A Question Of Honor

“Why?”

No hesitation. “Jack.”

Adam closed his eyes. There were no secrets in Wolf Lake. Everyone knew the Carson family’s history and circumstances, especially their good friend John. “Go on,” Adam said into the phone.

Gage spoke quickly. “I’m real busy here.” Where that was, he didn’t say. Gage’s design and construction company worked all over the globe, and Gage, who was a hands-on owner, went wherever the jobs were being done. “I won’t be home for Christmas, so I was glad to hear you would be.”

There was a commotion almost blotting out Gage’s voice. “Hold on,” he said, then, “Listen, Adam, I have to go. Just call me when you get there and see Jack.”

Adam barely had time to say “Okay” to his kid brother before the line went dead. He put his phone back into his pocket and looked at John again. “Why did you call him about Jack?”

John shrugged. “Worried.”

Adam was worried, too. He was worried enough to not only come home early, but block out a month of sick leave with the police force to give himself time to figure out what he needed to do to help his older brother.

John kept talking. “He’s not himself, although, I understand that after what he’s gone through. But he rides off for days alone into the high country. He’s at work on and off, mostly off, but he’s still living in the apartment above his law office. Going to tell me why you’re here early? What got to you to make you do that?”

Adam noted the landscape changing as they left Santa Fe. The old-world charm of the city, with its adobes and pueblolike housing clusters, morphed into vast, sprawling land, cut here and there by massive buttes and towering mesas. Home. He swallowed hard. “I talked to Jack. He was at Mom and Dad’s place, and he answered the phone when I called.”

“He asked you to come home?”

“No, he’d never do that. It wasn’t even anything Jack said, not really.” Adam remembered his brother talking about anything and everything except himself. His voice was different, flat and uninvolved in what he was saying. “When I asked him about some things, I could tell he’s not doing well.”

“He’s grieving, Adam.”

“I know. But it’s been a year and a half since Robyn was killed in the accident, and he’s not moving on. You said he’s staying by himself mostly. He lets Maureen take care of his cases, and those rides alone...” He thought of Jack going to law school, leaving the town for an extended time, then coming home, falling in love with Robyn and making a life with her that looked perfect.

They had lived in the loft over the offices in the center of town, everyone expecting they’d start building on Wolf land when they had kids. But there had been no kids, and not because they didn’t want them. They couldn’t, and they had been searching for answers, undergoing treatments. Robyn had taught on the reservation while they waited for their own children. Then, without warning, she was gone in the blink of an eye, in a single-car accident on her way home from work.

Adam closed his eyes for a moment. But he opened them as quickly as he’d closed them. He couldn’t take the images that came in the darkness. That night at the hospital, Jack, his face twisted with grief, the loss of Robyn so great that Adam had almost been surprised when Jack had gone on living.

By Christmas last year, Jack was back at his practice. He was doing what he’d always done, but the old Jack was gone, and the new Jack, left in his place, seemed numb and lost. On that Christmas, Gage and Adam had both been home, and they’d both told Jack that all he had to do was call, and they’d be back in Wolf Lake for him. He’d never called them on that promise. He never would. But Adam was calling himself on it now.

“There’s no time limit on grieving,” John said, snapping Adam away from the past.

“I know.” But he didn’t know at all. He’d been told that by others, as the only major loss in his life, his grandfather, made sense. His grandfather had lived eighty-four years before quietly leaving in his sleep three years ago. He missed the man so much, but he’d had a wonderful life. Robyn’s death made no sense to him at all—she’d been barely thirty with her whole life ahead of her. Adam had no idea about the hurt that Jack experienced.

“He’s lost, Adam. He’s breathing and walking and talking and even working some, but he’s not living.” Adam felt John’s eyes on him as he asked, “So you’re going back to do what?”

He didn’t know. He only knew he had to be there. “I’ll know that when I see Jack,” he replied honestly.

“I think when we get there, we should get Jack to come hunting or fishing or just plain old camping with us, maybe Moses, too, up in the high country where we used to go as kids.”

Adam agreed. The five of them—Jack, Gage, Moses, John and himself—had been inseparable when they were young. Now Moses Blackstar was the head of the local hospital, the driving force behind it being built and the one who kept it going. “Getting away from everything, maybe we can talk how we used to back in the day.”

“He’s turned down Moses’s invitations right along,” John said, “But if all of us do it, it could happen. It’s worth a try.” Without warning, John pulled off the highway and into the parking lot for a fast-food place next to a motel and gas station. “I’m hungry,” he said. “We can sit and talk for a bit, maybe make some plans, get them in place, then speak to Jack.”

Adam didn’t want to stop anywhere. He wanted to be in Wolf Lake. “Get it to go, and we can talk while you drive,” he said. He wasn’t even sure he could eat right then. His stomach had tightened painfully at the idea of what he’d find when he got home and saw Jack. He wasn’t at all certain what that would be. Not at all.

* * *

FAITH WAS EXHAUSTED. She’d been on the road for two weeks, stopping at motels in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas as she traveled south, then west. Her plan had been to keep moving, spend a day or two in each place, nowhere too long, and go through the files when she could. She read and read, hoping to find something that wasn’t right. Something that might prove her father was innocent. Anything the others had missed.

