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  Venus’ room at the Home for the Incurables was on the top floor in the back of the house, a cozy room with its own bath and sitting room. But most nights unless she was between relationships she spent away.

  “I’m kind of a sex addict, Georgie,” Venus had said. “I can’t seem to help it.”

  “OONA’S HERE!” THOMAS called from the vestibule. “And Jesse.”

  “And Uncle Nicolas,” Nicolas called.

  Nicolas had come alone—straight from the airport on a regular domestic flight from Detroit, where Obama was speaking. He’d left his work with the Obama Press Corps traveling in the first leg of his campaign for president in order to arrive in time for Georgie’s birthday, stopping at home to pick up Oona and Jesse.

  “Georgie my singular mother.” Nicolas kissed the top of her head. “Happy birthday. What news today? Thomas tells me something is up.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “Thomas? Are you kidding? And miss the opportunity for a dramatic revelation? So you have news?”

  “I do,” Georgie said.

  UPSTAIRS SHE HAD dressed for the evening. A fitted gray-lavender top, tight at the waist with an Asian-style stiff collar and black trousers. She had the figure for it—a long neck, long-waisted, flat stomach. Hips. She still wore deep red lipstick and blush on her high cheekbones, her hair swept up in combs.

  Just before she went downstairs, she slipped Roosevelt’s letter from the folds of a black camisole and tucked it into the waist of her trousers.

  SMALL—THE GROUP ASSEMBLED on the night of December 17 at the long refectory table in the dining room.

  Nicolas and Rosie and Venus, Nicolas with Oona, who was four, and Jesse, a sullen, ill-tempered fifteen. Rosie and Thomas. Venus, solo, although she had a new boyfriend, but as she told her family, she had only spent the night with him once.

  Not good enough, she said about her overnight. Quick to come to decisions.

  Kubla, Thomas’ curly-coated retriever puppy was under the table chewing a snow boot belonging to Rosie. The cats sleeping around the living room, as if they had been acquired for decoration and obliged.

  The other permanent residents of the Home—eight of them that December—were upstairs in their rooms or out to dinner or spending the evening with friends. By request, they were not to use the kitchen.

  “I do have news,” Georgie said when they sat down at the table.

  “Shall I say grace?” Nicolas asked, as if grace before dinner were a part of family ritual.

  “I thought grace was about God,” Thomas said. “Like the grace of God that passeth all understanding.”

  “Grace is a variable,” Georgie said.

  “Whatever,” Jesse said, a word he’d recently added to his small vocabulary, which included brain dead and fuck.

  Georgie took Roosevelt’s letter out of the waistband of her trousers, flattening it with the palm of her hand. She reached over and pulled the lit candelabra to her place at the table so she could see to read.

  “Here comes trouble,” Nicolas said.

  “This is a letter I received today,” she began, ignoring Nicolas, “written on Camp Minnie HaHa stationery from a man called Roosevelt McCrary who was on the trip when my mother was killed.”

  “This is not boding well,” Nicolas said.

  “Let her read it, Nicolas,” Rosie said. “It’s her birthday.”

  “Don’t talk about Georgie in the third person,” Venus said. “She’s sitting right here in front of us about to read a letter of great importance. I can see her. Voilà!”

  “I don’t know what’s coming in that letter, Georgie,” Nicolas said, “but I’m amazed—we are all amazed except maybe Thomas—at how easily you float between the real world and an imagined one when after all you’re a scientist.”

  “This news is the real world,” Georgie said, “and I have decided to make tonight a celebration of Roosevelt’s arrival in my life. That’s all.”

  “His arrival?” Nicolas asked. “Apparently he has always been in your life but you failed to tell us.”

  “I didn’t know. I read about him in the newspaper reports of what happened when my mother was killed, but I’ve never heard from anyone who was on the trip, so Roosevelt’s letter after so many years, nearly my lifetime, was a complete surprise.”

  Nicolas poured himself another glass of wine.

  He was as tall as Charley had been, dark-haired and wiry, with an edge that put his family slightly on guard. An occasional temper.

