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“At least he’s not a pedophile.” Jesse rests his head in his arms, his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. “That’s what Rosie means.”

  “Where did you pick up the word pedophile, Jesse?”

  “That was your description of Roosevelt this morning, Dad.”

  “Well don’t use it. Don’t use fuck either.”

  “I never do.”

  They sit around the table waiting, trying to think of something, anything, to say into the stillness of the room.

  Anything to alleviate the hollow echoes in the vast damp loneliness of the lodge.

  Nicolas paces the fireplace from one side to the other, his hands fisted—hitting the jagged stone with his right hand until it’s bloody, hitting the same place each time so the stone is bloody. He stops and licks the blood from his hand.

  “Dad!” Jesse says. “Don’t drink your own blood.”

  “He needs to, Jesse,” Venus says. “He needs to go back and forth and back and forth and hit the stone so it cuts his hand. A pattern. I get it.”

  “What is taking that guy so long,” Jesse asks.

  “Roosevelt,” Rosie says. “Not that guy.”

  “I know,” Jesse says. “Roosevelt.”

  “I hear him coming now,” Venus says. “His heavy boots.”

  Roosevelt comes through the door and down the steps, Mercy beside him.

  Under his arm, he has a roll of paper—long—the size of a large map.

  “Did you find out anything?” Rosie asks.

  “No concrete news, but I got the police. This is the first they heard she was missing, but they told me they’ll be back in touch as soon as they know anything.”

  He sets the roll of paper on the table and goes into the kitchen, soon bringing out a tray of hot blueberry muffins and waffles.

  “You don’t know anything else?” Venus asks.

  “That’s it. I have suspicions but no evidence. And the police aren’t interested in suspicions right now. My guess is the river police are already patrolling and likely at the campsite.”

  “We’re interested in suspicions, so what do you suspect?” Rosie asks.

  “Just ordinary suspicions a person has if you’ve lived in a place for a long time, especially isolated like this,” he says unrolling the map, anchoring it with two glass pitchers.

  “Help yourself to breakfast.”

  He leans over the table, the map under his hand—Jesse and Rosie beside him.

  “Just so you can see the topography of the campsite at Missing Lake.”

  “Nicolas?” Rosie calls.

  Nicolas has moved away from the fireplace across the room to the windows overlooking the Bone River, standing with his back to them, very still, his forehead against the window pane.

  “Here is where you were last night,” Roosevelt is saying, pointing to the campsite. “On this section of the river you can only access civilization on the east bank by walking this path—he points to the path behind the campsite. “The path is overgrown and rocky, but it goes to the town of Missing Lake about three miles east of the campsite. The forest that surrounds the path is too dense to navigate. There’re fallen trees and branches and thick underbrush. It’s wilderness really on both sides of the river.”

  He puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “That’s why it’s difficult in this part of Wisconsin to be in touch when there’s an emergency.”

  “I guess Georgie didn’t ask that question when she made reservations with the outfitters,” Rosie says.

  “What I can tell you about the campsite at Missing Lake is that it would be almost impossible for a person to penetrate the woods,” Roosevelt says. “They’d need to come from the town of Missing Lake on foot and with intention.”

  “What are you saying?” Rosie asks.

  “I’m saying that very likely, unless a little girl decided to walk to Missing Lake alone at night, the person who took her from the tent is from the town of Missing Lake three miles out from the campsite.”

  “Kidnapped, not took,” Venus says.

  “Do you know anyone who lives in Missing Lake?” Jesse asks.

  “I do,” Roosevelt says rolling the map, sticking it under his arm. “I know everyone there.”

  Nicolas has moved away from the window, pacing the length of the lodge in flip-flops so the rubber slaps against the floor with every step he takes.

  “Breakfast?” Roosevelt asks him as Venus and Rosie slip into the benches around the table.

  “I don’t want breakfast,” Nicolas says.

  “Nothing?” Roosevelt asks. “Not coffee?”

