CHAPTER ONE - EXCERPT

Eighty-thirty a.m. on a pretty May Michigan morning which should have stayed pretty and pristine and quiet. Far too early for a visitor, especially not Deputy Dolly Wakowski, who stood on my small side porch thumping with both fists at the screen door, bawling my name like a little kid calling me out to play:

Emily! Emily Kincaid! Damn you, I know you�re in there . . .

What I didn�t need at my door that early, or any time for that matter, was my officious, fully uniformed, square-bodied, thirty three year old almost ex-friend, Deputy Dolly, of the Leetsville Police Department. There was no way I was going to let her in. The last time she came to see me she�d been furious about a book I�d written, didn�t like the way I portrayed her, and left in a huff, with a big slam of my screen door.

Let her stand and wait. I pressed harder against the wall, making myself invisible while rolling my eyes at Sorrow, my big, ugly, unspecific dog, who did a noisy, tongue-lolling dance of joy at the very idea of having company. It didn�t matter if that guest was Dolly, a Jehovah�s Witness, or an ax-murderer. Sorrow was a non-discriminating creature that loved the world at large and didn�t give a flying fig if I�d spent all of the last evening drinking myself into a kind of squiggly fog that left me with a pounding wine-headache, a mouth tasting like dandelion fuzz, and a penchant for growling at any overt noise.

Dolly hammered again, setting my house to quivering and leaky-jowled Sorrow to barking and leaping. I could feel the reverberations inside my poor, abraded skull.

Last evening hadn�t been the best of my life. I�d gotten another snide rejection on my recent manuscript. Yet another of those �this didn�t excite me� letters which I took personally, as all writing teachers admonish writers not to do. But it was my own story, and Deputy Dolly�s. The literary agents had it in for me, I had decided. I now was known in all of New York as the 'unexciter.' I was the joke of every literary cocktail party. The �poor deluded Michigan writer� referred to at writers� conferences; my name followed by an embarrassed laugh.

Maybe I wasn�t really that important but anyway I�d downed a lot of cheap Pinot Grigio after setting fire to the rejection letter. I�m not one to paper walls with rejections nor get them inscribed on toilet paper. Such weak revenge. Instead, I sat out on my dock watching ducks fight in angry silhouettes against the fading light on Willow Lake, my own little northern Michigan lake surrounded by weeping willows, home to a family of loons I�d fallen in love with, and a beaver who, over my three years up here, had become my tree-chewing, tail-smacking nemesis. I had swatted spring mosquitoes the size of chickens and made a game of seeing how far I could flick them off my arm. In between these important businesses, I plotted large events of splendid vengeance on all of New York, where I swanned prettily into a party given for my new best seller. The agents who�d scorned me were all there, begging me to come to them, tears of remorse filling the room.

By nine p.m., before true northern spring dark, I had depressed myself sufficiently and gone in to bed with the dregs of the Pinot Grigio and a lot of self-pity.

Now Dolly was at my door. The last time I�d seen her she had come to tell me I better not try selling that book about her. Since it wasn�t about her�exactly�and I thought I did her justice, and I was certainly damn well going to try to sell it, we had mumbled and strutted at each other and she�d left in a mighty huff.

For a few minutes all was quiet. Maybe she was gone, I hoped. I lifted the corner of my gauzy white curtain and peeked out the door window. Still there, four-square with both hands hooked in her gun belt, shiny gold badge stuck on her powder-pigeon, blue breast. She looked absently off toward my spring garden of bright yellow daffodils and pale blue windflowers. The side of her face I could see had its usual intent and unappreciative stare. �I don�t GET flowers,� she�d once said to me as I had proudly showed off my neat bed of pink peonies. �Plastic�s better. Don�t die.�

She knew I was home. My Jeep was parked in the drive. She might figure I went out walking around Willow Lake; or maybe visiting my friend, Crazy Harry, across Willow Lake Road, getting him to come take out a wasp�s nest, or cut up a fallen tree. In either case, she�d sit in her car and wait, not just �til hell froze over,� but until whatever time it took for me to drag my body home.

