“Where in Motton are you?” I asked . . . but, like Jacobs, only for form’s sake. Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around to where it started.

XI

Goat Mountain. She Waits. Bad News from Missouri.

And so, little more than six months after the brief reincarnation of Chrome Roses, I once more touched down at the Portland Jetport and once more journeyed north to Castle County. Not to Harlow this time, though. Still five miles from the home place, I turned off Route 9 and onto Goat Mountain Road. It was a warm day, but Maine had gotten belted with its own spring blizzard a few days before, and the musical sounds of melting and runoff were everywhere. Pines and spruces still crowded close to the road, their branches sagging under the weight of snow, but the road itself had been plowed and shone wetly in the afternoon sun.

I paused for a couple of minutes at Longmeadow, site of all those childhood MYF picnics, and longer at the spur leading to Skytop. I had no time to revisit the crumbling cabin where Astrid and I had lost our virginity, and couldn’t have even if there had been. The gravel was now paved, and this road had also been plowed, but the way was barred by a stout wooden gate with a padlock the size of an orc’s fist threaded through the latch. If that didn’t make the point, there was a large sign reading ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING and VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.

A mile further up, I came to the Goat Mountain gatehouse. The way wasn’t barred, but there was a security guard wearing a light jacket over his brown uniform. The jacket was unbuttoned, maybe because the day was warm, maybe to give anyone stopping by a good view of the holstered gun on his hip. It looked like a big one.

I powered down my window, but before the guard could ask for my name, the gatehouse door opened and Charlie Jacobs came out. The bulky parka he wore couldn’t disguise how little was left of him. The last time we’d met, he had been thin. Now he was gaunt. My old fifth business was limping more severely than ever, and although he might have thought his smile of greeting warm and welcoming, it barely lifted the left side of his face, resulting in something closer to a sneer. The stroke, I thought.

“Jamie, good to see you!” He held out his hand and I shook it . . . although not without reservations. “I didn’t really expect you until tomorrow.”

“In Colorado they get the airports open fast after storms.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure. May I ride back up with you?” He nodded in the direction of the security guard. “Sam brought me down in a golf cart, and there’s a space heater in the guardhouse, but I chill very easily now, even on a day as springlike as this one. Do you remember what we used to call spring snow, Jamie?”

“Poor man’s fertilizer,” I said. “Come on, get in.”

He limped around the front of the car, and when Sam tried to take his arm, Jacobs shook him off briskly. His face didn’t work right, and the limp was actually closer to a lurch, but he was pretty spry, just the same. A man on a mission, I thought.

He got in with a grunt of relief, turned up the heater, and rubbed his gnarled hands in front of the passenger-side vent like a man warming himself over an open fire. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Does this remind you of the approach to The Latches?” he asked, still rubbing his hands. They made an unpleasant papery sound. “It does me.”

“Well . . . except for that.” I pointed to the left, where there had once been an intermediate-level ski run called Smoky Trail. Or maybe it had been Smoky Twist. Now one of the lift cables had come down, and a couple of the chairs lay half-buried in a drift that would probably be there for another five weeks, unless the weather stayed warm.

“Messy,” he agreed, “but there’s no point fixing it. I’m going to have all the lifts taken out once the snow’s gone. I’d say my skiing days are over, wouldn’t you? Were you ever here when you were a child, Jamie?”

I had been, on half a dozen occasions, tagging along with Con and Terry and their flatlander friends, but I had no more stomach for small talk. “Is she here?”

“Yes, arrived around noon. Her friend Jenny Knowlton brought her. They had hoped to get here yesterday, but the storm was much worse Downeast. And before you ask your follow-up question, no, I haven’t treated her. The poor woman is exhausted. Tomorrow will be time enough for that, and time enough for her to see you. Although you may see her today, if you like, when she eats what little dinner she can manage. The restaurant is equipped with closed-circuit television cameras.”

I started to tell him what I thought of that, but he held up a hand.

“Peace, my friend. I didn’t put them in; they were here when I bought the place. I believe the management must have used them to make sure the service staff was performing up to expectations.” His one-sided smile looked sneerier than ever. Maybe that was just me, but I didn’t think so.

“Are you gloating?” I asked. “Is that what you’re doing, now that you’ve got me here?”

“Of course not.” He half turned to regard the melting snowbanks rolling past us on either side. Then he turned back to me. “Well. Perhaps. Just a little. You were so high and mighty the last time we met. So haughty.”

I didn’t feel high and mighty now, and I certainly didn’t feel haughty. I felt caught in a trap. I was here, after all, because of a girl I hadn’t seen in over forty years. One who had bought her own doom, pack by pack, at the nearest convenience store. Or at the pharmacy in Castle Rock, where you could buy cigarettes at the counter right up front. If you needed actual medicine, you had to walk all the way to the back. One of life’s ironies. I imagined dropping Jacobs off at the lodge and just driving away. The idea had a nasty attraction.

“Would you really let her die?”

“Yes.” He was still warming his hands in front of the vent. Now what I imagined was grabbing one of them and snapping those gnarled fingers like breadsticks.

“Why? Why am I so goddamned important to you?”

“Because you’re my destiny. I think I knew it the first time I saw you, down on your knees in your dooryard and grubbing in the dirt.” He spoke with the patience of a true believer. Or a lunatic. Maybe there’s really no difference. “I knew for sure when you showed up in Tulsa.”

“What are you doing, Charlie? What is it you want me for this summer?” It wasn’t the first time I’d asked him, but there were other questions I didn’t dare ask. How dangerous is it? Do you know? Do you care?

He seemed to be thinking about whether or not to tell me . . . but I never knew what he was thinking, not really. Then Goat Mountain Resort hove into view—even bigger than The Latches, but ugly and full of modern angles; Frank Lloyd Wright gone bad. Probably it had looked modern, even futuristic, to the wealthy people who had come here to play in the sixties. Now it looked like a cubist dinosaur with glass eyes.

“Ah!” he said. “Here we are. You’ll want to freshen up and rest a bit. I know I want to rest a bit. It’s very exciting having you here, Jamie, but also tiring. I’ve put you in the Snowe Suite on the third floor. Rudy will show you the way.”

 • • •

Rudy Kelly was a mountain of a man in faded jeans, a loose gray smock top, and white crepe-soled nurse’s shoes. He was a nurse, he said, as well as Mr. Jacobs’s personal assistant. Judging by his size, I thought he might also be Jacobs’s bodyguard. His handshake was certainly no limp-fish musician’s howdy.

I had been in the resort’s lobby as a kid, had once even eaten lunch here with Con and the family of one of Con’s friends (terrified the whole time of using the wrong fork or dribbling down my shirt), but I had never been on any of the upper floors. The elevator was a clanky bucket, the kind of antique conveyance that in scary novels always stalls between floors, and I resolved to take the stairs for however long I had to be here.