“Which is then signing it over to the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. They’re not going to be clear-cutting the place. They’re going to put a stop to all development. And logging. The PLA people should be doing the happy dance over this. If they know about it.”

She thought about what Lisa had said. About how being lost in the woods could make a convincing alibi. “It may not have anything to do with Haudenosaunee. Or maybe it does. Maybe she didn’t like the idea of selling off to-what’s the name of the company?”

“GWP, Inc.”

“To GWP. Maybe she didn’t trust them to give all the easements or whatever to the conservancy.”

Russ rolled his eyes. “Maybe she’s being held prisoner by the president of GWP, who’s planning on selling her into white slavery after the signing ceremony tonight. Have you seen that picture of her in the hall? She’s quite a babe.”

Clare made a face. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s what Linda says.”

There was a pause. When Clare spoke again, her voice was quiet. “It could be nothing. But someone ought to be aware of it.”

He kept his eyes on the letter as he carefully folded it into thirds. “And now I am.” He held it up. “Mind if I keep it?”

She shook her head. He unsnapped a pocket on the outside of his camo pants and stuffed the papers inside. She tossed open the door to the pantry and snapped the light on. Surprise, surprise, there was an unopened jar of marmalade sitting next to a tin of tea and a box of farina. She turned back to Russ and set the jar next to his blackberry jam, thinking, Why am I bothering with this? A loaded question.

“I’m sure the team will appreciate your search efforts,” he said.

She snorted. “This is the problem with letting people know you can cook. I’ll probably be relegated to chef and bottle washer for every rescue they call me in on, for ever and ever, amen.”

He grinned. “C’mon, Julia Child. I promise I won’t stick you in a kitchen. Let’s ask Eugene if there’s anything else he can tell us about his sister’s disappearance.”

Randy didn’t set out from his house intending to drive to the Reid-Gruyn mill. He had woken at nine fresh and clear and full of energy, despite his heavy drinking the night before. His dad had been the same way. He used to tell Randy the secret was to eat lots of protein all the time. He had lived on eggs, chicken, and venison, and if he hadn’t fallen to lung cancer after forty years of a two-pack-a-day habit, he’d probably be partying still.

Randy rolled out of bed, scrubbed the stale smoke and alcohol smell off in the shower, and ate six eggs scrambled for breakfast, accompanied by the frenetic blare of a morning game show. He was going to take his bike into town and retrieve his truck from Mike Yablonski’s. That thought, combined with the noise from the television and the simple necessity of washing, dressing, and making breakfast, all kept the great dark heavy truth of being laid off at bay. It broke through in flashes-when he reached for his motorcycle boots and saw the steel-toed boots he wore lumbering, or when the bills piled on the corner of the kitchen counter caught his eye-but for the most part he moved in a state of deliberate unawareness.

Oddly enough, it was on his bike, headed into town, that he started to come to grips with it. The wind was whipping around him, the sun shining through the bare branches, swirling trails of fallen leaves marking where he passed. He felt good, and when he felt good, he thought of Lisa, and when he thought of Lisa, he heard her sweet voice, so full of confidence in him. “He’ll find another job. He always does.”

Shit. He couldn’t let her down.

It was bad enough she was wasting herself, scrubbing other people’s toilets. He knew she was thinking about a baby. She was nuts about her niece, Maddy-always offering to have the kid over, spending money on cute little dresses for her. Lisa deserved a kid of her own, and she shouldn’t have to leave it at home to go out to work. He wanted to support her, to give her the freedom that his brother-in-law, with his polished shoes and his creases in his pants, couldn’t give his wife.

God damn, but he had counted on that logging money. He supposed he could try for a team working farther up north, but that would mean moving out for the winter, getting home a few weekends every month if the roads were passable and he wasn’t too exhausted to drive. He couldn’t do that to her. She needed him. And as the new man on the team, he’d get the shit jobs and the shit hours. With no guarantee that he could come back the next year.

No, what he needed was a real job again. Regular hours, benefits, something he and Lisa could rely on. And with this thought, his Indian Chief Springfield seemed to turn, of its own accord, onto Route 57, leading him along the river, toward the Reid-Gruyn Pulp and Paper mill.

He dismounted in the employee lot and hung his helmet over the back of his seat. Just looking at the place depressed him. Red brick, with high narrow windows, it squatted in its own chemical stink like an animal too sick to move. Past the “new” building-which had been completed the year his grandfather was born-the “old” wooden mill moldered into the river, surrounded by weeds and discarded machinery. He and Mike used to sneak over there on break and smoke joints until the big Mohawk foreman had caught them and knocked them both to the floor, screaming that the place was a freaking firetrap, for chrissakes, and didn’t they have the sense God gave geese?

That hadn’t been the last straw, but it was near enough, and the next time Randy got into trouble, fighting in the break room with an asshole who tried to stiff him on a bet on a Giants game, he had quit before he could get fired. That had been three years ago. Now he was back, tail between his legs, asking for a chance to close himself inside with the foul air and the fluorescent lights and the foreman chewing his ass if he missed two minutes on the clock.

He closed his eyes against the cold fresh air and the sunshine and went in.

The Saturday morning shift was light, and nobody was in the break room yet. Randy walked past the scrubbed pine tables and the scarred door to the men’s room, past the battered green lockers, lifted the heavy latch, and walked out onto the mill floor.

The sickly sweet smell of fermenting pulp hit him like a blow to the face. His eyes watered and he sneezed. The air was hot and heavy and moist, pulsing with the sound of the pulper and the rollers and the constant boil and slosh of water. He skirted the edge of the floor. If there hadn’t been a change in the past three years-and “change” wasn’t usually in the Reid-Gruyn vocabulary-Lewis Johnson would be hanging out at his stand in the northeastern corner of the floor, where he updated stacks of forms and quality reports and kept an eye on the men.

Randy found the foreman where he had expected. Same hours, same spot, same dark green uniform with LEWIS in a red oval over the chest pocket. In three years, while Randy had gotten married, buried his father, moved into the old man’s house, and added four tattoos to his collection, Lewis Johnson had done nothing. He looked exactly the same: solid, square-faced, his skin like badly cured deer hide that had started to crack. He still had all his hair; one of the older guys had once confided to Randy that Indians didn’t have any hair below the neck, so they got to keep what they had on top.

“Randy Schoof.” Johnson didn’t sound thrilled to see him again.

“Hey, Lewis.”

“What are you doing here? Last I saw you, you were wiping the pulp off your boots, promising we’d never have the pleasure of your company again.”

“Well. You know. Times change.” God, this was going to be hard. He postponed his complete humiliation for another minute. “I got married.”