  “Nothing.”

  “This is going to drive me crazy,” Venus says. “We have to eat, Nicolas.”

  “I don’t blame him. He’s too upset to eat,” Roosevelt says, taking a seat at the table next to Rosie. “What about Jesse?” he asks of Jesse, who lies on the couch in front of the fireplace, a baseball cap covering his face.

  Rosie shakes her head.

  “I doubt he’ll eat.”

  “You used the word suspicion,” Venus says. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Not really a suspicion,” Roosevelt says. “Missing Lake is an odd town, out of touch with the world.”

  “Is there anyone in particular you think could be suspicious?” Rosie asks.

  “Possibly,” he hesitates, clearing his throat. “There is a woman in town who got pregnant by the pharmacist some years ago and the child was stillborn. She went a little crazy after the child was dead.”

  “Are you suggesting that she would take a child out of a tent in the middle of the night?” Rosie asks.

  “I suppose that is what I’m saying. She’s not …” He pauses, considering. “She’s not exactly normal.”

  The slap-slap-slap of flip-flops ceases and Nicolas, standing just beyond the table, is listening.

  “She pretends her baby is alive and growing up,” he says, pouring more coffee. “Her house in the Shallows behind town is filled with children’s books and toys and clothes on hangers.”

  “Poor girl,” Venus says.

  “But there isn’t anything bad about her. Just missing parts in her brain.”

  “She sounds obsessive,” Venus says. “I know about obsessive because I am one. Reformed.”

  “Are you saying this woman you know about with a child fetish is mentally ill?” Nicolas asks.

  “She is. Mentally ill but harmless.”

  “How can you say harmless?” Nicolas asks. “Who knows about harmless in another person?”

  “I know,” Roosevelt says. “She wouldn’t hurt a child.”

  “Fuck!” Nicolas slams his already-bloody fist into the stone fireplace again and again. “A child safe with a mentally ill woman? Bad thinking,” he says to Roosevelt. This place is insane.”

  “Don’t break your hand, Dad.” Jesse covers his ears.

  “I want to break my hand,” Nicolas says.

  Roosevelt heads into the kitchen, Mercy at his heels.

  “I trust him, Nicolas,” Rosie says. “I have an instinct.”

  “So do I,” Venus says.

  Nicolas slips to the floor, his back to the fireplace, his head resting on his knees, his injured hand weeping blood.

  “I hope he doesn’t bang his head against the fireplace,” Venus whispers across the table.

  His long, low growl fills the room.

  “I can’t stand to watch him.” Venus covers her eyes.

  At the top of the steps, Roosevelt stops, shaking his head.

  “This is an awful introduction to all of you,” he says. “I am so sorry.”

  He sits on the bench beside Rosie and lays his hand on top of hers.

  “Tell us about Missing Lake,” Venus says, tears running down her cheeks. “Just talk so there will be another sound in the room besides Nicolas.”

  Roosevelt rests his elbows on the table.

  “Is it just a regular small midwestern town near a river?” she asks.

  “It’s too
remote to be an altogether ordinary place,” he says. “Young people used to go along that path behind the campsite— it’s the only way to get to the river from the town and when they got to the river, they did bad things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sex, alcohol, probably drugs. A boy died once swimming with too much to drink.”

  “Could there have been teenage boys last night?” Rosie asks.

  “That’s not possible—there are no teenage boys,” Roosevelt says. “A few years ago, the women left. They packed their belongings, took their children, left their husbands or boyfriends or took them along, but most of the men were not willing to go.”

  “Why?” Venus asks.

  “The women were bored, the kids were bored, the men spent the evenings at the pool hall or the bar. It’s that kind of place.”

  “No children? No women at all?” Rosie asks

  “A few women like the woman I mentioned, but no children at all,” he says. “The school closed down. Now it’s just this place where I go to get supplies and hardware and leave when I’m done shopping.”

  He gets up to pour more coffee.

