Supervolcano: All Fall Down

XX

Colin Ferguson contemplated ways and means of busting his boss’ son without making it look like a coup d’etat inside the San Atanasio Police Department. The more he contemplated, the gloomier he got. The case would have to be dead-bang, one hundred percent airtight. And it would have to get made without Mike Pitcavage’s finding out it was even cooking.

Because if the chief did find out, something else would cook instead. Colin knew what, too: his own goose.

If, of course, there was a case. If Darren had sold Tim a few ounces and that was the only time he’d ever seen that side of the business, that was one thing. But if he’d sold a few ounces to a good many Tims, Dicks, and Harrys, that was something else again. That was a serious felony, was what it was.

If. Marshall didn’t know for certain. Maybe Tim didn’t know for certain. (Colin suspected Tim didn’t know anything for certain, the alphabet very possibly included.) But the vibe was that Darren Pitcavage was doing some real dealing.

Do I want to put my neck on the block because of the vibe? Yes, that was the question, much more than To be or not to be? Or Colin thought it was at first. Then he realized they were one and the same, only his version wasn’t in iambic pentameter.

It was well before noon when he walked over to Gabe Sanchez’s desk and said, “Let’s go Code Seven.”

Gabe blinked. “Early,” he remarked, but then he patted his midsection. “Hey, I can always eat. Where you wanna go?”

“How about the Verona?” Colin suggested.

“Kind of a ways,” Gabe said. And it was-the old-fashioned Italian place was closer to Colin’s house than to the station. That was why he wanted to go there: he didn’t want other cops overhearing him. He couldn’t very well say that here. A clenched jaw and a raised eyebrow got some kind of message across-Gabe stood up with no more argument. “Well, I’m game. What’s it doing outside?”

“We’ll both find out.”

It was chilly and cloudy, but not raining. Gabe lit a cigarette. They climbed onto their bicycles and pedaled off. Colin did a good deal of talking on the way. No one except Gabe could hear him then.

He finished just before they got to the Verona. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Holy shit,” Gabe said.

Colin chuckled-not in any happy way. “Yeah, I figured that out for myself, matter of fact.”

“I bet you did!” Gabe exclaimed. “You better watch who you talk to, too. Word gets back and you’re walking around without your nuts.”

“That also crossed my mind,” Colin said. They went inside. The Verona was a refugee from the 1950s, with red-checked tablecloths, candles stuck in Chianti bottles (often useful now, not just for show), and posters of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum on the walls. They made spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, ravioli-stuff like that. And they had a wood-fired pizza oven, so they stayed open even when the power went out.

Colin and Gabe decided to split a medium sausage pizza. The dough would be odd by pre-eruption standards. So would the cheese. The sausage would be pork or maybe chicken. By now, Colin made such adjustments almost automatically. Almost.

“I’ll tell you who to go to,” Gabe said when the pizza got there. “Talk to Rodney, man. He hates dealers with a passion, and he won’t screw you.”

“Even if it turns out to be nothing?” Colin said.

“Even then.” Gabe took a bite from a slice of pizza. He chewed thoughtfully. “Could be worse. Could be better, too.”

“Sure could,” Colin agreed after a bite of his own. But he ate with more enthusiasm than he’d expected. The black detective had been on the mental list he was making, too-and, by the nature of things, that list wasn’t very long.

He paid the tab. The cops unlocked their bikes from the little curbside trees to which they’d been chained. Gabe smoked another cigarette on the way back to the station. It started drizzling just as they got there. They hurried inside. Chief Pitcavage was gabbing with the uniformed officer at the front desk. He nodded amiably to Colin and Gabe. “Hey, guys. Wet outside?”

“Just a little, like it doesn’t know whether to piss or get off the pot,” Gabe answered. Colin was glad to let him do the talking. Dammit, he didn’t have anything against Mike Pitcavage-except for raising a worthless kid and letting him decide he would get away with anything because his father was a bigwig in this town.

Pitcavage wouldn’t think like that, of course. He’d think it was because he got the chief’s badge and Colin didn’t. Were things reversed between them, it would have been, too. Colin was positive of that.

