Lucy followed me upstairs to her room and shut the door behind us. “Joe, they’re going to arrest you.”

“I know.” We sat together on the bed. “I’ll tell you something. I want them to. Not for any reason other than to have this be over. A couple of years, probably. I’ve heard of guys who’ve gotten less.”

She began to cry. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I took her hands and made her look at me. I’d never felt so certain of anything in my life. “Don’t be, because I’m not. Not anymore. I’m tired of running, Lucy. I need to come home.”

“I want you to, Joe. I think that’s all I ever wanted.”

“Good. Here’s the other thing. I’m sorry this is so fast, but it has to be. I’ll raise Kate, be her father. You can tell Harry, but not for a while, at least until we know what’s going to happen to me. I just want us to be together, a family. Agreed?”

I was prepared to tell her more, but I didn’t have to. She put her arms around me, nodding fiercely.

When we came downstairs five minutes later, everyone was waiting in the kitchen. One of the MPs was holding Kate in his lap while the other was doing itsy-bitsy spider for her. When they saw us the one who was holding her stood quickly, his face flustered with embarrassment, and handed her back to Lucy.

“Sorry, ma’am. Your father said it would be all right. She sure is a cutie. I’ve got a niece not much bigger than that.”

Lucy let the error pass. “I don’t think I got your name, soldier.”

“Samuels, ma’am. Corporal Samuels.” He tipped his head toward his companion. “That’s Hickock.”

“Well, you held her very nicely, Corporal Samuels. You ever want a job babysitting, you come by, all right?”

He nodded nervously, his face pink as a ham. “Yes, ma’am.”

Lucy and I sat at the table and told Darryl Tanner what we wanted to do. He listened to what we had to say, helping himself to Oreos from the open bag on the table as we talked.

“That’s a new one on me,” he said when we were finished, and scratched his head. “Problem is, the state of Maine says a three-day wait once you get the license. But I might be able to pull a string or two, assuming it’s all right with these fellows. What do you say, gentlemen? A little detour?”

They exchanged a look and shrugged. “As long as it’s on the way,” Hickock said. “One guy, we stopped at his mother’s house to help him move a sofa.”

Tanner went to the office to use the phone. A few minutes later he returned, rubbing his hands together.

“Well, you’re in luck. Woman who answered in the county clerk’s office knows my sister pretty well. French Catholic, so this is right up her alley. She says she can backdate the license, so long as we all keep it under our hats. The question of officiation is another issue. The county clerk is away in Florida, got stranded by the storm. But she’s looking around to see who she can scare up.”

Lucy, Kate, and I rode together in the back of Tanner’s cruiser, my father and the MPs following in the jeep. By the time we arrived in Farmington it was after two. We stopped in a diner across from the courthouse for hamburgers and Cokes while Lucy changed Kate’s diaper and the MPs phoned the stockade to tell them we were running late, and then we walked across the street, where the woman Tanner had spoken to on the phone was waiting for us in the clerk’s office. She was a woman in her fifties, round as a beachball and with hair frizzed by too many trips to the beauty parlor. When she saw the MPs she gave a startled look.

“Friends of the family,” I said.

Lucy and I filled out the paperwork, each of us holding Kate while the other one signed the license. Then we followed the woman into an empty courtroom.

“You all have a seat,” she said. “He’ll be along in just a minute.”

“Who will?” Lucy asked, bouncing Kate.

“Carl Hinkle, fellow who owns the shoe store around the corner,” she said.

A little while later the door opened and in walked a slender man wearing a parka over his brown suit, and shiny new loafers.

“Is this my happy couple?” His eyes found the MPs, then Kate, sitting in Lucy’s lap. “I see. I guess we better get a move on.”

“Is this legal?” Lucy asked.

He showed us his JP’s license, a slip of damp paper he produced from the folds of his wallet. Kate had begun to fuss, so we all waited while Lucy fed her, holding her inside her heavy coat.

“Do you want me to say a few words?” Carl asked me quietly. One of the MPs had brought a deck of cards, and the two of them and Darryl Tanner were playing a round of hearts. “Perhaps,” he offered, “given your situation, you’d like something quicker.”

“Take your time,” I said.

After the ceremony we signed some more papers and walked around the block to the shoe store, where Carl told Lucy and me to pick something out. Lucy selected a pair of black mary-janes, and little pink lace-ups for Kate. I tried on a pair of loafers, like Carl’s, but these seemed impractical given where I was headed, and I opted for a pair of steel-toed work boots instead. When we tried to pay, Carl refused.

“Comes with the service,” he explained. “Footwear is a living, but it’s the weddings that are my real calling.”

He kissed Lucy on the cheek, shook my hand and then my father’s. Outside by the jeep, Darryl Tanner officially transferred my custody to the MPs, and Hickock took out a pair of handcuffs from a compartment on his belt.

“I’m real sorry about this, Joe.”

“That’s okay. Could we do it in front?”

He shook his head. “Can’t. I’ll make ’em real loose, though.” He clicked the bracelets closed and regarded my feet. “Those are good boots,” he said.

The day was late. I looked toward the snowy sidewalk, where my father and Darryl were standing.

“You make sure my family gets home all right, Darryl. And Dad, look after my girls now. I’m counting on you.”

He nodded soberly. “You have my word, Joey.”

I kissed Lucy, then Kate, leaning against them. We were all three crying a little. It was me who stopped first, though that was only because somebody had to. Then the MPs helped me into the back of the jeep and took me away.

TWENTY

By two I’d seen neither Harry nor Hal (I’d spoken briefly with Frances as she made her way back and forth to the kitchen for sandwiches and sodas; no change, was the gist of what she said); the moose-canoers were still somewhere upstream floating our direction; Joe was still out with the lawyers at the old Zisko Dam; and I found myself with absolutely nothing to do but wait. I killed a couple of hours rebuilding the loose stair-risers to cabin three-whatever a three-stage, thirteen planetary gear system was, it drove a deckscrew like a champ-and when that was done, lubed and cleaned out a couple of the outboards, working down by the dock below Harry’s cabin. Once in a while I saw Hal step out with January, or Frances would appear to stretch and wave or head off to the kitchen or phone. Sometime after four, Lucy came down, bringing me a thermos of coffee and a bacon sandwich, and while I ate we sat together on the dock, just as we had done a thousand times before-spinning out the coming week’s details, the chores that needed to be done and who was coming in for how many days and which cabins needed to be tidied and stocked. When I’d finished my sandwich and thanked her, she rose, tucking the thermos under her elbow, and looked back at the cabin where Harry and his family were waiting out the afternoon.

“It just breaks my heart to see him like this,” she said. “You know, with everything else that’s gone on, it’s easy to forget that he’s just a human being, afraid to die like the rest of us.”

“You think he’s just trying to take his mind off it?”

“Some. Sure.” She pushed her bangs off her forehead, glazed with sweat in the afternoon heat. “He’s a proud man. You didn’t know him as a young man, but I did. One thing he was, was proud.”