Dottie’s glare did not lessen. “Sleeping with the enemy is about as close as you can get.”

Diana Prince had been in Newenham less than two months, but two months was plenty of time to learn that it was never wise to attempt to match wits with the bartender at Bill’s, whoever she happened to be that day. Meekly, the trooper paid her tab and returned to the post.

Waiting on the doorstep was Natalie Gosuk. “Ms. Gosuk,” Prince said, and held the door for the woman. She took off her hat and settled in behind the desk. “How may I help you?”

In the custom of the country, Gosuk kept her eyes and her voice low in response. “I want to see my son.”

“Yes,” Prince agreed, “so you said when you were in here yesterday. You still have the court order?”

Natalie displayed it.

“Is the foster parent denying you access?” Natalie looked confused, and Prince elaborated. “Won’t she let you see him?”

“She is not there. He is not there.”

Prince looked up and said sharply, “Do you mean she has taken him somewhere else? Have they moved? Left town?”

Natalie looked confused again, and Prince remembered the class in Native relations taught at the academy, which had stressed patience and courtesy when dealing with Alaskan citizens who spoke English as a second language. This was a Yupik woman, the product of a culture where a woman seldom raised her voice, where a problem was always resolved within the family. The fact that Natalie Gosuk, alone, was looking for help from a state trooper spoke volumes about how seriously she regarded her complaint. “Let’s start over, Ms. Gosuk,” she said. “Please. Have a seat.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Gosuk sat on the extreme edge of one of the two armchairs across the desk. Prince pulled an incident report from the file. “As I understand it, your son was placed with foster parents.”

“A woman.”

“Here in town.”

“Yes.”

“What is her name?”

“The woman who flies.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The woman who flies,” Natalie Gosuk repeated.

Diana Prince looked up from the form. “Do you mean Wyanet Chouinard?”

A nod.

“Your son is living with Wyanet Chouinard.”

Another nod.

Prince thought back to the morning before, to Natalie Gosuk’s first appearance at the post, of Liam’s subsequent distracted air, and identified the child in question for the first time. “You’re Tim’s mother.”

A third nod.

“One moment, please.” Diana looked up Gosuk, Timothy, on the computer, and her initial irritation at Liam not telling her the truth about Natalie Gosuk abated a little. “Ms. Gosuk, Tim was removed from your custody nearly two years ago.”

“I’m sober now,” Gosuk said, still staring at the floor. “I want to see my son.” She raised her eyes for the first time and held up the court order. “The judge says I can. She says the woman who flies must let me see him.”

Prince looked at the court order. “Did you go to the house?”

“Yes.”

“And did Ms. Chouinard refuse you entry? Would she not let you in?”

“The woman who flies is not there.”

“And your son is not in the house?”

“They say no.”

“Who says no?”

Gosuk gave an infinitesimal shrug. “The people who are there. I don’t know them.”

Prince looked at the clock. One-thirty. Of course the woman who flies was not there, she was at present providing air transportation for one Corporal Liam Campbell to Nenevok Creek. How very convenient. “Have you tried the airport?”

“I have no car.”

“How about a cab?”

“I have no money.”

Prince thought again of Liam’s description of Tim when Chouinard flew him out of Ualik, the bleeding wounds, the broken bones, the doctor’s warning that the boy might not regain his hearing in one ear, mercifully proved wrong by time and care. There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, Campbell had said. Natalie Gosuk had the might of the law on her side, and the court order in hand to prove it. Moreover, she was Tim’s mother.

On the other hand, babies should not be, should never be, hit. According to the official report, even one as sloppily filled out as this one by Sergeant Corcoran, the woman sitting in front of her had hit her baby. Repeatedly. Over a period of many years. She was also a drunk. Because she was sober now didn’t mean she would be tomorrow, or even tonight. Whatever genetic, societal, geographical, historical or financial pressures had combined to make this happen did not matter, only the result and the way Prince dealt with the result.

And then there was the boy. Liam Campbell said he had no wish to see his mother. He had rights, too.

Diana Prince was a trooper. She had sworn to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the state of Alaska. She held out her hand for the court order. “We’ll serve it this evening,” she said, “when everyone comes home.”

Newenham, September 3

“Hi,” Jim Wiley said without enthusiasm.

“Hi, yourself,” said Jo Dunaway, with even less.

“Hounded any bereaved fathers lately?”

“Ha ha,” Jo said, very carefully.

“I’m supposed to tell you to make yourself at home,” Jim said, waving a hand, “so make yourself at home. There’s beer in the fridge. We’ve got Tim’s room. You get the couch.”

“So I’ve been told.” She tried hard to keep the edge from her voice, but Luke Prior looked at her with his eyebrows raised. They were very nice eyebrows, to go with his very nice eyes, and it was only a bonus that he was at least ten inches taller and twenty pounds lighter than Jim Wiley. “Luke, this is Jim Wiley. Jim, this is Luke Prior.”

The two men sized each other up. One looked like a surly teddy bear. The other looked like a Greek god. “Good to meet you, Jim,” Luke said, extending a hand.

“Yeah, sure,” Jim said, clasping it briefly. There was a noise at the door onto the deck and he looked around. “Oh, and this is Bridget from Ireland. Luke Prior.”

Bridget smiled and came forward with her hand extended. “It’s Bridget Callahan, Luke.”

Luke’s very nice eyes had widened upon catching sight of Bridget, and he took her hand and bent his head over it in appreciation of her manifest charms. “I’m delighted to meet you, Bridget.”

The two of them were surveyed with varying degrees of mixed feeling by the other two people in the room. On one hand, Luke was poaching on Jim’s preserve. On the other hand, he was meanly delighted that Jo’s honey couldn’t keep his hands off other women. Jo, who on the now rapidly fading chance he might be a keeper had brought Luke to Newenham so Wy could vet him for her, felt much the same.

Jo remembered first that they were guests in this home and avoided open warfare by opening the refrigerator and peering inside. “Where’s Wy? You want something to drink, Luke?”

“Actually, I’m starving,” Luke said. “Anything in there to eat?”

“There’s leftover roast from last night,” Bridget said, bustling around the counter and all but elbowing Jo out of the way, who, truth be told, was no help in the kitchen and happy to step aside.

Jo rescued a couple of Coronas and handed one to Luke. She followed Jim out onto the deck, perched on the edge of the bluff that fell fifty feet to the bank of the river below. The sun was shining but there was a nip in the air that brought color to her cheeks, and a sharp breeze that ruffled her short blond curls. Clouds were forming low on the southeastern horizon, dark with purpose. Storm coming, she thought. Beneath the clouds the Nushagak flowed gray with silt into Bristol Bay, swiftly, as if in a hurry to finish the business of summer before winter set in and froze it into a winter highway for snow machines.

Jim wasted no time in going on the attack. “What’s Luke do?”

“He’s a business consultant.”

Jo could hear Jim as if he’d spoken the words out loud.Now there’s a perfect title for somebody who’s never held down a real job. She said, “Where’s Wy? You didn’t say.”