He quietly checked which cases Rodney Ellis was working on, then ambled over to his desk. “Want to talk with you about the witnesses to the robbery at that check-cashing place last Saturday,” he said, as casually as he could.

“Well, okay,” Rodney answered. That wasn’t Colin’s usual style, but it wasn’t too far out of line, either. “Drag up a rock.” He pointed to the beat-up chair by his desk.

“Let’s do it in one of the interrogation rooms,” Colin said. “Coupla things I want to bounce off you.”

“However you want.” Rodney got to his feet. He was solidly built, but moved as smoothly as the point guard he’d been in high school. They walked into one of the rooms. Colin closed the door behind them and glanced up at the camera near the ceiling to make sure the red light under the lens was off. He hadn’t even sat down when the African-American detective asked, “What’s really going on, man?”

“I’ve got a problem,” Colin said. “Maybe you can give me a hand with it.”

“I’m listening.” Ellis showed no cards. Well, neither had Colin.

But he had to now. He had to if he was going to go anywhere with this, anyhow. He told Rodney what he’d heard from Marshall-what Marshall had heard from Tim, in other words. He named no names, though he was glumly aware Rodney would work out at least one of them without a hell of a lot of trouble.

When he finished, Rodney didn’t say anything for close to a minute. Then, very softly, the other cop went, “Aw, shit, man.”

Colin nodded. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“It wasn’t your kid who bought from Pitcavage Junior?” Sure as anything, Ellis could walk barefoot through the obvious.

“No, a friend of his. I’ve known, uh, him”-Colin almost said Tim-“since they were in high school. They kinda stopped handing out brains before the guy got to the front of the line, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t make up something like that for the fun of it. The way Marshall tells it, his buddy thought it was a big old joke.”

“A joke. Uh-huh.” Rodney didn’t sound like somebody who was going to ROFL. “You believe this happened because your boy’s friend says it did. You believe darling Darren’s dealing.” Those weren’t questions, not the way he came out with them.

“’Fraid so.” Colin nodded again. He would rather have gone to Kelly’s dentist father for a root canal without Novocaine, but he did. “Would I be talking about it with you if I didn’t believe it?”

“Not fuckin’ likely,” Ellis answered, which was also the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He eyed Colin. “What do you want to do about it?”

That was the $64,000 question, all right. Colin had been thinking of little else since his son gave him the unwelcome news. Sighing, he said, “Seems to me we’ve got to find out how deep Darren’s in. If this was a onetime thing, if he scored more than he could use for a while and was selling some, then I guess we shine it on. But if he’s dealing dealing, if you know what I mean. .”

“Then we got to drop on him.” Rodney didn’t ask that, either-he said it. Colin made his head go up and down one more time. Rodney went on, “And whatever we do, we got to do it so Chief Mike doesn’t know we’re doin’ it.”

“Probably a good plan,” Colin agreed, so dryly the other cop guffawed.

“I trot over to the chief’s office now, man, you’re fucked,” the African-American detective said.

“Yeah, I know.” Colin left it right there.

Ellis stared up at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. He let out a sigh of his own. “And if I don’t go to Pitcavage, if I start working this like it’s a case, and he finds out, I’m fucked, too.”

“I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry all kinds of ways,” Colin said. “If you want to make like this entire conversation never happened, hey, I can see why you would. Long as you don’t rat me out, I won’t hold it against you.”

“Wanna know something weird, Colin? I believe you,” Rodney said. “Anybody else in the whole wide world’d be blowin’ smoke up my ass. Pitcavage sure would, Lord knows. But you, I believe. Doesn’t matter any which way, though, on account of I’m in. If Darren’s dealing, he’s got to pay the price, same as anybody else. Wasn’t for his daddy, he woulda paid some prices a while ago by now. ’Bout time he finds out the rules don’t have except for you in ’em anywhere.”

“Looks that way to me, too,” Colin said. He hadn’t been so relieved since. . since when? Since Kelly’d said she’d marry him-that was the only answer that crossed his mind. “Thanks, man,” he added a moment later. He’d never been one for big shows of gratitude.

