Northern Lights

himself."
    "That's tidy."
    Coben flattened his lips. "Some like it tidy. I'll get you the file, Burke, but you keep your personal investigation low-key. The lowest. The press, my lieutenant, anybody gets wind you're poking around, and I'm helping you, it comes down on me."
    "Done."
     
     
    MEG WAS SO SATURATED with Carrie's grief that she didn't mind spending another evening waiting tables. Given a choice, she'd have preferred to load up her dogs and fly out to the bush. Somewhere. Anywhere she could spend a couple of days completely alone, away from the pulls and tugs of people and all their needs.
    That, she thought as she swung into the overheated kitchen at The Lodge, was the Galloway gene. Take off, flip it off, shrug it off. Life's too short for hassles.
    But there was enough of something else in her—Christ, she hoped it wasn't Charlene—to make her stay and see it through.
    She hooked her orders on the turntable for Big Mike. Two meat loafs, a vegetarian special and the salmon surprise.
    She picked up the completed orders from her last trip in, balanced them with such ease it made her wince. Nothing against waitpersons the world over, she thought as she carried the food out, but she wished she wasn't so good at it. It wasn't on the scope for her, even as a fallback career.
    God, she wanted the air, some silence. Her dogs. Her music. Some sex.
    She was ready to pop.
    She worked another two hours, through the clatter, the complaints, the gossip, the bad jokes. She could feel the pressure building up inside her, the desperate need to get out, get away. When the crowd thinned out, she caught Charlene at the kitchen door.
    "That's all you get for tonight. I'm taking off."
    "I need you to—"
    "You're going to have to need somebody else. Shouldn't be hard for you." She headed for the stairs. She wanted a shower, and by God, she was packing up her things and going home.
    This time it was Charlene who caught her.
    "We're going to have another rush in an hour. People coming in to drink, to—"
    "Oddly enough, I don't care." She'd have closed the door in Charlene's face, but her mother was through the door and slamming it behind her.
    "You never did. I don't care that you don't care, but you owe me."
    Forget the shower, she'd just pack. "Bill me."
    "I need help, Megan. Why can't you ever just help me out without being so bitchy about it?"
    "I inherited the bitch from you. Not my fault." She ripped open a drawer and dragged whatever was in it out, tossed it on the bed.
    "I built something here. You benefited from that."
    "I don't give a rat's ugly ass about your money."
    "I'm not talking about money." Charlene grabbed clothes from the
    bed and hurled them into the air. "I'm talking about this place. It means something. You never cared. You couldn't wait to get away from it and from me, but it means something. We've been written up in the paper, in magazines, in tour guides. I got people working here who depend on their paycheck to put food on their table and clothes on their kids' backs. I've got customers who come in here every damn night because it means something."
    "You've got," Megan agreed. "It's nothing to do with me."
    "That's what he always said, too." Enraged, she kicked at a pair of jeans on the floor. "You look like him, you sound like him."
    "That's not my fault either."
    "Nothing was ever his fault. Bad run of luck playing poker, gee, guess there's no money this week. Need a little space, Charley, you know how it goes. I'll be back in a couple of days. Something'll turn up; stop nagging at me. Somebody had to pay the bills, didn't they?" Charlene demanded. "Somebody had to pay for medicine when you got sick or come up with the cash to get you shoes. He could bring me all the wildflowers he could pick in the summer or write me pretty songs and poems, but they didn't put food on the table."
    "I put food on my table. I buy my own shoes." But she'd calmed a little. "I'm not saying you didn't work. You did plenty of scheming on top of it, but it's your life. You got what you wanted."
    "I wanted him. Goddamn it. I wanted him."
    "So did I, so we both lost out there. Nothing we can do about it." She'd come back for her things, Meg thought. Right now she just needed out. She walked to the door, hesitated.
    "I called Boston, talked to his mother. She's . . . she won't block you from claiming his body, from burying him here."
    "You called her?"
    "Yeah, it's done." She opened the door.
    "Meg. Megan, please. Wait a