“There you are!” Patrick Cutter announced as he charged through the door. He dismissed Walt and Dryer without so much as a glance. “Been looking for you everywhere.”

“A little business to attend to,” Liz Shaler said. She looked over at Walt and he saw apology on her face.

Cutter’s arrival had slammed her back into the reality of her headlining his coveted conference. He wondered what it felt like to be drawn between power and money and one’s personal safety. He got his answer more quickly than he wanted.

“Well,” she said, pulling herself up out of the chair, but slowly, as if suddenly more heavy or painful. “I’ll count on you to keep me up on any developments, Walt. Day or night, okay?”

“Smoky-backroom deals?” Patrick Cutter said in his obligatory sarcasm.

“There’s been a murder in Salt Lake that has all the markings of a professional hit.” Walt’s voice was filled with frustration.

“Well, good,” Cutter said, without missing a beat. “We must have been given bad information. What a relief.” With a penetrating look, he challenged first Dryer, then Walt, and finally Shaler to contradict him.

Walt was about to when Liz Shaler caught his eye and silently called him off.

“Who needs a drink?” Cutter asked, ever the jovial host. “I’m buying.” He laughed at his own joke, took Liz Shaler by the elbow, and led her to the door before Walt gathered his courage.

As Cutter opened the door, there stood Stuart Holms, about to knock. For a moment tension filled the short space between Holms and Shaler.

“Your Honor,” Holms said.

“Mr. Holms,” Shaler returned.

“I know we’ve had our issues,” Holms said. “I was just wondering if we might get a minute together? I would hope we could both put the past behind us and keep an open mind toward the future.”

“From what I read in the press,” Liz Shaler said, “the past is hardly behind us. You’ve made your opinions of me abundantly clear.”

“I’d like to discuss that.”

Another palpable silence fell between them. “Let’s all get a drink!” Cutter moved her through the door. “Come on, Stu-let’s get this worked out.”

Liz glanced back at Walt furtively, still outwardly apologetic. With the music and the drone of excited conversation entering the room like a wave, Walt found himself making a parallel to Marie Antoinette’s lowering her head into the guillotine.

Three clocks tolled throughout the house within a few seconds of one another: 8 P.M.

He was late for dinner.

W alt joined his father at a table in the near corner of the Pioneer Saloon’s restaurant, just below a wall display of barbed wire. Jerry sat with his back to a pair of rawhide snowshoes. The tabletop was sealed in so many coats of polyurethane that it looked like a piece of amber.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“Nothing new.”

A bouncy waitress arrived. Walt ordered a house salad and ribs; his father, a bowl of corn chowder, a thick cut of prime rib, and another Scotch.

Jerry, already looking drunk, indicated a copy of The Express Weekender he’d been reading-a seasonal supplement to the town’s weekly paper. “This just in: You’ve got birds shitting in your county dog pound and a cougar snacking on yellow Lab mountain dogs. The Wild West certainly offers challenging crimes.”

Walt had no desire to mention Salt Lake and start an argument. “Beats working for a living!”

“You should patch it up with Gail for the sake of the kids.”

“Gail is where she should be, Dad. Leave it alone.”

“She’s your wife.”

“Was. The truth of the matter is, she was a great wife, a terrific wife, but a lousy mother. She never rose to the job, and knew she never would. Say what you want, but some women aren’t cut out for it, just as some guys aren’t. And she’s one of them. It was never going to work.”

“This is you talking.”

“She’d tell you the same thing, I promise.”

“It’s going to wreck the kids,” Jerry mumbled, trying to sip Scotch at the same time.

“Believe it or not, they’re way better than they were. Now when they see her it’s for a few hours, a half day at most, and she can handle that just fine. Thrives. She’d grown gloomy and short-tempered. It was a bad scene.”

“She’s your wife.”

“I know it violates your Ozzie and Harriet sensibilities, Dad, but it’s working. Leave it alone. If it ain’t broke-”

“But it is broke.”

“No, it’s not. And why we go around on this every time we talk, I don’t know. What’s with that?”

Five minutes passed in silence. Walt didn’t hear the nearby conversations, or the music, or the guys behind the grill calling out orders-only a droning whine in his ears that the beer would not quiet. His father’s voice saying, She’s your wife.

“Why the end run this afternoon? Why cut me out like that?” Walt said. “How can that possibly help anything?”

“You took that all personal. It wasn’t like that.”

“You can’t stand the thought of me running this, can you?”

“I never said that.”

A second Scotch was delivered, along with the salad and soup. Jerry ignored the soup.

“If she made the announcement early,” Walt said, “it might help.”

“You’ve had protection experience?” Jerry found this amusing. “Save your energy for this cougar.”

Another silence descended. Their meals were delivered.

“Is it so impossible that we all might actually work together?” Walt suggested.

“Is that your experience talking?”

“Where’s this coming from? What did I do to deserve this?”

Jerry made a point of dramatically checking his watch. “We don’t have near enough of that kind of time.”

“Don’t mix me up with Bobby.”

Jerry slapped the table. His drink jumped. He won the attention of a few nearby tables. He leveled his bloodshot eyes at Walt, wiped his wet lips with his napkin, and then carefully sawed through his slab of prime rib.

“I asked Myra and Kevin to join us for dessert,” Walt said. “If you don’t want to see them…”

“’Course I do.”

“Kevin needs us, Dad. Needs us as role models, not constantly at battle. Maybe we could declare a truce for a few minutes tonight.”

Jerry sought answers in his reflection in the drink. “What battle?”

“And at some point we’ve got to clear the air on Bobby’s death.”

The man’s eyes flashed darkly.

“Kevin and Myra need closure. Keeping it to yourself-”

“I’m not keeping anything to myself.”

“You think you’re protecting us. I know your heart’s in a good place on this. But it’s boomeranging.”

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” Jerry said.

“We can’t help Bobby, but we can put this family back together, Dad.”

“You and Gail are doing your part. Right?” Jerry pulled on the Scotch, rescuing the ice cubes from drowning. He peered out from beneath his brow, cruelly, then set the drink down without a sound.

Walt spotted Myra and Kevin by the grill, scanning tables. “Here they are,” Walt said. “Remember, Dad, he’s not a little boy anymore.”

Jerry drained the drink. “Shut the hell up.”