunshine.

His crony gone, Dylan steps over the spreading spill and orders a cookie.

* * *

Ben’s checking the traps when I get back, and the house, dare I jinx it, is empty. I’m too tired to guess what Danny’s done to get the Boys on his tail, but I can’t get their visit off my mind. I start water on the stove and stand over the pot, gathering steam on my face until it’s hard to breathe. Pulling back to the cool rush, I snap to.

Voices.

They’re real, and they’re coming. I look out the window.

A posse of brewers advances through the grass. Hank spearheads. Dylan trails, not halfway through his cookie. He’s picking it apart with schoolgirl precision, bite by dainty bite. They don’t look dangerous, but I can’t expect a cordial house call. They know Ben’s not home and they’ve come in numbers.

I kill the burner and go for my shoes. They won’t come in if I can help it.

“Minerva!”

Annie comes out of nowhere, clinging to my elbows. She’s got such a light step, I could kill her for startling me at a time like this, but I feel her trembling and catch her face in my hands. Her tears run hot over my fingers as she blubbers about the Boys outside. I keep her steady and still, but she won’t calm down.

“Annie,” I say, over and over. “Annie. Mother.”

She whimpers. “Where’s Ben?”

With all my might, I will her to concentrate. “Mother, this is important. Where’s Maeve?” I hear the kick and spray of gravel up the walkway. I squeeze her jaw. The pressure will focus her. “Where is she exactly?”

Annie squeaks like a broken faucet.

Hide and Seek.

We don’t have time for an interrogation. I wheel Annie around and rush her out the back, pointing the way she already knows. “Go to Oz and Lily’s. Wait for us there.”

Annie does as I say, stumbling through the clotheslines. As I catch the door from banging after her, I double back to the kitchen and pray Maeve’s as good at the hiding as she thinks she is. I can hear Death-Rattle Dylan’s namesake wheezing and turn the knob.

“Boo!”

I whirl. Maeve’s wings flop behind her as if of their own mind. Her forehead glows from the chase, and she can’t for the life of her figure why Mommy looks as if she’s seen a ghost.

That’s not how you play Hide and Seek. If ever I want to use the wooden spoon on her—but I’d never. She doesn’t mean any harm. She’s such a good girl.

I remember Hank’s words and try not to panic as the front steps creak.

Switching the deadbolt, I grab Maeve and duck out of eyeline as the knock sounds. Around the bend from the kitchen is the short hall that leads out back. I curse myself for getting rid of Annie so fast. She could’ve taken Maeve with her. But it’s too late. Opposite the door is Ben’s cupboard. I don’t like it, but I stuff Maeve inside and tell her not to make a sound, not to touch a thing.

“I’m playing now,” I say. “Mommy’s playing Hide and Seek.”

She stares at me in openmouthed awe. My heart cracks.

“But we’re doing my rules, so listen good because we don’t like spoilsports.”

Maeve lets out a disgusted uh-uh, then remembers her silence and zips her lips.

“It’s you and me against Granny. And you know Granny’s rule.”

Maeve hesitates and unzips, “Don’t go in the cupboard,” and zips again.

“Exactly. She’d never expect a good girl like you to be here against the rules, right? So she won’t catch you here as long as you stay nice and quiet.”

The door pounds in earnest. Not knuckles, but fists.

“I’ll come for you when the coast is clear. No spoilsports. And no touching.”

Then I shut her in darkness and convince myself down the short hall that Ben always keeps the safety on, the bullets in their box. He’s on his rounds anyway and could just as well have taken the rifle with him, not that I checked when I had plenty of time to.

Harebrain! It happens when I’m expecting, but this was my kid. Why the hell did I lock her in the gun cupboard? I turn heel to double back—

“MINNIE.”

I catch Hank’s eye through the front window. He’s not in a waiting mood.

With a sinking gut, I go to the door and wedge it open. “I don’t see a poppy loaf.”

Hank’s fingers curl over the frame. “We don’t want to ruin supper.” Glancing behind, he calls, “Shoes off!” and sweeps me aside, bidding the pack of them come in and thank the lady. I don’t recognize all the guys that hand me their reeking ratty boots, but there goes Dylan, lining his pair by the wall and sneaking sheepishly past me. Between kitchen and living room I count nine. Someone takes Grandma’s rocker, and I bite my tongue. Having let these lugs into my home and locked my daughter in an arsenal, I don’t get to be annoyed. “So, where’s the pretty one?” Hank asks.

I’m choosing to take it as a cheap dig at Danny, so I say, “He’s not here.”

“The little investor!” Hank chuckles. “We’ll see, won’t we?” He stands with arms crossed, muscles fluffed, as if by pushing me around he’s got something on Danny.

Danny could be gone years.

“I can’t help you, Hank,” I say. “Neither can Danny. Whatever he’s promised you, he can’t deliver. It’s just not him.”

“Oh, I’ve got time. Not a lot, but…” He reaches around me and switches the deadbolt. “Danny came to me. He drops by last week with a fat wad of cash and signs onto a stake in the business, says he’ll be back with more. I think, Kid’s got the balls Ben doesn’t. But the kid doesn’t show. Then you tell us he’s skipped town again, and I get to thinking, Maybe he and Old Flake aren’t so different. And then I think, What’s the link?”

