Ozzie panted and heard only his breath and his pounding heart until his breathing slowed and the forest sounds rose to meet him. The notes were mostly calm and peaceful. Only the singing of distant frogs and crickets that sang their last songs of the Indian summer drowned out the last dying gasps of a trio of coyotes.

He looked to the sky. The full moon still shone its beacon brightly, and guided Ozzie home. As he began his descent to the camp he felt a chill, even though his muscles were flush from battle. A haunting chill as if a change was in the air. As if time was running out for something, someone. He trudged along and thought about his mother, as he lumbered past Hal’s garden and around the front of his cabin. He stood and watched Hal wail. Hal looked, saw three of Ozzie, and smiled at the one in the middle. Tammy raised her head and looked at Ozzie, at the blood that stained his tusks. She called to him with her eyes.

Ozzie stepped up onto the porch, lying down close to Tammy and drifting asleep. For the first time since he had been with Hal, nightmares didn’t chase him. Instead, Ozzie dreamed he was the one atop a mountain, looking over the expansive forest as he commanded the soil to wash away his enemies. To wash away anyone who meant to harm him.

Chapter 21

Rose walked out of the master bathroom and down the hall, stopping just for a moment to linger in the doorway to the girls’ bedroom. It was the first night in six years, since their first child had been born, that she had been separated from either of the girls. John bounded through the kitchen and began climbing the hardwood staircase to the master bedroom.

“You ready?” he asked as he glanced at his watch. “Dinner starts in half an hour.” Before Rose could answer, John looked up at her to see that she was ready. “Wow,” John said, stopping on the third step from the top. “You look— breathtaking.”

Rose tilted her head to her left shoulder slightly, just enough that her ebony hair flipped off her ear in a flirtatious way. She swept it back behind her ear with her right hand. “Thanks Johnny. It’s so quiet without the girls here.”

“Now, now,” John said. “You don’t want to change your mind, do you? Just a little R & R, me and you on the beach of a secluded Bahamas island.”

“Of course not,” she said, and smiled at John as he passed and walked to the bedroom to finish dressing.

The truth was that Rose would have been happy to stay home. The trip was John’s idea, one to which she eagerly agreed, but not because she wanted to be away from the girls. She knew the stresses that John had in his job, the relentless pressure he was under to keep customers, to win customers, to find and keep employees. Even with all the success of WallCloud, John often spoke of the pressure in managing cash flow. Rose didn’t understand the details the way John did, but she wasn’t ignorant of business finance. She knew that the business could be profitable on paper and still have trouble paying its bills at the same time, the result of having to pay money out before receiving payments from customers. When the business was stable and not growing, managing cash flow was pretty easy, John had always said. But the past few months had seen rapid growth.

“We’ll increase revenue by forty percent this year,” John boasted the month before, after winning a number of new accounts. And the company was well on its way, but the new business meant that John had to incur expenses up front, in the form of hiring more employees, additional computing capacity, increased health care costs—the list went on and on. Costs that had to be paid now, even though customers wouldn’t be on board until November. After waiting the customary thirty days to invoice them the cash wouldn’t start rolling in from them until they paid thirty days later, in January. Rose had always thought it was peculiar that the faster John grew the business, the more strapped the business was for cash. But WallCloud was John’s thing now. Rearing the girls and community volunteer work was largely hers. She knew that John needed a break from business even if she didn’t need a break herself.

Rose sat at the hallway computer for a second while waiting for John. She moved the mouse to deactivate the screen saver and stared at the email John had opened. It was the invitation he had received earlier in the day to the dinner. Rose perused the email and noted the address and directions. Then her eyes drifted to the bottom of the email, which read to her like a legal agreement. “Hey, John, did you read this legalese at the bottom of this email?”

John poked his head out of the master bathroom, his fingers running styling gel through his wavy brown hair. “Which one? The dinner invite?” John asked.

“Yes,” Rose said. “Get a load of this.” Rose mimicked a fast-paced voice the way a lawyer closes a commercial on a radio advertisement.

When you attend a 50-Forks dinner you’re attending a “dinner party” hosted by Nick Vegas at a private home. The home is not a restaurant, and has not participated in any health inspections. It is not subject to the standards required by law of a legally licensed restaurant. By attending the 50-Forks dinner you agree that you are attending a dinner party and not a restaurant, that you will not hold Nick Vegas or any member of 50-Forks liable, and that you willingly forfeit any right to sue any member of 50-Forks for any circumstances, including, but not limited to, food poisoning or any accident that may occur at, or as a result of, the event.

Rose paused and read the last sentence slowly in her own voice.

You’re eating at your own risk.

“He’s just covering his assets,” John said with a wink, as he elongated the first syllable of “assets.”

“Kinda takes the fun out of it,” Rose quipped. “Sounds pretty scary, actually.”

“Relax, honey. I don’t think Nick Vegas would do anything to risk his reputation,” John said. He pulled the chair out for Rose and took her hand as they walked down the stairs toward the garage.

***

John pulled the Lexus IS 350C around the gravel circular driveway that fronted the antebellum home, and parked after passing two dozen cars and two television vans that had already arrived. He walked around to open the door for Rose, a chivalrous act that Rose had resisted for years before finally relenting to John’s loving gesture. She smiled and took John’s hand as he helped her from the car. They walked, hand-in-hand, up the graded gravel drive and glanced into one of the vans as they passed. Three technicians were busy on high-end computers rendering real-time video of the visitors’ arrival and the chefs’ preparations. A cameraman stood at the base of the steps at the entrance and trained his camera on the two of them as they approached.

Don’t trip! Rose said to herself as a cameraman filmed her climbing the stairs of the front porch.

“You okay there, hon?” John asked.

Rose smiled nervously, but continued looking at the stairs. “Just don’t like these cameras,” she whispered.

John patted her hand to ease her as they arrived on the front porch.

“What kind of house is this?” Rose asked as they stood in the breezeway. John began to answer, but a kindly face at the top of the steps asserted itself.

“Why, this here’s a dogtrot, ma’am,” Wade Ferry said. “Or a possumtrot, if you prefer.” He smiled at John and extended his hand. “Howdy, John.”

“Hi, Wade,” John said, shaking Wade’s hand enthusiastically. “Thanks so much for the invite, really.” John looked to Rose. “Wade, you remember my wife, Rose, don’t you?”

Rose extended her hand and smiled at Wade, knowing him as both a kind man and an investor in John’s company.