"That determined look in her eye," she said, "combined with the sweater and the pearls."
Joe finally got it that Marybeth was talking about her mother.
She said, "It's like a knight putting on his armor or an Indian painting his face. She's getting ready to take action."
"What action?" Joe asked, patiently waiting for Marybeth to finish with her theory so he could tell her about the offer.
"I don't know for sure, but I'm suspicious. I think we're looking at the opening phase of another round of trading up."
Joe nodded. Bud Longbrake was Missy's fourth husband. The first, