Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (5 page)

While I waited, I noticed that my leg had begun to hurt again. Looking down, I could see that the bandage was soaked with
fresh
blood.

When the police arrived
,
I shut off the alarm. They were from the county, since I lived well outside the town limits. One was a young, short, blond woman named Sam. Her partner was a tall, lean
,
middle
-
aged guy with a shaved head. His name plate said Nelson.

Officer Sam noticed my leg immediately. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I got this a few days ago at the bank. Probably just busted it open chasing that guy out of here.”

“I heard about that,” said Nelson.

“I know you,” said Sam. “You were involved in that courthouse business last year. Didn't you get shot in the same place then?”

“Other leg,” I said. “But thanks for remembering. I'm Jonah Borden.”

“Sam,” she said. “And this is
O
fficer Nelson.”

“Rick,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Ricky Nelson?
What happened to the hair?
”

“Careful,” he said. “I'm a lot bigger than you.” But then he grinned.

“So what's up here?” asked Sam.

I told them about the intruders. They poked around a little bit and found the window to my office was open. We couldn't see that anything was missing or disturbed.

“Not much more we can do,” said Nelson. “No description of the suspect. According to you, nothing taken or damaged.”

Sam finished writing in her notebook. “Call us if you realize later that something is missing,” she said. “In the meantime, keep your doors locked and your alarm on.”

I'm not normally nervous or jumpy when I'm alone in my cabin in the woods overlooking Superior, a mile from my nearest neighbor. But for some reason that evening, every time I glanced up at the night outside the glass of my patio door, I could swear a man in black clothes and a ski mask had just stepped away from the light into the darkness beyond.

At around eight, I heard a subtle noise coming from my office.
It sounded like someone was moving around, but trying to be very quiet about it.
I remembered that the window had been opened there this afternoon. My heart began to pound. I stepped over to my stereo, plugg
ed
in my iPod,
and turned on some tunes. I glanced over my shoulder but no one was coming out of my office door yet. Covered, I hoped, by
the sound of the music, I walked over to the fireplace and picked up the poker again. Then I stepped softly in my stocking-feet toward my office. I could have hit the panic button on the alarm, but I would have
felt pretty
stupid if it was nothing.

I waited outside the office door for a long time. Now I regretted putting on the music, because I couldn’t hear as well. At last I heard it again, a soft rubbing, maybe someone’s pant-leg against a chair. Then there was a quiet thump, and then a louder sound of papers being pushed off my desk.

I leaped through
the door, poker raised, yelling, and then I stopped.

Flattened in fear on my desk was a scrawny orange kitten, its fur puffed up to twice its size.
I lowered the poker weakly. Then I collapsed in the chair, laughing.

The kitten watched me with wide eyes, like I was a Martian just descended from my space-ship.

“Well,” I said to it, “I’m glad I didn’t hit the panic button. You must have come in when the window was open before.”

Slowly, the animal relaxed, its fur settling back down
into place. Its orange coat was long and fluffy, like a Persian cat. The kitten looked small and helpless and very hungry. It continued to stare at me out of large round eyes.

“I had a vet friend who told me once that orange cats are almost always male,” I said to it. “That true?”

The kitten slowly sat up, and then yawned and started to clean itself.

“Well, I’m going to take that a yes. You new in the neighborhood?” He had to be a stray. He looked ill-kept and hungry, and there were no houses for a mile around my place.

The cat stopped licking himself and stared at me again.

“What?” I said. “You got something to say, say it.”

“Mew,” he said, and then started purring.

“I guess I can see that,” I said. I leaned forward slowly. “You OK if I pick you up?” As I reached out my hand, the kitten arched his back and rubbed against my computer monitor. I stroked him and the purring got louder. I gently reached under him and picked him up, pulling him back to my chest. He immediately thrust his head decisively under my chin, the purring going like a chainsaw.

After a minute I carried him out into the living room, where I replaced the poker and stepped into my kitchen. I put him on the floor and got him a little bowl of milk. He sniffed at it curiously,
and then
tasted it. After a second or two he began lapping furiously.
When he was finished
,
he came to me where I sat on the couch. He climbed up my leg, and the
n
wormed his way up my chest to shove his face under my chin again. I petted him and blew fur away from my face.
Eventually he fell asleep and I moved him up against some pillows on the couch.

Before bed I checked the doors and windows. I leaned the poker next to my bed.
Even so, I laid there for a long time
staring into the dark. I heard a little sound and then the kitten padded softly into my room. “Mew?” he said, and the scrambled up my comforter. He wormed his way under the covers until he was tucked under my chin, purring loudly.

“Goodnight,” I said, and slept peacefully the rest of the night.

It was fall, and the counseling appointments were starting to line up. Minnesotans didn't waste time with relational or psychological problems during the short, beautiful summers. They tried to eke every last second of enjoyment out of
each
precious degree above
sixty
. So every fall, after school started up, I had a rash of appointments. This year, the favored topic seemed to be marriage problems.

On the Tuesday after the bank robbery, I had an appointment with someone new, a woman named Angela. She had called the church out of the blue, and Julie had set up the meeting. At eleven, she came into the church office.

