"Yeah, well, I know that now. I guess I needed someone to blame, you know. You were a big ol' white target."

Abel sat down on the sofa and put his hands on his knees. "I didn't see the big picture. I saw the evidence, and that was it. The evidence said you were guilty, so you were. Same thing with Maggie."

"Not like you were the only one."

"You want to sit down?" he asked.

Nicole shook her head. "I can't stay. I'm driving south. My son and my momma are in Knoxville, and I'm moving down there."

"You going to join the force?"

"No way, not for me. Forget that. I don't want to put anyone in prison ever again, know what I mean? I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand the idea of being wrong. No, momma's got a restaurant, I'll probably work there."

"What kind of restaurant? Chinese?"

Nicole laughed. "That's a good one. I forgot you could be funny."

"I guess I did, too."

She looked around the living room and frowned. "What the hell are you still doing here, Abel? Ain't it about time you got yourself a life? That whore you were married to is long gone, so why hang around?"

He winced, but she was right. His ex-wife had sucker punched him, and he was still sitting here gasping for air. "I wound up in a ditch, and I was stuck for so long I figured I must like it there," he said.

"Well, go down to the pancake breakfast at church and get yourself a chicky."

Abel snorted. "I forgot how to date about forty years ago."

"I'm not talking about dating, I'm talking about getting yourself some." She grinned. Her teeth were yellowed. She was ten years younger than he was, but they could have passed for the same age. He felt responsible.

"You won't believe this, but I miss having you as a partner," Abel said.

"That's 'cause I was the only one who would put up with your shit."

He nodded. "Yeah, you're right about that."

"What say you dump that Chinese barf, and you and I go to dinner someplace, huh? Before I leave town. For old times."

"My treat," he said.

"Damn right it's your treat."

Maggie tilted a bottle of imported lager to her lips and drained the last third, then tossed it into the pile of empties on the sand. "You know what I would have paid good money to see?" she said.

Stride and Serena both looked up, and the orange glow of the bonfire reflected on their skin.

"What?" Stride asked.

Maggie began giggling. "I would have loved to see your face when your beloved Bronco sank to the bottom of that lake."

Serena laughed, too.

"Hey," Stride said. "That's not funny."

The two women laughed so hard they had to hold onto each other to avoid spilling backward off the driftwood.

"Are you kidding?" Maggie said. "I can't believe you didn't dive in after it."

"That truck was a classic."

"Oh, Jonny, it was a piece of junk," Serena said. "It had like six hundred thousand miles on it."

"It was only a hundred and seventy-five," Stride said. He finished his own beer and retrieved the bratwurst that was blackening on a skewer and dripping fat with a rich sizzle onto the circle of flames. He blew on it and bit off its head and sighed. "Oh, man, that's good."

It was the middle of the night. The three of them had stayed on the beach behind Stride's house for hours, stoking the fire pit, watching the stars, and listening to the slap of lake waves a few yards away. The March night was cool, and snow lingered in patches on the sand, but winter had loosened its grip, giving sea-blue color back to the gray sky. The sweetness in the air tasted like spring. It was the time of year when every Minnesotan in the north knew that they weren't yet safe from a late fist of icy anger descending on the arrowhead, but time was on their side.

"I haven't shown you my new trick," Serena told Maggie.

"Go for it."

Serena breathed in slowly through her nose, swelling her chest until her lungs were completely filled with air. For weeks, she had been unable to take a deep breath without a fit of coughing. Now, she held it for fifteen seconds, then thirty, then forty-five.

"Honey, that's great," Maggie said. She added, "How are the legs?"

Stride saw Serena catch his eye before responding. It was sensitive ground. He was so used to thinking of Serena as tough that it brought him up short to find her breaking into tears over how she looked. He told her over and over to be patient and that, however it worked out, it didn't matter to him at all. That got him nowhere. It mattered to her.

"I'm not going to be modeling any swimsuits this summer," Serena said, and her voice had an edge. Stride thought the thin ice holding her up might give away again, but she took another deep breath. "But I'm doing better. It stings when I walk since the last surgery, but that only lasts a few days. It doesn't feel like alligator skin anymore."

The day before, she had lingered in front of a mirror. She hadn't done that in a long time.

"What about you?" Serena asked.

"Don't you worry about me," Maggie said, lifting her arms over her head. "It's spring. My favorite time of year. The lakes melt, the rivers melt, and the bodies all come drifting ashore. I feel like a catcher in the rye."

"You're just happy to be back," Stride said. "And you're drunk."

"I am. I'm a little drunk, I'm back on the job, and I'm rich enough to buy and sell you both, so be nice to me."

"Do we want to know just how much money you've got now?" Serena asked.

"You don't. You really don't. But don't complain, because I bought the bats. I mean, I brought the brats. Whatever."

"Yeah, but I bought the beer," Stride said. "And you're on your fifth beer."

Maggie laughed again, a happy, drunken laugh, a laugh that forgot everything else in the world.

"Speaking of the spring thaw," Stride said quietly.

He was drunk, too, but when he was drunk, he brooded. He had been dwelling on the bad news all day, and now it bubbled out of him. He could never entirely escape. It was like living on the Point, in the shadow of the lake. There were long, gorgeous summer days, cool spring breezes, a watercolor pallet of fall leaves, and winter mornings where each twig on each bare tree was sheathed in a silver wrap of ice. Every moment was beautiful and fleeting, but lurking behind all of them was the mass of the lake, which took lives and didn't give them back, which was like the foggy shroud of evil that was always gathering behind him. It was impossible to outrun.

Serena, who wasn't drinking anything harder than mineral water, recognized the sadness in his tone. "What happened?"

"Tony left a calling card," he said.

"Oh, man," Maggie murmured. "What did he do?"

"I got a call from the police in Hassman," Stride said. "When the snow melted on the highway shoulder this week, they found a woman's body."

Maggie and Serena absorbed the information in silence. The wind took that moment to gust off the water.

"Do they know who it is?" Serena asked.

"They think so. A woman named Evelyn Kozlak has been missing for several weeks out of Little Falls. Turned out she was Helen Danning's college roommate and best friend. That's how Tony tracked Helen down. He knew them both at the U."

"Shit," Maggie said. She added, "And you know what really sucks? I actually liked him. I have a hard time getting past that."

"Me, too," Serena said. "He helped both of us."

"You helped yourselves," Stride told them. "Tony just happened to be in the room."

"Helen's the one I really feel bad about," Maggie said. "She wasn't part of any of this. She just wanted to live her life and be left alone. Instead, she and her friend got sucked into a hurricane. Makes me feel pretty helpless."

"We're not in prevention," Stride told her. "We're in cleanup."

Maggie stood up and brushed sand off her jeans. "On that cheery note, boys and girls, I'm going to go home and sleep for a couple hours. You two can do whatever it is you do in that bed of yours."