His hot hand spreads the small of my back. The stink on his breath, the oil on his nose, the vermin shine in his eyes—I burn.

“Go on, Mama. Call him. See if Danny Boy won’t hightail it home for you.”

My legs twinge up and down, ready to fly, but I imagine what happens when a girl in my place causes an upset. I imagine Maeve stuck within earshot. I master the sandpaper in my throat. “You know Danny doesn’t leave a number.”

Hank knows full well, but he’s having fun. His hand slips lower.

I jump him off. It was kneejerk, not the still calm that would have been wise. But Hank laughs to have gotten a rise out of me and starts passing out beers from the icebox. They’re here to scare me is all. They know Ben’s out and Danny’s gone, and if they twist my arm I’ll find a way to make one or the other give in to them. It’s the Boys, remember. It’s not about me. I can’t decide if that makes it easier.

A choir of groans brings me back to the moment. Hank’s waving the last bottle. There aren’t enough, and the Boys who’ve been served are snickering over their good luck. The others are just as happy to whip up a scene.

Hank quiets the din. “The lady’s doing her best. I’m sure she can dig up another four? Five?” Hands shoot up. Hank mulls it over. “Just bring what you have. Please.”

I smile tightly and force myself not to walk too fast. Hank knows where we keep the extra, in a cooler out back by the propane. When they’d stolen that, they’d left Ben a box full of bottle caps. Low blow. But now, Hank’s good as sent me down the hall. I don’t have long, not fully out of view, but the Boys are all facing him while he paws through the leftovers. I stop at the end and open the gun cupboard.

Maeve squints as the light hits her face, but she’s grinning like mad thinking we’ve won our game. I put a finger to my lips, relieved and brimming for pride in her fearlessness. Not many kids can sit in the dark, surrounded by—

I check. The rifle’s gone. Ben’s got it. I’m an idiot, but at least I didn’t endanger my daughter. I scoop her into my arms and slip out the back. The sun hits my eyes at the killer angle, making everything a shapeless dazzle. I duck between the clotheslines, nightgowns and sheets hissing and catching at me. Parts of the yard are still wet from the rains, and the stretch between us and the woods is a sty that sucks my heels every step. I worry the Boys will hear me squelching to safety and yank me—us—back in the house.

But we’ve almost made it. Shouldering through the evergreen border, raking my arms, neck and face through the needles, we disappear. On the other side, I check Maeve’s okay. Her wings have taken the brunt of the hurt, but even in shreds she’ll still wear them. Apart from a sprinkle of green in her hair, she’s thrilled.

Didn’t think Mommy could play, huh?

I hoist Maeve onto my hip and pick up a run. We’re not going to Oz and Lily’s. The Boys will find soon that I’m not coming back with those beers, and they’ll pick up the trail—which would make Oz’s day if they came bullying him. He’s got a mantle of Winchesters and always jokes that any intruder is welcome on his wall, next to the deer heads. The edge in his voice makes you doubt he’s joking. But Annie’s there, and she’d be beside herself. I won’t bring the Boys her way. I can manage.

On an incline from the house, the ground is loose but dry. My tracks won’t show as much, and the leaves will help throw the trail so I have a prayer of making it to the turnpike. From there I’ll follow the guardrail to the rest stop and call the police.

A gun cracks.

I dive to my knees, covering Maeve. I can’t tell what direction it’s come from, but something tells me it’s not Ben. I listen for the onrush. Boots, shouts, hot sticky hands.

Nothing. I pick up and keep on. It could have been anything from a busted engine to a stick underfoot. It could have been in my head. But there’s something in the distance, a form on the ground. It brings me back two mornings, when I woke to a cool gap in the bed and saw Danny loading his car with a strange purpose. Not the usual agitation, but purpose. I had always understood him, he said, and he loved me for it. He was trying to reckon with the closeness of it all, the houses and trees that crowded and choked him, but he wanted to get it right someday. He had to take care of some things, that was all. He’d said it before, but this time was different.

Another thing he’d said before.

I closed the door on him and waved him off. I trusted his conviction and knew he’d be back. He just wouldn’t stay.

But there was something different about him. A freshness, a hardness, as if he had woken from some lifelong spell, blinking into the light. Or so I imagined.

And here he is now, come again. So soon.

I put Maeve down facing a tall oak and bet her she can’t smell its sap. She puts her nose to the bark and will stay like that until someone pulls her away.

Someone will, I think dimly, as I approach the form that sprawls and steams in the brown leaves.

But why is he wearing a suit?

I laugh. I’ve never seen Danny in a suit. He looks awfully handsome. But the suit has dirt and wet on it. What a waste. Why can’t you be more responsible, I want to shake him. This is why nice things don’t come in these parts.

I kneel by his side and put my hand to his cheek. His eyes don’t see me. Their blind kitten blue takes in the light and gives nothing back.