But thus far, there had been nothing like that. So she just kept moving. At the moment, she was moving west on Highway 40 toward Albuquerque. She’d made the news quite regularly as a tagline to her father’s problems. One headline read Faith Sizemore Stays Out of Sight. It was another, though, that actually hit her the hardest. Sizemore’s Daughter Hiding—Subpoena for Grand Jury Fails. Below that, the story began, “While Federal investigators search her home again, Faith Sizemore is nowhere to be seen. An attempt to serve a subpoena for her testimony in front of the grand jury failed and prosecutors say they will keep trying, believing that her testimony could be vital to their case.” Did they know she’d run, or did they think she was just “secured” somewhere?

Her stomach grumbled, and at the same time, weariness almost overtook her. She realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and she couldn’t remember when she’d actually slept for a good number of hours. She covered a yawn, cupped the back of her neck with one hand to knead at the tension. She was exhausted to the point she couldn’t concentrate. To keep herself going and to be of any use when reviewing those files, she had to have food, then rest. Real rest.

Peace and privacy for a week was what she needed. But where would she find that? The motels she’d been staying at were not exactly calm and quiet with people coming and going at all hours. And a hotel that would give her peace wouldn’t give her privacy, since she couldn’t use a credit card.

She rotated her head from side to side to ease the cramping in her muscles and felt as if she hadn’t taken an easy breath since leaving Chicago. Looking ahead, she saw a sign that towered into the graying sky, which was rapidly filling with dark clouds. Multicolored neon lights flashed Willie G’s Diner. The best food in town.

She almost smiled at that as she headed to the exit. The “town” was little more than a gas station, a tepee-shaped souvenir shop with a heavy emphasis on Native American and Western collectibles, and a cluster of trailers beyond the parking lot for the old adobe building that was Willie G’s Diner.

She slowed as she spotted a sign on a power pole near the diner’s entrance advertising The Wolf Lake Inn. The words were printed over a sepia depiction of what looked like a wolf baying at a crescent moon. But it was the last line that got her full attention: “As much or as little peace and quiet as you want. Rooms by the day or by the week. Come visit us at The Inn.”

She took the time to jot down a phone number and address from the sign before parking in front of Willie G’s. The building was low-roofed, with faded pinkish-beige walls that were chipped in spots to reveal adobe bricks underneath. Every arched window along the front held a wreath made out of sticks with twinkling lights threaded through them. The lot was barely full, with only four other cars, an 18-wheeler and an old motorcycle.

Faith sat for a long moment after she turned off the engine, fighting the urge to call her father, to hear his voice and feel as if she wasn’t totally alone. She had only called him twice from a throwaway cell, and each time, she’d been afraid to speak too long or to be too honest. She hadn’t wanted him to hear any fear or worry in her tone and she couldn’t bear to hear the somber resignation in his voice. She left the phone alone and got out into the snow and wind to hurry to the entrance. Pushing the door aside, she stepped into comforting warmth, enhanced by the fragrance of food being cooked and woodsmoke that came from a funnel-shaped fireplace set in the middle of the dining area.

The interior echoed the exterior character of the building. Rough, oxidized plaster walls, a ceiling with massive beams made from stripped timber. Well-worn stones underfoot were faded and chipped from years of use. Straight ahead was a counter and beyond that, swinging doors leading to the kitchen.

Booths lined the wall to the right and across the front by the windows, separated only by a large Christmas tree, fully decorated in silver and gold. Wooden tables were arranged in the middle of the room to take advantage of the fireplace. A young girl with brilliant red hair was serving two men at the counter. She looked up as the door thudded shut. “Sit anywhere you’d like,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be right there.”

Christmas music with a definite Western twang played in the background, blending with the customers’ conversations. Faith chose a booth by one of the windows. She sank down onto the dark red vinyl bench seat, slipped off her jacket and thought about the sign for the Wolf Lake Inn. “As much or as little Peace and Quiet as you want.” She craved both the way a man lost in the desert craved water.

The girl from the counter came over to her and smiled. “Welcome to Willie G’s. What will you be having today?” Faith ordered coffee and a hamburger with fries, then sat back as the girl took off for the kitchen. When the hamburger and stack of fries, both large enough to feed a small nation, came, she knew that she’d made a decision. She was going to find Wolf Lake Inn and stay put for a few days if it looked okay. And she could sleep, really sleep, so she could think straight. She was afraid of making a mistake and being recognized.

She ate half of her food. Pushing aside the plate, she reached for her wallet. She needed to get going.

“Food no good, lady?”

The blunt question startled Faith, and she looked up to find an older man standing by the booth. He was in his middle to late sixties, with weathered skin and long white hair piled under a cook’s hairnet. Wearing a white T-shirt and white pants, both liberally stained by various foods, he frowned at her plate, his hawkish nose twitching. “No good?” he repeated as he met her gaze.

She shook her head. “Oh, no, it was very good. It’s just so much food, enough for two or three meals.”

He folded his arms on his chest as a smile softened his lined, angular face. “I understand. You’re a little bit of a thing. For a minute I thought old Willie G. had lost the magic touch.”

“What I could eat was great.” She couldn’t stop a yawn. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been driving forever and I’m really tired.”

“Where you heading for?”

She hesitated, wondering if he could help. “Albuquerque, but I saw a sign for The Wolf Lake Inn when I pulled in here. Do you know it?”

“You looking to stay there?”

“Maybe, as long as it’s peaceful and private, and not too fancy or expensive.”

“That about describes it,” Willie said