“It’s cool, Colin.” Yes, Rodney’d known him long enough to have a notion of how he ticked. “Anybody who deals, he ain’t no friend of mine.” He peered up at the ceiling again, as if trying to extract wisdom from the random patterns of holes in the tiles. “Talk about friends, though. . We end up busting the chief’s kid, this whole goddamn department’ll go off like a grenade.”

“That did occur to me, yeah,” Colin said. “Be careful while you’re working on it. Be careful who you pick to help you, too. You know the old line-three guys can keep a secret as long as two of ’em are dead.”

“I didn’t, but I like it.” Thoughtfully, Ellis continued, “Not the only reason to be careful. Darren, he’ll make a lot of cops. A couple of the brothers who haven’t been here since dirt, maybe not. Let’s hope he’s one of the white guys who figure all black folks look alike.”

“That’s a bunch of bull, too,” Colin said. “You don’t look one damn bit like Halle Berry.”

Rodney laughed. “Well, you got that right, anyway. Long as we’re here, you wanna really talk about the robbery?”

“Sure. Let’s do it,” Colin said, so they did.

* * *

Deborah started to nurse. Kelly felt her milk let down. That was a sensation she’d never known-never even imagined-till she had the baby. Well, so was labor, but this was a lot more pleasant than that.

Deborah sucked and gulped, sucked and gulped. Then she tried to gulp when she should have been sucking or something, because she choked and swallowed wrong. The first time that happened, it had horrified Kelly. Now she got that it wouldn’t kill her firstborn daughter. She pulled Deborah off the breast and hauled her up onto her own shoulder, patting her on the back till she could breathe easily again. It didn’t take long. Then the baby went back to supper.

Kelly’d just switched her to the other side when her eyelids started to sag. Up on the shoulder she went once more. Kelly wanted to get a burp out of her before she crashed. She also checked the baby’s diaper. Deborah was dry. That was good.

“Okay, kid, you can sack out now,” Kelly said, rocking in the recliner. With luck, Deborah would stay sleep long enough for Kelly to make dinner, perhaps even long enough to let her eat it. That was bound to be against the babies’ union regulations, but the local hadn’t come down on Deborah yet.

The front door opened. Somebody was back from work: Colin or Vanessa. “Don’t sl-” Wham! Too late. Deborah jerked and yelled. “Shit,” Kelly muttered.

Vanessa sauntered into the front room from the foyer. “Aw, did I wake her?”

“Yeah, you did. Thanks a bunch.” Kelly was too frazzled to stay cool; maybe that horseshit Aw had something to do with it. No, for sure it did. “I tried to tell you not to slam the goddamn door, but did you listen? Fat chance.”

Vanessa blinked. Kelly’d done her best to play the easygoing stepmom-till now. “Well, excuse me, Ms. High-and-Mighty,” Vanessa said. “Can I kiss your ring?”

“You can kiss my ass, Vanessa,” Kelly said, meanwhile rocking to try to calm Deborah down again. “Now that somebody’s been dumb enough to hire you, the sooner you get the hell out of here, the happier everybody else will be.”

“Fuck you, too,” Vanessa snarled. She stomped up the stairs and slammed the door to her bedroom, too.

Kelly’s stomach churned. She didn’t like fights. She didn’t do them very well, or she didn’t think she did. And she was damn glad she’d already nursed Deborah, because if she hadn’t the baby would be chowing down on sour milk right this minute.

Deborah was just going back to sleep when Colin walked in. On the off chance that she might be, he closed the door quietly. When he walked into the front room, he stopped short. “Good God in the foothills!” he said. “I’ve seen guys we tased who didn’t look so ready to bite holes in things. What did I do? Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Kelly said, and not another word.

“Uh-oh.” Colin didn’t need any fancy DNA analysis to work out what must have happened. “You and Vanessa fired away, huh?”

“Yeah, we did.” Kelly sighed. She wasn’t proud of it, not even slightly.

“What went on? Do I want to know?”