There’s a bulge in his jacket. I unbutton it and pull out a small bank envelope. There’s a wristwatch inside. Someone’s polished it up, and I believe its value. From the initials on back it could be Danny’s father’s, but it looks much older.

I shouldn’t touch. I’m getting blood all over it.

I put the watch in the envelope and put the envelope in my pocket. I take Danny’s keys and put them also in my pocket.

The shrubs rustle ahead. I lick my lips to prepare some excuse, some plea, for whoever comes out. I imagine his muzzle trained between my eyes.

But it’s not a man that emerges.

She moves like water, a silver flicker that cuts in and out of visibility between the sun and shadow of forest light. She stops paces away, blinking her ancient eyes.

The bobcat licks her paw and waits.

I don’t want to spook her. I back off on hands and knees before standing all the way to leave. Before I go, though, I watch her come and nose the outstretched hand. Maybe she tastes ocean salt. She follows the arm to the body proper, probing it with her whiskers. With my full pocket, I can’t grudge her her share. She must have kits. Her black lips part, and I turn and lead my daughter toward the sound of passing cars.

* * *

The boy at the counter is real nice. I tell him what happened at the house, and by the state of us two he lets Maeve open a box of frozen pancakes and a jug of syrup, now that she has tree sap on her mind, while I phone the police.

Turns out they’re close to the gas station.

For years the boys in blue had suspected the brewers of making more than just bourbon, but Hank wasn’t stupid. He only looked it. Lacking hard evidence, the cops couldn’t get their investigation off the ground. But, two days ago, an inside source informed them of a new player, a rooky investor who might talk or leave a paper trail. If he cooperated, he could get off with a slap on the wrist and land Hank & co. behind bars. But when news circled back of the investor’s sudden departure, the station put out a BOLO on his plates and got a tip outside Lexington Bank this afternoon. They sent a squad car to pull him over, and the guy bolted on foot. A gun went off during the pursuit, but no body’s been found. He can’t have gotten far.

Now, what seems to be the problem, dear?

Officer Mick has quite the mouth. Maybe I’ve pulled all the right faces to make him feel important. It isn’t hard to look mystified as he fills me in on Danny’s stupid operation. Can’t hold a job? Danny must have thought. Well, no need.

A hefty stake in the mountain dew ring would set him up nice. He went to Lexington all right. Not for any money, but for the family safe deposit. There he got the heirloom watch that weights my pocket now.

I keep quiet on that front and tell Mick about the brewers. “You can get them on something, can’t you? Trespassing, intimidation?” What I want to know is whether a house check would scatter the Boys or poke them.

“I’m not sure,” says Mick, “but tell you what. I’ll get a car to go over and see what’s the matter. And who knows. Maybe your visitors will be gone by then?” The hopeful uptick in his voice gives me the sense that any car on deck would be Mick’s, and that Mick would rather the Boys blow down the house than turn on him.

I thank Mick for his support.

“Much obliged, honey.” He turns to Maeve, who’s swirling syrup over Lord knows which number pancake, and brightens. “Why, you’re quite the fairy princess!”

She sticks out her tongue. Mick unclips his radio and fakes calling in a suspicious winged person. Very small, very dangerous. He asks if she’s carrying fairy dust.

Like she needs the encouragement. I tell them not to muss up the nice boy’s store and call Oz, asking him to sweep the woods for Ben. “And make sure he goes back with you. The cops could swing by the house.” If they catch Ben slinging carcasses on his jolly way home, they might probe into Oz, whose idea of hunting season was any of the big four. “Plus Annie could use him. How’s she getting on?”

“Lily gave her some lemon balm,” says Oz, “but not well. She keeps asking for Maeve. How fares the little one?” I glance down the aisle. She’s put Mick to work reshaping her wings. He’s frowning over how to even out the loops.

I roll my eyes. “She’s making the best of it.”

The line crackles with Oz’s gravel laugh. “What else can she do?”

* * *

We’ve had quite the party it looks like. Ben and I sit on the back porch, too beat to sweep up. Annie’s sleeping sound in Maeve’s and my bed, and the robins coo through the night fog. They can’t turn in either.

I pass Ben the envelope. He shakes out the watch and holds it close to the lantern, which sparkles the chain like fool’s gold. He thumbs the engraving on back.

“We’ll file it off and have it appraised. Not Pawnshop Chuck,” I say, before Ben can point out that burned bridge. He warms to the idea.

“That kind of money goes a ways. You and Maeve could get a place in town. She could go to a good school. You…” He wraps his arm around me, his eyes bright as chestnuts. “You could go to college.”

I tip my head on his shoulder and we watch the line dance of shirts and sheets. First thing tomorrow I’m going to Pikeville. Ida’s got a cousin in antiques who always pays fair. I’ll turn a fast buck and drive straight to the distillery, square Danny’s debt to Hank. Annie can rest easy. Ben can stop pulling doubles, given a surplus. Maeve can have a whole costume for her first day of school, and I can repaint that rocking horse for when this baby comes singing into our world.

The cold starts to bite, and we get up to turn in. Ben holds the door as I put out the lantern. Through the afterlight haze I see two distant spots.

Between the evergreens, two ancient eyes.