  “And no black people live there,” he says. “That’s another thing.”

  “Why does the woman you mentioned stay there if most of the women have left?” Rosie asks.

  “She has her reasons.”

  “So you know her?” Venus asks.

  “I do.”

  Roosevelt speaks slowly and with care.

  “I know her well enough not to worry that she will harm anyone but herself,” he says.

  Nicolas, holding his injured hand, collapses on the bench at the far end of the table.

  “Do you know about our family?” Rosie asks.

  “Only William,” Roosevelt says.

  “Georgie knows nothing about her father,” Rosie says. “Did she tell you that? Nothing. He left a letter for her just before he died. That’s all. One letter from prison.”

  “I was fifteen when William died in prison in 1945,” Roosevelt says. “The owners of the camp—one was William’s uncle Irving—invited me back then. But I didn’t come, and later I did.”

  “It seems like a strange place for you to land,” Rosie says.

  “Strange, yes—for a man like me from Washington, D.C,” he says. “My mother and William were close. He lived for a while at his uncle’s house, where she was a cook, and before she died, she told me stories about him.”

  “What do you remember about him?” Venus asks.

  Roosevelt hesitates, resting his chin in his hand, looking off into the middle distance before he speaks.

  “A lot,” he says. “When a person you love dies, you remember what you need to remember to keep him in your life.”

  “You loved him?” Rosie asks.

  “I did.”

  Roosevelt sets a plate of waffles on the floor for Mercy.

  “She’s fifteen. I give her whatever she wants,” he says.

  He kisses the top of her head.

  “You were at the campsite when Georgie’s mother died?” Nicolas asks, subdued, holding his injured hand.

  “Murdered,” Roosevelt says, as if the fact of it still surprises him. “I wrote Georgianna a letter for her birthday.”

  “She read the letter at the birthday dinner she gave for herself,” Nicolas says, shaking his head. “You would have thought …”

  “We’ve seen the story in the Chicago Tribune,” Venus says.

  “Your mother’s name is on the list of people who were at the campsite,” Rosie says, “but I guess you were too young to be mentioned by name.”

  “I was mentioned. Negro boy child, age 11,” he says. “My mother had that paper and I read it too.”

  He pours more coffee from a blue and white enamel coffee pot, spilling just a little with each cup.

  “How well did you know him?”

  “I knew him well,” he says. “I was a baby and without a father when William came from Lithuania to live at his uncle’s house, where my mother and grandmother worked.”

  “Georgie has no idea you knew him well unless you told her,” Rosie says.

  “I didn’t tell her,” he says. “I have waited until we are face-to-face.”

  Roosevelt wipes down the table, carries the dishes to the kitchen, stacks the glasses in the sink. Rosie leans against the kitchen door, Venus at the sink washing.

  He reaches in his pocket, takes out a cheese stick, dips it in the pitcher of maple syrup and drops it in Mercy’s mouth.

  “She eats well,” he says.

  “Do you ever think about what happened when our grandmother was killed?” Rosie asks.

  “I think about it all the time. Even now after so many years, I still think about it.”

  “Did Georgie tell you that she believes her father was innocent?” Rosie asks.

  “She thinks he was protecting someone else and that’s why he confessed to a murder he didn’t commit,” Venus says.

  “Well …” But the telephone is ringing and Roosevelt heads to the office. “I’m guessing it’s the police,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ll finish the dishes.”

  Venus turns on the hot water and sprays the plates.

  “There are beds for you up the stairs from the kitchen,” Roosevelt says, closing the office door. “Make yourself at home.”

  “What are you thinking?” Venus asks when the phone stops ringing.

  “What else to think about but Oona,” Rosie says.

  “I have bad feelings.” Venus leans against the sink.

  “Don’t tell Nicolas,” Rosie says.

  They finish washing the dishes, drying them, putting them on the open shelves, and come back to the table.

  When Roosevelt comes down the steps from the office, he is carrying a large framed photograph.

