Free Purgatory Ridge by William Kent Krueger

whom she hadn’t birthed but had certainly nurtured. With the children, Rose had a special bond. Often Jo came into a room—usually the kitchen—and found her sister in quiet conference with one of them. The talk ceased the moment Jo entered, and she understood that Rose was a confidant to the children in a way that she, as their parent, could never be. And Jo knew there was no one Cork admired more than Rose.
    She ate her cookies and sipped her milk and told Rose everything—the bombing, the body, the council meeting. Finally she confessed to Rose her concern that Cork might consider running for sheriff again.
    “What are you afraid of?” Rose asked. “Really?”
    Jo stared at the crumbs on her plate. “I like things the way they are right now. I don’t want anything to change. We seem to be heading toward happiness again.”
    Rose waited, her wide, freckled face full of calm.
    “I feel like we’re all still wounded,” Jo stumbled on. “I think we need more time to heal.”
    “Does Cork know how you feel?”
    Jo got up and carried her glass to the sink.
    “You haven’t told him,” Rose surmised.
    “It’s not that easy.”
    They heard the front door open and the sound of Stevie’s laughter. A moment later Cork and Stevie came into the kitchen, Stevie holding up proudly a string full of sunnies.
    “Look what I caught.”
    “Wonderful,” Rose said. “Where are you going with them?”
    “To clean them,” Stevie replied.
    “Not in my kitchen. Downstairs to the basement. You can use the laundry sink.”
    “Come on, buddy.” Cork opened the basement door and followed Stevie down.
    Rose smiled after them, then turned to her sister. “This family means too much to him. He wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize it. Just talk to him.” Rose returned to washing the fruit.
    Jo headed upstairs to change her clothes. In a few minutes, Cork stepped in. She could smell the fish on him all the way across the room.
    “How’d it go on the rez?” he asked. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it into a wicker hamper near the closet.
    Jo sat on the bed and bent down to buckle her sandals. “We put together a statement denying any connection with the Army of the Earth or any knowledge about Eco-Warrior. We criticized the action. And we did our best to distance the Iron Lake Ojibwe from any threat of violence over Our Grandfathers.”
    “How’d Charlie Warren take that?”
    “He wasn’t there. But Isaiah Broom had a huge problem with it.”
    “That’s because he probably is this Eco-Warrior.”
    “Don’t joke.”
    “Who’s joking?” Cork dropped his jeans and reached into the dresser for some shorts.
    “You wouldn’t be saying that if you were sheriff.”
    “No?”
    Jo stood up. “You’d be reserving judgment until you had more facts. Even then you’d say it was up to the court to decide guilt or innocence.”
    “But I’m not the sheriff anymore.” He grabbed a red T-shirt and tugged it on.
    They were at the edge of a subject they never talked about—the events that surrounded Cork’s fall from grace in Aurora. To talk would risk opening old wounds, discussing events that had hurt them terribly, that had nearly torn them apart. Although Jo felt all these things constantly between them, dark and restless, she was afraid that to look at the past straight-on might be deadly to her marriage. Cork had never seemed eager to talk either, and Jo believed his own silence on the subject of their past indiscretions meant a mutual—though unspoken—agreement not to dwell on hurtful history.
    “I’m going to go down and give Rose a hand with dinner,” she said. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Annie came in the front door. “Where’s Jenny?” Jo asked.
    “Sean showed up at Sam’s Place. He said he’d help her close and then bring her home.”
    Sean was Jenny’s boyfriend. Jo knew Cork had a grudging liking for the boy and didn’t mind his dropping by to give Jenny a