She told him. It didn’t take long. She finished, “You go upstairs, you’ll hear a different version, though, I bet.”

“Uh-huh. Hearing a bunch of different stories comes with being a cop. So does deciding which one you believe, or whether you believe any of them,” Colin said, the corners of his mouth turning down. “I already have a notion about that, but I am gonna go upstairs.” And he did, more slowly than Vanessa had. He knocked on her door. She said something. Kelly couldn’t make out what, but Colin answered, “It’s me,” so she must have asked who was there. The door opened, then closed again.

Rocking Deborah, Kelly could hear Colin’s voice and Vanessa’s, but, once more, she couldn’t follow what they were saying. By their tones, she counted herself lucky there. Then Vanessa was, in the classic Nixonian phrase, perfectly clear: “Get out of here! Everybody hates me!”

If she’d been thirteen, that kind of thing would have come with the territory. Kelly remembered screeching the same words in the same tone. But since Vanessa was more than twice thirteen. .

The door to her room opened and closed again. Colin came down the stairs. His face held no expression at all. Kelly got to her own feet as fast as she could without bothering Deborah. The baby muttered, but her eyes stayed shut. “I’m sorry,” Kelly said.

“Not your fault.” Colin went into the kitchen. Kelly followed him. He got the Laphroaig bottle down from the top shelf of the pantry and poured himself three fingers’ worth.

“I’m gonna put her in the crib. Fix me one, too, would you? Not quite that much,” Kelly said.

He gave her a surprised look. “You don’t drink this stuff.”

“Tonight I do.”

Deborah went into the crib with another mutter, but no more. Kelly hurried back to the kitchen. Colin handed her the dose of scotch. That was how she thought of it, all right. They clinked glasses. She drank. She still didn’t see how he could enjoy the taste, but she wasn’t drinking it for the taste. She was drinking it for the booze.

“How was the rest of your day?” she asked. “Better than this, I hope.”

“Not so you’d notice,” Colin answered. “Darren Pitcavage. . deals everything this side of real estate and old Buicks. Setting up a buy is gonna be a piece of cake, looks like. Not just a felony bust-a big-time felony bust.”

“I’m sorry.” Kelly felt the inadequacy of words.

“Yeah, me, too.” Colin’s eyes slid toward the stairway. “But I’m not sorry Vanessa doesn’t know thing one about this. Way she is right now, if she did she’d probably get hold of Darren and let him know we were looking at him.”

“She wouldn’t do that!” Kelly exclaimed.

“Oh, I think she might,” Colin said.

“But that’s illegal, isn’t it?”

“Sure, if you get caught. Lots of things are illegal if you get caught.”

“Mm,” Kelly said. “Uh, does Marshall know not to talk with her about this?”

“Well, I haven’t told him not to,” Colin answered. “But I don’t think he wants to talk about it with anybody. He wants to make like it never happened and he never had anything to do with it. And he doesn’t talk to Vanessa any more than he has to, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I did,” Kelly said. “I wondered if you had. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”

“She will get a place of her own pretty soon,” Colin replied, which might or might not have been a non sequitur. “We’ll all be happier once she does, too. She’s okay in small doses-and she’ll decide we’re okay in small doses, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Kelly said once more.

He shrugged. “Nothing to be done about it. Yeah, she’s prickly. But she’s honest as the day is long. I don’t have to worry that Mike’s getting ready to come after her the way I’m going after Darren.”

“That’s so,” Kelly said, which was as much praise as she felt like giving Vanessa just then. She changed the subject, or at any rate deflected it a little: “What will Mike do after you grab his son?”

“I’m not looking forward to that.” By the way Colin set his jaw, he really wasn’t looking forward to it. He went on, “When Darren got in trouble before, Mike always dickered it down to a misdemeanor. Five gets you ten he tries it again. But I don’t care how hard he tries. Not a chance in church the DA will play along, not this time.”

“Can he stay chief if his son gets arrested for something like this?” Kelly asked. Under that question lay another one, one she left unspoken. If he does have to step down, will they offer you the job? Will you want it if they do?

