“Don’t you have someplace to go?” Anna asked irritably.

“Right. Stay out of Davey Jones’s locker.”

And the line went dead.

Anna settled the receiver back in the cradle. The heaviness in her chest had grown more oppressive. Maybe she’d been hiding in the wilderness long enough. Maybe it was time to go back to civilization. It would be good to shave her legs, pull on something silk, go to a pretentious party in lipstick and hose.

She looked out the window of the phone box. Damien still inhabited the bench. Not with the air of a man waiting impatiently-or patiently-but of a man with no better place to be. The wide-set eyes were fixed on a pileated woodpecker high in an aspen tree. He watched with the total unaffected concentration of a child.

A red feather floated down through the golden-green leaves and landed a yard or two from his sneakered feet. He picked up the feather and the lovely smile flashed. Not for Anna this time, for the giver of the gift: the woodpecker.

Anna banged open the door of the phone box and the bird flew off in an aerial scramble. “I’m finished,” she announced unnecessarily.

“You’re Anna Pigeon, aren’t you?” Damien’s voice was soft and high. Over the phone he would be mistaken for a child. In person, with the clear greenish eyes and styled dark hair, it didn’t seem inappropriate.

“You’re Damien,” Anna replied.

“There’s a party tonight in the lodge for Denny Castle of the Third Sister. Can you come? Tinker and I must talk to you.” He’d dropped his voice to a furtive level and, with a melodramatic flair Anna couldn’t help but admire, glanced over his shoulder.

She didn’t laugh but it took some effort. “I’ll be there,” she replied. “In my official capacity.”

If Damien knew she was teasing him, he was not affected by it. “Good,” he said, then again, firmly, as if coming to some inner decision: “Good. It is necessary.”

As he turned away and walked to the call box, throwing his shoulders as if a cloak swirled down from them, Anna allowed the smile inside to break the neutral set of her mouth.

Officially the party would start at half past eight, when Denny Castle was to bring his new bride into the dining room. Unofficially Anna commenced toasting the happy couple shortly after she got off the phone with her sister. Trying, and fairly successfully, to float the heavy weight off her heart, to water down the loneliness with wine.

Sitting on the lodge’s wooden deck, overlooking the harbor, she sipped a mediocre Beaujolais and let the silver of the evening sink into her soul. Sadness didn’t seem half bad when there were no human mirrors at hand to reflect it.

“To Piedmont,” she said and lifted her glass to the paling sky. The Beaujolais had a lovely color, catching the light without dulling it.

“Piedmont?”

The voice was so calm and well modulated that it made scarcely a ripple in Anna’s solitude. “My cat,” she said easily and looked up from the deck chair where she sprawled to see who had addressed her.

A small woman-five foot two or so, shorter than Anna- stood a few yards away, her arms crossed against the coming chill. In the pearly evening light her hair shone a pale gold, almost certainly from a bottle, but so artfully done it was hard to tell. She wore it shoulder-length with bangs blunt-cut just above eyebrow level. Her dress, heavy silk from the way it moved in the breeze, was of nearly the same shade, a color close to that of winter sunlight. Her face was heavily lined. Crow’s-feet fanned out from the corners of her eyes and partway down her cheeks. There was a pronounced parenthesis around her mouth where the nasolabial folds carved their mark. Faint creases, held at bay by lipstick carefully applied and fixed with powder, cut into her lip-line. But for the wrinkles she showed no age at all. Her body was narrow-hipped, slim as a willow wand, her voice resonant, her gaze direct and challenging.

Anna pegged her as a rich tourist. Maybe a doctor’s wife up from the Twin Cities on a tasteful little yacht named the Kidney Stone or the Aqueous Humor.

The woman smiled, a friendly pretty smile which gave absolutely nothing away. Anna revised her first impression: maybe the woman was the doctor herself.

“Piedmont’s my cat,” Anna said, the mutual assessment over in a heartbeat. “I had to leave him in Houghton with Christina and Ally-my housemates.”

“Ah. Yes.” The woman spread her skirt around her in a golden circle and sat gracefully on the step. Anna noticed her sandals matched her dress and hair-exactly. They had been dyed the same shade. “We left Pointer in a kennel in Duluth. Carrie writes him once a week. If any dog can learn to read, it’ll be Pointer. He’s a Lhasa Apso. ‘No Domestic Animals on the Island.’ As if the comforts here weren’t few enough.”

An employee. Anna felt she should be able to place the woman, but her brain was in no mood to be racked for once-seen faces, half-heard names. “I know I’m Anna Pigeon, North Shore Ranger, but I don’t know who you are. Should I?” The sentence construction was a little tipsy but Anna thought the sentiment sounded reasonable enough.

“At least you know who you are,” the woman said and laughed. “That’s more than most of the people here know. These Upper Peninsula types aren’t given much to introspection. I’m Patience Bittner. I manage the lodge. When I’ve been guffawed on, jostled, or growled at one too many times, I escape out here to regain my equilibrium.”

Anna nodded, took a sip of her drink, turned her mind free again to glide out over the water. She must have made a face, because Patience said: “You’re drinking the Beaujolais.”

“Yes,” Anna said neutrally.

“It’s the last of it, I promise. It was ordered without my approval and it seemed a shame to pour it out. It’s such an ordeal getting anything good shipped out here back of beyond. I’ve got quite a decent California red coming in on the Ranger Three. Glen Ellen has a nice cabernet sauvignon. Young but nice.”

“Nosy without being precocious?” Anna teased, thinking of Molly and her neurotic gourmet.

Patience smiled. “Do I sound pretentious? Habit. I used to manage a winery outside Napa.”

“Vodka and beer are the booze ordinaire in this part of the country. Not many people will notice your hard work.”

“You will, I expect.”

“Only on the first glass,” Anna said truthfully and the woman laughed again, a brittle sound but not unpleasant.

“If I get in anything special, I’ll get you in on the first glass.” She looked at her watch, a delicate gold band. “Party time. Pleased to meet you, Anna. I hope you’ll come by and sit on my deck again sometime soon.”

The innkeeper left, trailing a faint scent of perfume. “Privileged,” Anna thought, or “Passion.” Expensive scents, but neither could compete with the mind-clearing draft that was carried over the water from the ground hemlock and fir on Raspberry Island.

With the fading of the light the guardians of the island began to reclaim her shores. A persistent whining burned in Anna’s ear. A stinging itch cut through the thin fabric of her shirt. Again she missed the desert. There if something bit, one usually died of it. She hated this nickel and diming to death, one bloody sip at a time.

She stood and knocked back the last of her wine. Denny Castle’s wedding reception: it would be rude not to make an appearance. And she needed to wheedle an invitation to sleep on someone’s floor. Failing that, she’d bed down in the Lorelei, the boat belonging to the District Ranger, Ralph Pilcher. More damp sleeping bags and pit toilets.

Inspired-or intimidated-by Patience Bittner’s easy elegance, Anna made a stop in the ladies’ room. Hair hanging in two gray-streaked braids gave her an aging Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm look. She wrapped the plaits around her head and secured them in place with pins from her daypack. Too sunburned to wash her face with the harsh industrial soap in the washroom, she limited her toilette to the new coiffure.