  “Why should the appearance of Roosevelt be good news?” he asked.

  “I didn’t say it’s good news or bad,” Georgie said. “It’s news that makes me very happy. That’s all.”

  “It’s very good news and it makes me happy too,” Thomas said. “Finally we’ll get to know for real whether Georgie’s father killed his wife on June 17, 1941. Or not.”

  HER CHILDREN SELDOM talked about Georgie’s past. Not her mother’s murder, nor her father’s confession, except among themselves and that occasionally since it had been their father’s death in Vietnam that dominated their childhoods.

  But if the subject of the murder came up, Georgie would say—known to dramatize her life as if the one she had lived needed extra effort—that her father was innocent and confessed to the murder to protect someone else.

  “It’s complicated news, Thomas,” Nicolas said. “More than you can possibly understand. We’re living in present time and the past, at least in this family, is very disturbing.”

  “How come disturbing?” Thomas asked.

  “Come off it, Thomas,” Nicolas said. “In an ordinary family, it would be disturbing to know that your grandfather had killed his wife.”

  “It may be that Roosevelt has something on his mind to tell us,” Georgie said. “We may get news.”

  “I’m sure he does have something on his mind.” Nicolas got up from the table to attend the fire.

  “He probably needs money,” Venus said.

  “It’s nothing about money,” Georgie said. “Roosevelt McCrary was eleven years old and happened to be at Missing Lake when everything exploded. My father had hired him to work at the camp that summer. Of course, he probably does know something.”

  Venus got up from the table, heading to her room.

  “I’m going to read your cards tonight, Georgie,” Venus said. “I’ll do it right now, if you’d like.”

  “She wouldn’t like it now, Venus,” Nicolas said. “We’re about to eat and drink. A lot—especially a lot of drink.”

  “Be a little sensitive, Nicolas,” Rosie said. “Georgie’s right. Roosevelt might very well know something.”

  “Something, I’m sure,” Nicolas said. “But it may be something we’d rather not know ourselves.”

  “Who exactly are we?” Venus asked.

  “We are the originals. Seven of us sitting at this table related by blood,” Georgie said. “When we go to Camp Minnie HaHa in June to meet Roosevelt, we’ll have a chance to find out what he knows.”

  “We?” Nicolas asked.

  “That’s my birthday present to myself,” Georgie said. “I’m taking all of you with me next summer to Camp Minnie HaHa to meet Roosevelt.”

  “That will not include me,” Nicolas said.

  “It will include you, Nicolas,” Georgie said cheerfully. “I have already written to Roosevelt that we’re coming and reserved the canoes.”

  THE BONE RIVER

  June 16, 2008

  They arrived at five at Blake’s Lodge and Outfitters in Riverton, Wisconsin. The town of Riverton was no more than a gas station, a convenience store and Blake’s located on the edge of the Bone River, roaring this early evening as if a storm were charging up from the riverbed. The six of them had left from Washington Reagan, meeting Nicolas at Chicago O’Hare and driving north in a large rental van that seated seven. Georgie’s plan, arranged to accommodate Nicolas’ schedule on the campaign with Obama, was to be gone two days and three nights,
the first night in the lodge in Riverton. One day on the river to Missing Lake, where they would spend the night. A short day to Minnie HaHa for the second night. Late the following morning, a worker from the Outfitters would drive their rental van up to Minnie HaHa to pick up the family. A motorboat from the Outfitters would pick up the three canoes at the dock of the camp and take them back to Riverton. Georgie’s family would drive on to Chicago in the rental van to board their flight to Washington and Nicolas’s to meet the Obama team in Michigan. Hillary Clinton had withdrawn from the presidential race in early June and it was possible that Obama, running against John McCain, would be the next president of the United States, which made it all the more difficult for Nicolas to be away from the campaign.

  When he met his family in Chicago, he was at a low boil.

  The owner of the outfitters, Mr. Blake, had told Georgie there was no reason to make such complicated arrangements with canoes and a pickup van.

