Northern Lights

the southeast, interviewing bush pilots and getting some of them to fly him around. For the paper, and research for the novel he was writing."
    "Did he do a lot of traveling back then?"
    "He did. I put that down, too. He said he'd be gone maybe four or five weeks, and that didn't sit well with me, especially with things still up in the air between us. I remember because he was back sooner than he said, but he didn't even come to see me. People told me he'd holed up at the paper. Was practically living there. I was too mad to go see him either."
    "How long before you did see him?"
    "It was a while. I was pretty mad. But finally I got mad enough to see him. I know it was the end of March or the very start of April. We had the classroom decorated for Easter. Easter hit the first Sunday in April that year. I looked it up. I remember sitting there with all those colored eggs and bunny drawings while I was stewing about Max."
    She ran her hand over her stack of papers. "This part I remember perfectly. He was at the paper, locked in. I had to bang on the door. He looked terrible. Thin and unshaven, his hair all which way. He smelled. There were papers all over his desk."
    She sighed a little. "I can't remember what the weather was like, Nate. What it looked like in town, but I can remember exactly how he looked. I can remember exactly how it looked in his office. Coffee cups, dishes all over the place, trash cans overflowing, trash on the floor. Ashtrays full of butts. He used to smoke.
    "I wrote it down," she said, and smoothed the papers again. "He was working on his novel—that's what I assumed—and looked like a madman. Damn if I know why I found that so appealing. But I gave him what-for. Told him I was done. If he thought he could treat me that way, he could just think again, and so on. I just raved and ranted, and he didn't say a thing. When I'd run out of steam, he got down on one knee."
    She stopped a moment, pressed her lips together. "Right there, in all that mess. He said he wanted a second chance. He needed one. And asked me to marry him. We were married that June. I wanted to be a June bride, and since I'd already missed the thirtieth-birthday deadline, a couple more months didn't matter."
    "Did he ever talk about the time he was away?"
    "No. And I didn't ask. It didn't seem important. All he said was that he'd learned what it was like to be alone, really alone, and he didn't want to be alone again."
    Nate thought about the lines connecting the names on his list. "Did he ever have a particular run-in or a particular friendship with Bing?"
    "Bing? No, not a buddy sort of thing. Max tried to stay on his good side, especially since he knew Bing had asked me out."
    "Bing?"
    "'Asked me out' is probably a euphemism. He wasn't interested in dining and dancing, if you follow me."
    "And did you ever . . ."
    "No." She laughed, cutting herself off in midstream and looking shocked at herself. "I haven't laughed, not really, since . . . It's terrible to laugh at this."
    "The thought of you and Bing strikes me funny. How'd he take being turned down?"
    "Oh, I don't think it was a big deal." She brushed it off with the back of her hand. "I was handy, that's all. New female in the very small pack. Men like Bing would try to cut the new one out of the herd, see if he could get some sex and maybe a couple of home-cooked meals out of it. Nothing against him, it's natural enough in a place like this. He wasn't the only one who made moves. I went out with a few that first winter. Even The Professor and I had dinner a couple times, though it was plain as plain he had a major crush on Charlene."
    "That would be before Galloway left?"
    "Before, during, after. He's always had a thing for her. But we had dinner a couple of times, and he was a perfect gentleman. Maybe a little more gentlemanly than I was looking for, to tell the truth. But I wasn't looking for someone like Bing."
    "Because?"
    "He's so big and crude and rough. I went out with John because I liked his looks and his intellect. And with Ed once because, well, why not? Even Otto, after his divorce. A woman—even one who's not very pretty and past thirty—has a lot of choices in a place like this, if she's not too picky. I chose Max."
    She smiled into middle distance. "I still would." Then brought herself back. "I wish I could tell you more. Looking back, I guess I can see that Max was troubled. But he always seemed troubled when he worked on one of his books. He'd put