“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any rule that would make him quit, but it wouldn’t be easy for him to go on like nothing was wrong.” Colin also heard the underlying question, which surprised Kelly very little. He went on, “If he does resign, I wouldn’t take the slot on a bet. No way, not after I went and knocked him off his perch. Besides, I don’t want it any more.”

He’d told Kelly the same thing before, and more than once. But when he’d told her before, he’d had about as much chance of being elected Pope as of being named Chief of the San Atanasio PD. If Mike Pitcavage did have to resign now, in offspring-induced disgrace, the city council and the DA and the other people who ran San Atanasio might well want to put him in charge of the department for a while so he could straighten it out and get it back on its feet.

And she could see how, with his strong sense of duty and responsibility, he’d be tempted to accept the job, at least as a caretaker. But his reasons for steering clear looked good to her. There was also one he hadn’t mentioned: “If they did name you chief, you’d start telling them to piss up a rope in about three days. Or if you didn’t, you’d want to so bad you’d explode like the supervolcano.”

“I wouldn’t tell ’em to do that in three days.” Colin affected righteous indignation-brief righteous indignation. “I’d hold out for a week, easy. A week and a half, if everything went good.”

Laughing and liking him very much in that moment, she gave him a hug. “Think so, do you?”

“Darn right I do.” He laughed, too-again, though, not for long. “Mike, he can tell those people what they want to hear. What they need to hear, the way they need to hear it. That’s an art. Honest to God, it is. I’ve watched him do it, and I’ve watched him get what he needs ’cause he can do it. When I realized he could and I can’t-and you’re dead right; I can’t, not for beans-that was when I figured out I was barking up the wrong tree when I put in for chief to begin with.”

“You’re fine the way you are. Better than fine,” Kelly said. “I’d rather have you than somebody who pats me on the back so he can feel where the best place to stick the knife is.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so. Not everybody does-you don’t believe me, all you’ve got to do is ask Louise.” Colin let out another sharp, short chuckle. “And I make a pretty fair cop, if I do say so myself. But if you’re gonna be chief, you have to know how to handle all the political stuff. I can’t, and Mike Pitcavage can. If he’s got to step down on account of his rotten kid, they’d better pick somebody a lot like him to take his place.”

Kelly listened hard. She couldn’t hear any rancor or bitterness. She thought she would have if they were there. Colin could hold things in, but only by keeping quiet about them. When he did talk, he meant what he said.

“I am sorry I had the row with Vanessa,” Kelly said. Unlike her husband, she wasn’t altogether blind to the power of positive hypocrisy. “I wish it hadn’t happened.” That much was true. The rest? Maybe not quite.

“If she wants to give you a hard time, that’s between her and you. Meeting my new wife and getting along with her, it can’t be easy for a grown kid,” Colin said.

“Marshall hasn’t had any trouble I’ve seen,” Kelly said tartly.

“Marshall’s Marshall. He doesn’t get himself in an uproar about stuff. Vanessa. . does. She’ll go to war over commas. Makes her a darn good editor. Makes her kind of a pain, too. And she’s a woman, and so are you.” Colin set a fond hand on the curve of her hip. But then he said, “That’s not where I was going with this.”

“Where were you going, then?” Kelly asked.

“If she gives you a hard time, that’s her business, hers and yours,” Colin said. “But if she gives a little tiny baby a hard time, that’s a whole different ball game. That’s being mean for the sake of being mean. She knew what she was doing when she slammed the front door, all right. I called her on it, too. She didn’t like that very much.”

He hadn’t raised his voice. Kelly would have heard if he had. No, Vanessa was the one who’d started yelling. But Colin didn’t need to make a lot of noise to get his message across. Kelly’d known that as long as she’d known him. Vanessa wouldn’t have cared for his opinion, even delivered quietly.

“As long as it happens just the once, I’ll forget about it,” Kelly said.

“Sounds about right.” There, Colin’s agreement seemed reluctant. He went on, “Since she has landed a job, she will want a place of her own. She’ll want one, and she’ll get one.” And if she had some not-so-discreet encouragement from her father to speed her on her way, that wouldn’t bother Kelly a bit. Not even half a bit, Kelly thought as she started fixing dinner.