  “I understand it was hard to get to the camp in 1941, Ms. Grove, but it’s 2008 and we’ve got roads and you could be up there in a van and back in Chicago in a day and a half and never have to get in a canoe.”

  “That’s not the point,” Georgie said. “This is a canoe trip and I’m happy to pay whatever extra costs for you to pick up the canoes and us.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “We’re glad to have you.” There was a pause. “You’re familiar with canoes on rivers, I assume.”

  “Rivers, lakes. I haven’t been in a canoe for a long time, but I can surely paddle,” Georgie said.

  “There’s a difference between canoeing on a lake and canoeing on a river.”

  “Yes, of course,” Georgie said.

  “Current,” Mr. Blake said. “Bring warm clothes.June is cold.”

  And that was that.

  “GEORGIE?” NICOLAS ASKED, leaving the lodge after they had made the arrangements with Mr. Blake, paid the rest of the bill, gotten their room keys for the night. “Did you check out the current on the river?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “It’s a calm evening.”

  Nicolas walked with Georgie to the bank—dusk, a beautiful crisp summer night, the moon clear and slender.

  “What do you think?” Nicolas asked.

  “About the current?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Listen.”

  “I can see it.”

  “We’re not exactly a boating family.”

  “Well, maybe not, but you went to camp and so did Venus and Jesse. Rosie says Thomas is excellent on the water.” She inched down the bank. “I know how to canoe. I mean I’ve been out in a canoe on the Potomac River.”

  “Once?”

  “Or twice.”

  “At least we need to ask Mr. Blake some questions about this river. I know nothing about rivers and I think our family would justifiably be considered novices.”

  “We’ll take life preservers.”

  “Well, of course. But look at the water. Even in a life preserver …”

  “I understand, Nicolas. I know what you’re saying and I did take danger into account when I was planning this trip.” She spoke with a calm exasperation that had developed over years of teaching.

  But in actual fact, Georgie had taken very little into account.

  Canoes on a river, a narrow river in northern Wisconsin with four adults. Easy to swim to the bank if a canoe capsized. Or so it appeared. Certainly they wouldn’t put in if there were a storm. They’d take every precaution. But she actually had not given danger any thought. She believed herself capable of accommodating circumstance. An orphan, a widow, a self-supporting mother of three children. Traveling solo in Africa for her work, living in tents among the wildlife, taking small planes, open jeeps. No parents, no husband, the full measure of responsibility on her watch. Had she thought too much of danger as a young mother with the world imploding around her, she would have crawled under the covers in her four-poster and called 911.

  Help. Three unattended children. Take them to good homes.

  She followed Nicolas up the hill to the lodge.

  “My idea is that you’re in the lead canoe with Thomas and Oona in the center,” Nicolas was saying. “I’m in the back with Venus and supplies, and Jesse is with Rosie.” He grabbed her hand since the hill was slippery with mud. “And if you think Rosie can paddle a canoe, you are even more deluded than I thought.”

  The lights were out in Mr. Blake’s office, so he must have closed up shop, it being nearly dark and a wind picking up.

  “Well …” Georgie said drifting off, uneasy with Nicolas when he was in a mood.

  He was given to short bursts of temper or biting sarcasm, even as a boy, a fatherless boy in a houseful of girls, with a mother in charge.

  “Well?”

  “Did I tell you that it was actually a Tuesday, June 17 in 1941, when my mother was killed at Missing Lake. And tomorrow, June 17, 2008, is also a Tuesday.”

  A light wind blew her hair across her face and she piled it in a clip on top of her head.

  “Serendipity,” she said.

  “Miraculous,” Nicolas replied, his irritation evident.

  “I’m not suggesting it’s miraculous, Nicolas, but it is an interesting coincidence.”

  MR. BLAKE WAS STANDING beside Rosie, seated with the rest of the family at a round table in the lodge.

  “We were just checking the river,” Nicolas said.

  “A little frisky tonight,” Mr. Blake said. “There might be a storm.”

  “Let’s say there’s a storm,” Nicolas said. “and we’re in our tents at the campsite. What happens?”