Or I could be in my writing studio under the tall maples behind the house, but she had probably checked already. No escaping her. I opened the door.

�God, Emily!� she greeted me, small, homely face tied in a knot. �I thought you were dead.� Her voice had a hurt, demanding quality to it; a kind of angry mother tone that got me way down inside, maybe because it had been a long time since anyone�younger or older�had said my name like that.

She threw both her hands in the air, reached for the door handle, pulled it open, and came on in, half-knocking me out of the way and stepping on Sorrow�s big, hairy front paw. �I�m not here because I�m mad about the book anymore. You write whatever you want to, you hear? I don�t give a rat�s behind about any of that stuff. You probably won�t sell it anyway. Never have. I�m over that. Something else. I need your help and you�re my friend. You�ve gotta come with me . . .�

I didn�t get a chance to say hello or even sort out her words. This wasn�t the usual Dolly voice. She never asked nicely for anything. This was a mix of pleading and demanding. A dubious face. Fast batting eyes. Evidently asking favors didn�t come easily to Dolly. I was thrown, and stood looking at her with my mouth half open.

Sorrow recovered from the foot stomp and leaped to hold Dolly in place, big black and white paws strategically landing on either of her ample breasts. Dolly nuzzled his long, wet nose then pushed him away. She leaned close to me, taking in the circles under my eyes that probably made my long face look like a mask. She checked out my curly blond hair caught in a messy pony tail, my paint and soil marred jeans, and the new University of Michigan tee shirt that was a gift from Jackson Rinaldi, my ex-husband, whose obsessive philandering had ended our marriage, though we had stayed nominal friends. He had taken a cottage over near Spider Lake, outside Traverse City; up here on sabbatical, finishing his book on Chaucer. Or he was up here just to bedevil me. The tee shirt from him was my payment for endless hours at my computer, typing and retyping his manuscript. I valued that tee shirt above all others, figuring it had to be worth about two thousand dollars, considering all the time I�d put in deciphering Middle English.

�Emily, I swear to God, something awful�s happened. I don�t know what to do, where to turn. I�m gonna do something illegal. I got to. And I need you as a witness. Just to say why I did it, if it comes to that.�

A shudder passed through me. I could smell trouble coming. Dolly attracted it and I would get the fall out again. My day was all planned. Today was for going over my checkbook and figuring out how many months I had left of food money, while still paying my bills. Summer taxes would be coming in August. I had to prepare. Today was for calling editors I knew at northern Michigan magazines and pitching articles. Maybe calling my friend, Bill Corcoran, at the Traverse City Northern Statesman, to see if I could get more stringer work. Something had to be done about my pathetic bank account. The money my father left me was going fast. I�d come up here from Ann Arbor, after the divorce, with what I considered a good stake, certain I would soon sell a novel that would bring a million. I figured that at thirty-four all it would take was one best seller to set me up for life. What editor could resist such quality? Such amazing intelligence? Such creative spirit?

Seemed everybody could.

Dolly leaned in close to get a good look at me. She sniffed and shook her head. �Damn, Emily. You�re not drinking, are you? Out here all alone? Taking to drink will be the end of you, like old Cornelia Pund, over to Mancelona. Nothing in her garbage can but cheap whiskey bottles. Garth got tired of picking up those whiskey bottles every week and called social services. Told�em about her. A guy came out and she pulled a gun. Shot him in the arm. Now she�s sober as a monk, staying down near Detroit in a women�s prison. Habitual Offender. So, you see? Drinking�s not going to get you anywhere you . . .�

�Let�s stick with what�s going on here. I can�t imagine you doing anything illegal.� I ignored the sermon I�d just gotten. �You go into spasms when you forget to put on your turn signal.�

She lifted her chin from the V of her blue uniform shirt to give me a long hard look. Those faded blue eyes had never registered neediness before. There might even have been a tear there, if stones can be said to cry. �Have to . . .