* * *

Dick Barber eyed Rob in mock reproach as they came up to the Episcopal church. Snow swirled through the air. It was one of the months with a vowel in it, so of course snow swirled. “The things some people will do to get out of climbing a ladder every time they want to go to bed,” Barber said.

“Don’t listen to him, Rob,” Justin Nachman said. “Now that you’re officially moving out of the tower, I’m gonna sublet it. I’ll be rich, man. Rich! He chortled unwholesomely and rubbed his mittened hands together in gloating anticipation a ham Shylock would have envied.

“I wasn’t listening to him. You don’t need to worry about that,” Rob answered. “Of course, I wasn’t listening to you, either.”

“Hey, there you go,” Charlie Storer said. “Equal-opportunity discrimination.”

Rob waited for the next smart-ass crack to come from Biff Thorvald. But Biff was less into them than his bandmates and the proprietor of the Trebor Mansion Inn. And he had more distractions. He was making sure his little son, Walter, didn’t trip on the rough sidewalk. He was also shepherding Cindy along. His wife’s belly bulged again. That made her balance less sure, but she at least knew enough to be careful. Walter wanted to go running all over creation. It wasn’t as if he even walked very well, because he didn’t. Toddlers always wanted to do more than they possibly could, though.

And this makes them different from other people how? Rob wondered.

Others going into the church waved to him and called congratulations. Some were people he knew in Guilford. Others-more-taught or worked at Piscataquis Community Secondary School with Lindsey.

“When was the last time you were in a church and it wasn’t for a town meeting or something like that?” Barber asked.

“Oh, wow.” Rob had to think about it. Like most of his family, he thought freedom of religion implied freedom from religion. Mom drifted from one New Age almost-faith to another, but Rob, like his father and sister and brother, pretty much did without. Then a memory came back. “My senior year in college, I went to a wedding at an old mission north of Santa Barbara. Don’t jinx me-that one didn’t last.”

“This isn’t a church wedding, anyway, even if it’s in a church,” Charlie said.

That was also true. They went into the church. Standing up at the front, instead of a minister in his clerical vestments, was Jim Farrell in his decidedly secular ones. The fedora and fur-trimmed topcoat set him apart from the crowd at least as well as a white dog collar would have.

The wedding was the event of the winter social season: from lack of competition, as Rob knew perfectly well. Lindsey’s mother had come over from Dover-Foxcroft to attend. Her father had come down from Greenville-even farther-with his girlfriend. Said girlfriend was a smashing brunette, and was about Lindsey’s age. Whether she’d caused the breakup between Lindsey’s folk or come along afterwards, Rob didn’t know. Maybe I’ll get the chance to ask later on, he thought. For the moment, the atmosphere was what the diplomats called correct. With luck, it would stay that way.

Having winter guests in Guilford from such distant towns (Dover-Foxcroft was ten or fifteen miles away, Greenville about twenty-five) brought home to Rob how tightly his mental horizon had contracted since he came here. Guilford and its immediate environs were all that concerned him from day to day. News from other places north and west of the Interstate trickled in every so often. It was well out of date by the time it did. He cared no more than the people whose families had lived here for generations. When it did trickle in, it was news to him. What else mattered?

When most of the snow melted and the roads cleared during Maine’s short stretch of alleged summer, news from the great big wide world came in along with canned goods, sacks of flour, gasoline, condoms, and other vital supplies. Once upon a time, Rob had been a news junkie. Now? Hey, it was a long way away and it had happened a while ago. He couldn’t do anything about it. So why get excited?

For this performance, Dick Barber was playing the role of his father-nowhere near the worst casting in the world. Justin was his best man, Charlie and Biff his groomsmen. Lindsey’s principal, who looked like a pit bull with gold-framed glasses but actually seemed pretty nice, did duty as the matron of honor. Her bridesmaids were a couple of teachers. She’d told Rob her dad’s new arm candy had tried to volunteer for one of those slots, but was more or less politely discouraged.