  “News?” Venus asks.

  “The river police from Riverton went in motorboats to search the banks of the river, and they’re there now,” Roosevelt says. “The police report that the campsite is empty. There’s no canoe. No evidence of camping.”

  “That means Georgie must have left the campsite, right?” Nicolas lifts his head.

  “Someone had to take the canoe,” he says.

  “If that’s the case, I bet she’s found Oona,” Rosie says. “Otherwise she wouldn’t leave.”

  “Or not,” Venus says. “The police might have told her that they have the kidnapping covered and Georgie should get in the canoe and come here.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Rosie says.

  ROOSEVELT PUTS THE PHOTOGRAPH down on the counter.

  “Your grandfather,” he says.

  They have only seen one photograph of William, and that sits on the round table in Georgie’s bedroom, likely taken at camp. He is leaning against the large trunk of a deciduous tree, shadows of leaves across his shirt.

  In the present photograph on the counter, William is on the porch of the lodge, his arms folded across his chest, a stripe of light across his torso. He’s wearing shorts, a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, unsmiling, his expression serious, his large, dark eyes intense.

  On the copper plate affixed to the bottom of the frame and written in small block letters—WILLIAM GROVE, DIRECTOR CAMP MINNIE HAHA, SUMMER 1939.

  “I discovered this photograph among a lot of photographs of your grandfather, but this one looks just like William as I remember him, so I had it framed for my office and had the metal plate made to honor him.” Roosevelt says. “I don’t know if it was taken in 1939, but that was the year I was nine and William sent me a birthday card with two fifty-dollar bills. I’d never seen a fifty-dollar bill.”

  He takes the photograph into the main room and rests it against the wall on the mantel.

  “I’ll leave it here for Georgianna when she comes.”

  “Which could be soon,” Rosie says.

  “Then we should go down to the river and wait for her to arrive.” Roosevelt ch
ecks his watch. “Surely if the canoe is gone from the campsite, she should be headed here.”

  Nicolas sits up on the couch, his phone in his good hand. Jesse beside him.

  “Any luck with reception?” Roosevelt asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “You should go to the end of the diving board and try it.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Parents when they come to bring their kids to camp have told me they occasionally get reception late morning at the end of the diving board.” He shrugs. “Who knows? I don’t have a cell phone.”

  IT’S COOL NEAR THE RIVER, and the sun, halfway to noon, deconstructs the landscape with light. Warm on their faces. Nicolas has walked back to the dock and is sitting on the end of the diving board swinging his legs.

  “Have a chair,” Roosevelt says, indicating the Adirondacks lined up on the bank of the river.

  Venus lies on the grass, her arm over her eyes to keep out the sun.

  “Have you called Mom?” Jesse calls to his father.

  He is sitting beside Venus.

  “Dad?”

  “No reason to upset her until I have something to say,” Nicolas says.

  “But you have something to say,” Jesse says.

  “Yes, I do. But it’s something upsetting.”

  “Do you have a cigarette?” Jesse asks Venus.

  “I’m a reformed addict. I don’t have anything but squished M&M’s.”

  “May I have those?”

  She hands him the flattened package of regular M&M’s.

  “I’m sorry, Jesse,” she says gently.

  “I didn’t even like Oona very much until she disappeared,” he says.

  Rosie kicks off her flip-flops and stretches out next to Jesse, leaning up against him.

  “They’ll be okay,” she says.

  “Who?” Jesse asks. “Thomas?”

  “And Georgie and Oona.”

  “Georgie knows what she is doing,” Jesse says.

  “Georgie?” Nicolas says. “What makes you think that Georgie knows what she’s doing?”

  “She’s just the kind of person who knows things,” Jesse says.

  “Sometimes,” Venus says, “and sometimes she doesn’t.”

  She wraps her arms around her knees.

  “This promises to be the longest day in my life,” Nicolas says.

  “Well, I trust Georgie,” Jesse is saying.