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“Didn’t Diana leave yesterday?” she asks, in a knowing tone.
I shift to a new plant. My knees are beginning to hurt. I recall seeing a foam pad much like Muriel’s when I was cleaning the house. I regret tossing it. “Roy and I are working through our issues.” With eggs and wooden donkeys.
“Hmm …”
I keep my head down, plucking and filling my basket, bracing myself for a lecture about helping thy neighbor, even when thy neighbor is an irredeemable asshole.
“Did I ever tell you how Roy came to help us look for my boy Deacon?”
My red-stained fingers stall on a berry. In the months I’ve known Muriel, the one person she never talks about is her missing son. I look to her now, meeting her steely-gray gaze. “No. You didn’t.”
She turns back to her plant. “When we got the call that they couldn’t find him, Teddy and I jumped in the truck and headed on up there to meet the state troopers right away. But soon enough, others were showin’ up. Friends of Deacon’s, our regulars at the resort, people from around Trapper’s Crossing. Everybody seemed to be rallyin’. It was nice to see. A real sense of community, pullin’ together.” She smiles sadly. “The official search for Deacon lasted seven days. There was a lot of focus on the river, ’cause that’s where the signs led. Toby’s bum knee wouldn’t let him walk too far, so him and Phil searched as best they could from the sky, while the rest of the volunteers combed the riverbank. But the days passed with no luck.”
She presses her lips tightly and then clears her throat. “State troopers called off the search after a week, but we kept goin’. Less and less people came out each day. We understood. People had to go back to their lives. Nights were coolin’ off fast. Soon, even Teddy said it was time to pack it in. And that’s when Roy showed up.” She chuckles and shakes her head. “He came with his gun and his campin’ gear, sayin’ he was there for some moose huntin’ and took off into the bush.”
“Alone?”
“The only way Roy does anythin’ is alone. But, no.” She smirks. “Moose huntin’ had ended and even he ain’t ballsy enough to go off-season. But he was too stubborn to admit that he knew I’d be too stubborn to call it quits so soon, so he made up this cockamamie story, knowing I’d follow. I did. And Roy and I spent another nine days out there, him in his tent, me in mine, combing the woods for my boy, until the snow made it pointless.”
I’m trying to picture Muriel and Roy spending nine days together—alone—in the woods, with guns, but I’m struggling. “You two didn’t fight?”
“Oh, we fought.” She laughs. “When don’t we? It was more to pass the time than anythin’. But he never complained about bein’ out there. Never said anything about quittin’. He waited for me to make the call.”
“That was … kind of him.” And so unlike everything I know about Roy Donovan so far.
“Yeah. Kind. That’s a good word for it. Who knew Roy’d be capable of that?” She snorts. “He’s an odd duck, I’ll give him that. Not easy to deal with, or even like. But he knows right from wrong, and he chooses right when it counts.”
“What made him like that?”
“I don’t know if there’s any rhyme or reason to the way he is. My guess is he’s always been like that, but nobody knows much about Roy Donovan at all. That he ever managed to wrangle a wife in the first place is a mystery to me, if he behaved the way he does with us.”
“There’s someone for everyone,” I echo what I’ve heard Simon say on more than one occasion. “I think Roy has troubles with addiction. He said a few things …” My words drift as I hesitate. Am I betraying Roy by talking about this with Muriel? Will she storm over there with her hands on her hips to question him about it? Do I even care?
“Yeah, I’ve gotten that impression, too.” She frowns at the berry in her hand before chucking it over the fence for Zeke. “He told me he got himself into some trouble with the law, back in Texas. Not exactly sure what all happened, but I know it was enough that his wife picked up and left him, told him to stay far away.”
So he came to Alaska. I guess that’s about as far away as anyone could get while staying within their own country.
“He actually told you that?”
She chuckles. “Nine days is a long time to spend with any one person. We got a pretty good understandin’ of each other.”
“Did you know he has a daughter, too?”
Her eyes flash to me. “I know about her. How do you know about her?”
“I saw a picture in his cabin, the day I went to look for a blanket for him. I asked him.”
She makes a sound. “I suppose that’s the reason for this disagreement between you two.”
“Yeah. Part of it.”
She nods slowly. “On that last day, when I had to throw in the towel and accept that I’d likely never see Deacon alive again, Roy mentioned how he had a daughter he’d never see again either.” Her brow furrows. “I think he was tryin’ to relate in his own way. ’Course, I made the mistake of tellin’ him it wasn’t the same. That was his choice to take off on her, and she was alive and well, as far as he knew. He could see h
er anytime he wants if he’d get over himself. Me?” She shakes her head. “I can’t even visit my boy’s grave.” There’s the slightest quiver in her voice, and it throws me off. Muriel is never anything but loud and strong and certain.
“Well, Roy got madder than I’ve ever seen him get before, which is sayin’ somethin’. We’ve had an unspoken agreement since then. I don’t mention his girl and he doesn’t bring up Deacon. It’s a good thing, too, ’cause Lord knows he’d say somethin’ that would make me pull out my gun and shoot him on the spot.” She leans back on her haunches, assessing the rows of plants still prime for picking. “I thought you two spendin’ some time together might be good, ’specially after what you told me about you and your own father, how you were estranged and then you weren’t. I thought, if you somehow ended up mentioning it to that old badger, maybe it’d give him ideas. Maybe he’d see that it’s never too late.”
“So there was method to your madness,” I murmur, more to myself.