She was probably
five foot seven,
with a mass of frizzy, dark-blond hair. I thought it was a natural frizz. I couldn't imagine anyone paying to get that done to her hair. All the same, she had it pinned and barretted so that it cascaded attractively down one shoulder.

I stood up and walked around my desk. “Come on in,” I said. “Do you want some coffee?” To my approval, she accepted. I decided to have a cup with her. Just to be sociable.

I ushered her to the sitting area and went to get the elixir of the gods. When I came back
,
she was sitting on the love seat, both legs crossed under her, her sandals lying on the floor. She looked comfortable. On both wrists
,
she wore a bunch of thin metal bracelets, the kind I used to call bangles. I never did know if I had that right, but that's what I called them. They clinked in a sort of enticing way when she moved her hands. She wore loose fitting, thin trousers that looked vaguely Indian. Her top was long and orange-ish and definitely East Indian. The overall style of her look, I figured, was classy hippie. I thought she might be in her mid-thirties, and well kept.

After we exchanged the normal banalities, I said, “What I can do for you, Angie?”

“Angela, please.” She said. “I never go by Angie. That is what my
father
used to call me.”

“OK
,
Angela,” I said. “How can I help
you?
”

She turned her hand palm up and twisted her wrist around aimlessly. The bangl
es made little clinking sounds.

“I have had an affair,” she said.

I waited. Sometimes I think one of my biggest jobs in counseling is simply not to appear shocked. That was easy this time, because I had heard this sort of thing before.

She twisted her hand in the air and clinked some more. “The problem is,” she said, “I feel guilty.”

I waited some more, mostly because this time I didn't really know what to say. Finally, I said, “It's pretty normal to feel guilty after you have an affair.”

“Guilt is an artificial construct, created by a patriarchal society to enforce its arbitrary mores.” She said it with a straight face, unblinking. She pronounced mores properly too, like 'mor-ays.' I wanted to compliment her enunciation, but I restrained myself.

“I know better than to fall for all that patriarchal social oppression,” she added, “but somehow I still feel guilty.”

“I'm not sure I understand,” I said.
“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to help me to not feel guilty,” she said.

“Angela,” I said, “do you understand what it is I do here?”

She laughed, a short laugh, but genuine. Then she cocked her head at me. “You don't seriously still believe in sin and all that nonsense, do you? You seem so educated.”

“I am, in fact, ridiculously over-educated,” I said. “Even so, I'm wondering why you chose to come to me, rather than a therapist who might share your same views.”

“
I’ve been
taking a few classes in Feminism and Counseling at the University of Minnesota Duluth,” she said.

That explained a lot about her misconceptions concerning guilt

“One of my professors is also a certified therapist. I’ve been seeing him. Unfortunately, he can’t really help me in this matter.”

“You had an affair with your
professor?
” I blurted.

“How could you
possibly
have known that? Did
Ethan
call you?” She looked shaken.

“No, I don't even know who he is,” I
said. “Sometimes I get these –
insights. I think it
’
s a God thing.”

“Well
,
anyway, there is nothing wrong with
our affair
.”

“Actually,” I said, “there are all kinds of things wrong with
it
. Not least of which is malpractice.
As a therapist, h
e is liable in a civil court for that, and possibly a criminal one too.
I imagine UMD still frowns on that sort of thing also.
”

There was an awkward silence. She didn't meet my eyes. “Anyway,” she said very quietly
, but firmly,
“I still feel guilty, and I don't think I should have to.”

“All right. Why do you think you should have no guilt?”

“It was a beautiful thing,” she said. “Nobody else even knows it happened, so it doesn't hurt my husband. And besides, like I said, guilt is an artificial construct created by a patriarchal society to enforce arbitrary mores.”

“Nice diction,” I said. She didn't seem to think it was as amusing as I did.

There was a slight pause. “If guilt is artificially created, then why has every single human society in ev
ery time period and every place
come up with that same idea?”

She shrugged, “It
is
effective.”

“Angela, that's not really an answer, and you know it. And it isn't just guilt. Marriage is a universal idea too. Throughout history, every single culture has –
most of them
independently, mind you – arrived at some sort of idea of 'marriage.' Some cultures disagree about who can marry whom. Others disagree about how many people a person can marry. But all cultures have always agreed there is something called marriage, and that adultery is wrong. Most cultures came to that conclusion independent of the influence of any other culture. That can't be an accident.”

She seemed to shrink inside herself. “That doesn't really help me to feel not guilty.”

“In my profession, I deal with guilt quite a bit,” I said.

“That's why I came here,” she said. “I thought you would know more about how to get rid of it.”

“I guarantee I know more about it than your therapist,
or professor, or whatever he is,
” I said. I sipped some coffee, and felt no guilt myself. “In all my experiences and studies, I know of only one thing that can deal effectively with guilt.”

There was silence. “What is it?” she asked finally.

“Forgiveness.”

“
Forgiveness?
But that would mean that I had done something wrong, something that needs to be forgiven.”

“Precisely.”

“But there was nothing wrong with it. It was a beautiful thing. My husband doesn't even know about it, so it doesn't hurt him. It doesn't hurt anybody.”