  “The river police patrol in their boats starting around seven in the morning when the sun is up.”

  “What about cell phone service?”

  “Nada!” Mr. Blake said. “If you run into trouble in the night, you have to wait it out ’til morning. But there are two, sometimes three, boats patrolling the Bone every day. We haven’t had a problem for four, maybe five years, but you’re in the wilderness from here on out.”

  “No cell phone,” Nicolas said shaking his head. “Nightmare.”

  “What about the storm tonight?” Rosie asked.

  “It’s called for tomorrow—a possibility of lightning midday. If that’s the case, you could stay here another night and wait for the weather to clear. Weather is usual in this part of Wisconsin.”

  “We can’t,” Georgie said quickly. “We have to be at Missing Lake on the night of the seventeenth.”

  “But if there’s a storm, I’d advise you …”

  “We’ll wait until tomorrow morning and decide if there’s a storm. But the whole trip is predicated on arriving at Missing Lake tomorrow afternoon.”

  Nicolas shook his head, exchanging a glance with Mr. Blake.

  “We’ll make it to Missing Lake,” Thomas said. “No worries, Georgie.”

  “I have no worries,” she said.

  Dinner was silent and tense.

  Roasted chicken family style, beer and coleslaw—six tables in the lodge, strangers, no different than Georgie’s group of seven, young and older, one grandfather, elderly but fit enough. Not exactly dressed as if they were at home on rivers.

  “So guys,” Thomas said. “All these people are going upriver tomorrow and they look excited.”

  “Expert canoeists, all of them, you can tell,” Venus said. “I bet they canoe four times a week.”

  “No one canoes four times a week,” Thomas said.

  “Whatever,” Jesse said. “I hate canoes.”

  “My personal plan is to lie on my back and look at the sky rolling by,” Venus said.

  “You’ll be paddling bow, Venus, looking straight ahead at the river and there’ll be no room service,” Nicolas said.

  “I’m actually really scared,” Rosie said. “I didn’t sign up for trouble.”

  “Well, I did,” Thomas said.

  Georgie was quiet, resting her chin in her hand, looking off into the middle distance.
r />   At the bar, a couple was kissing.

  “Yuck,” Jesse said.

  “Don’t look at them if they offend you, Jesse,” Nicolas said.

  “I can’t help it,” Jesse said. “The woman keeps staring at us.”

  Georgie looked over at the bar. The woman, tall, dark, curly hair, was standing on one foot, half off the stool, her hand on the man’s crotch, the other around a glass of beer. The woman turned and stared at Georgie.

  “She’s drunk,” Nicolas said. “Or crazy.”

  “How do you know?” Jesse asked.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t stare,” Georgie said. “We’ll embarrass her.”

  “She’s not the kind of woman who embarrasses,” Nicolas said.

  After dinner, late, Nicolas, himself a little drunk, corralled the others to stay with him at the bar while Georgie took Oona up to a third-floor bedroom. She climbed into the double bed, still in her clothes, Oona’s body pressed close, her soft curls silky on Georgie’s cheek, her eyes half-closed.

  Occasionally, as was happening now, Georgie would find herself staring at Oona unaware, as if to cross some mysterious boundary between them—as if there were no lines of demarcation and what Georgie saw or wished to see in Oona was herself.

  Herself at four years old believing in the mercy of the world.

  “Does Oona know why we are taking this trip?” Georgie asked Nicolas in the van on the way to Blake’s.

  “I don’t know why we’re taking this trip, Georgie.”

  “I wonder if she knows what murder means?” she asked. “I certainly haven’t told her. Have you?”

  “I haven’t told her because she hasn’t asked. I operate on your terms.”

  “But certainly she’s heard the word tossed around the house enough.”

  “Either she doesn’t know or she isn’t curious enough to ask. The word fuck is interesting to children. Murder not so much.”

  Georgie was quiet—thinking of herself, how long it was before she actually understood what had happened at Missing Lake, how long before she recognized that among her friends in Ann Arbor, her childhood had been unusual.