Next thing Rob knew, he was standing in front of Farrell. He couldn’t quite recall how he’d crossed the intervening space. Teleportation seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t rule it out. Lindsey stood beside him, so everything else receded into the background. Her dress was white, if not exactly a wedding gown. He’d borrowed a blue blazer and tie from Dick Barber. Weddings, funerals, and gunpoint-yes, this was one of the happier reasons to don a tie.

Jim Farrell beamed at the two of them. “I have the honor to be standing in this place by virtue of authority invested in me as the law west of the Pecos-or at least west and north of I-95. If I say you’re married, you’re as married as you’re ever going to be in these parts. Have you got that?”

Rob managed a nod. Next to him, Lindsey did, too. Her eyes sparkled. Rob doubted he would have got on with her so well if she didn’t think Jim was one of the funnier critters on two legs.

“Along with marrying you, I’m supposed to stuff you with good advice like force-fed geese,” Farrell went on. “That’s a hot one, isn’t it? I never tied the knot myself, and I stopped caring about the amusement value of the fair sex a few years ago. So you’re thinking, Well, what the devil does he know? We might as well be at a town meeting, hey?”

This time, Rob didn’t nod, but he came close. Laughs and chuckles rippled through the pews.

“But I am an escaped-excuse me, a retired-historian, so I may possibly have learned a little something. Possibly,” Jim Farrell said. “People do seem to get along better when they’re willing to put up with each other’s foibles. If you’re convinced you have The One Right Answer”-Rob heard the capital letters thump into place-“good luck with the rest of the human race. If you think you’re going to impose it on everybody else No Matter What”-more loud caps-“even good luck won’t help.”

“Amen,” Dick Barber said quietly: pious agreement to a secular thought.

“Oh!” Farrell raised a gloved forefinger, as if at an afterthought he liked. “People have been screwing each other for as long as there’ve been people. You should probably do some of that, too.”

More laughter came from the audience. Rob had all he could do not to snicker out loud. Lindsey did squeak.

“You can laugh, but you can’t hide,” Farrell said with mock severity. “Since you aren’t even trying, you must want to go through with this. Rob, do you take Lindsey as your wife for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, and for as long as you both shall live?” He might have been thinking or until one of you reaches for a lawyer, but he didn’t say it.

“I do,” Rob answered. Official it was, yes.

“Lindsey, do you likewise and likewise, respectively, and for just as long?”

“I do,” she said. Yes, it was very official.

“Then I do, too-pronounce you man and wife, that is,” Farrell said. “Mr. Ferguson, you may kiss Mrs. Ferguson.”

Rob did. Lindsey still hadn’t decided whether she’d take his last name or keep Kincaid. Rob wasn’t about to commit litcrit, though. He’d got a ring on a trip of his own to Dover-Foxcroft. He slipped it onto Lindsey’s finger. That was another way to make things official. And there was one more, but that would have to wait till after the reception.

Moose meat. Roast goose. Stewed squirrel. A home-smoked ham. Potatoes. Parsnips. Pickled mushrooms. Sauerkraut. Moonshine vodka and applejack. Store-bought whiskey somebody’d been saving for a snowy day.

Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles provided the dance music, with a local kid filling in for Rob. The kid wasn’t terrible, but Rob didn’t think he needed to worry about getting booted out of the band. On the dance floor, he was no threat to the ghosts of Michael Jackson and Fred Astaire. He didn’t worry about that, either.

The reception was a success. Everyone had plenty to eat. Nobody punched anybody else. No one groped Lindsey’s dad’s hot girlfriend (or if anyone did, she didn’t squawk about it). What more could you want?

Jim Farrell laid on his sleigh to take the newlyweds back to Lindsey’s apartment. “How about that?” Rob said as she unlocked the door. “We’re really married.” He picked her up and carried her over the threshold.

“Darn right we are,” she agreed. “And what do you propose to do about it, Mister?”

“I already proposed,” he pointed out. “Why don’t we go back to the bedroom, huh? I expect I’ll think of something.” They did, and he did.