lights, so familiar with the building that it was easy. She knew the placement of every tool by now, and knew their purposes. Navigated around the chain fall in the corner, frame rack beside it, paint booth behind that, toolboxes lining the walls. When she got to the office door, she took her keys out of her pocket but didn’t use them. There was a stool beside the door, and rather than enter the officeshe just sank onto the stool, pulled her feet up onto the seat and hugged her knees to her chest, sat there smelling the paint and the dust and staring at the shadow-covered room. Instead of building a garage divided into separate bays, her grandfather had simply jammed everything into one large warehouse, a space that cooked you in the summer and chilled you in the winter. Her father had upgraded the equipment over the years but never considered a new building. Though earlier in the day she’d told Jerry she’d been learning about the work that went on in here since she was a girl, she really remembered being inside only a handful of times, usually accompanied by her mother, who stalked around the place with an expression of haughty distaste.
They’d gotten divorced when Nora was six. It had been a marriage of whim and romance: Her mother was from old money in Minneapolis, and her father was third-generation Lincoln County, Wisconsin, son of a body shop owner who also drove a plow in the winter. He’d been bartending at a supper club up near the Willow when twenty-two-year-old Kate Adams arrived for a vacation with her parents and some cousins. The family bored her; Ronald “Bud” Stafford did not. He was tall and good-looking and appealing in a way that only an outdoorsman can be, but also quick with a joke and a compliment. It was supposed to be a summer fling. Only problem was, Kate didn’t realize that until Stafford had replaced Adams at the end of her name and a baby was on the way.
If there’d been good times when she was a child, Nora couldn’t remember them. Couldn’t remember the bad times, either, just a vague sense of tension. After the divorce Kate moved back to Minneapolis with Nora in tow. Nora’s relationship with her father had been slow building at best. He would come to Minneapolis about once a year, usually around Christmas, take her down to the Mall of America and patiently wander through girls’ clothing stores with her, laughing at the way she insisted on trying everything on. Her mother had only permitted a few visits to Tomahawk when Nora was young, and always came along, as if she were afraid Nora would never come back if left alone for a few days. It wasn’t until high school that Nora finally began to make a weeklong trip by herself in the summer. She and her father started writing letters more frequently then, a couple of times a month, exchanging photographs—her in a prom dress, him with a thirty-six-inch northern pike—and news. From the time she was a little girl he’d promised to put her through college. Her mother had remarried by the time Nora was ten, remarried to plenty of money, but on that issue Bud was firm—
he
would pay for college.
He and her mother just couldn’t live together, that was all. Everything Katehad found so charming about Tomahawk that first summer disappeared under a blanket of snow in November, and even when the thaw came and the tourists returned the luster was gone. And for Bud Stafford, moving to Minneapolis wasn’t an option. He’d been born into a pocket of the earth he considered superior to all the rest, and he’d never leave . . .
Someone was at the door. Nora put her feet back on the ground and started to stand up as the door opened. Not the front door of the office but the back door.
Frank,
she thought as the knob turned and the door swung inward. Had to be him. Then the visitor stepped inside, and as his silhouette filled the space she saw it was too tall, too broad. Without even seeing his face she knew him. It was the man
They’d gotten divorced when Nora was six. It had been a marriage of whim and romance: Her mother was from old money in Minneapolis, and her father was third-generation Lincoln County, Wisconsin, son of a body shop owner who also drove a plow in the winter. He’d been bartending at a supper club up near the Willow when twenty-two-year-old Kate Adams arrived for a vacation with her parents and some cousins. The family bored her; Ronald “Bud” Stafford did not. He was tall and good-looking and appealing in a way that only an outdoorsman can be, but also quick with a joke and a compliment. It was supposed to be a summer fling. Only problem was, Kate didn’t realize that until Stafford had replaced Adams at the end of her name and a baby was on the way.
If there’d been good times when she was a child, Nora couldn’t remember them. Couldn’t remember the bad times, either, just a vague sense of tension. After the divorce Kate moved back to Minneapolis with Nora in tow. Nora’s relationship with her father had been slow building at best. He would come to Minneapolis about once a year, usually around Christmas, take her down to the Mall of America and patiently wander through girls’ clothing stores with her, laughing at the way she insisted on trying everything on. Her mother had only permitted a few visits to Tomahawk when Nora was young, and always came along, as if she were afraid Nora would never come back if left alone for a few days. It wasn’t until high school that Nora finally began to make a weeklong trip by herself in the summer. She and her father started writing letters more frequently then, a couple of times a month, exchanging photographs—her in a prom dress, him with a thirty-six-inch northern pike—and news. From the time she was a little girl he’d promised to put her through college. Her mother had remarried by the time Nora was ten, remarried to plenty of money, but on that issue Bud was firm—
he
would pay for college.
He and her mother just couldn’t live together, that was all. Everything Katehad found so charming about Tomahawk that first summer disappeared under a blanket of snow in November, and even when the thaw came and the tourists returned the luster was gone. And for Bud Stafford, moving to Minneapolis wasn’t an option. He’d been born into a pocket of the earth he considered superior to all the rest, and he’d never leave . . .
Someone was at the door. Nora put her feet back on the ground and started to stand up as the door opened. Not the front door of the office but the back door.
Frank,
she thought as the knob turned and the door swung inward. Had to be him. Then the visitor stepped inside, and as his silhouette filled the space she saw it was too tall, too broad. Without even seeing his face she knew him. It was the man
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