Northern Lights

snaked out, gripped her wrist before she could hurl the coffee in his face. "Think again," he said quietly. "A scene's going to embarrass you a lot more than me."
    She jumped violently out of the booth and stalked across the room, up the stairs.
    For the second time that day, Nate heard the bullet shot of a slammed door.
    And in its echo, he finished his dinner.
     
     
    HE DROVE OUT TO MEG'S, hoping his blood would cool and his brain clear by the time he got there. The gloom of the past few days had lifted, leaving brilliant stars in a black-glass sky. A slice of moon rode over the trees, and a shimmery fog slithered low to the ground. Bare branches on the trees, Nate noticed. The snow was still thick on the ground, but the branches had shaken off the snow.
    A part of the road was still flooded so he had to ease his way around the barricade and through the foot of standing water.
    He heard a wolf call, lonely and insistent. It might be hunting, he thought, for food. For a mate. When it killed, it killed for purpose. Not for greed, not for sport.
    When it mated, he'd read, it mated for life.
    The sound died off as he drove through the night.
    He could see the smoke rise from Meg's chimney, hear the soar of her music. Lenny Kravitz this time, he thought. Rocking on mists of doom and fields of pain.
    He parked behind her, then just sat. He wanted this, he realized, wanted it maybe more than he should. To come home. To deal with the day, then shake it off and come home to music and light, to a woman.
    The woman.
    Hearth and home, Meg had said. Well, she'd nailed him. So if he ended up with that chunk of his heart spat in his face, he had no one to blame but himself.
    She opened the door as he walked up, and the dogs rushed out to dance around him. "Hi. Wondered if you'd find your way to my door tonight." She cocked her head. "You look a little rough around the edges, chief. What've you been up to?"
    "Winning friends, influencing people."
    "Well, come on inside, cutie, have a drink, and tell me about it."
    "Don't mind if I do."

 
     
    LIGHT
     
     
     
    Is it so small a thing
    To have enjoy'd the sun,
    To have lived light in the spring,
    To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
    To have advanced true friends, and beat
    down baffling foes . . . ?
    MATTHEW ARNOLD
     
     
     
     
    We burn daylight.
    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 
     
     
     
    TWENTY-SIX
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    "CHIEF." PEACH OFFERED HIM a sticky bun and a cup of coffee almost before he got in the door.
    "You know, you keep baking these things, I'm not going to be able to sit in my desk chair."
    "It'd take more than a few sticky buns to pork up that cute little behind. Besides, it's a bribe. I need to ask if I can take an extra hour for lunch tomorrow. I'm on the May Day planning committee. We're going to meet tomorrow and try to finish coordinating the parade."
    "Parade?"
    "May Day parade, Nate. It's on your calendar and not that far off."
    May, he thought. He'd played with the dogs a bit that morning in Meg's yard. In snow up to the tops of his boots. "That'd be May first?"
    "Come hell or high water, and we've had the parade in both. School band marches. The Natives wear their traditional dress and play traditional instruments. All the sports teams are in it, and Dolly Manners's dance classes. More people who live here participate in it than watch it, but we get tourists and Outside folk come in from all over."
    She fussed with the vase of plastic daffodils on her counter. "It's a good time, and the past couple years we've done some advertising. We did even more this year, drumming up media interest and whatnot. Charlene puts it on The Lodge's web page and does package deals. And Hopp pushed and got us included in the events page of a couple of magazines."
    "No kidding. Pretty hot stuff."
    "Well, it is. It's a full-day event. We have a bonfire and more music that night. Weather's too bad, we move that to The Lodge."
    "You have a bonfire in The Lodge."
    She punched his arm playfully. "Just the music."
    "Take whatever time you need."
    Big parade, Nate thought. Bookings at The Lodge, meals served, customers in The Corner Store, browsing the local artists and craftsmen's work. More money, more business at the bank, the gas station. More business period.
    That could be cut considerably by too much talk of murder.
    He glanced over when Otto came in. "Isn't it your day off ?"
    "Yeah."
    Nate could see something in his eye, but played it light. "You come by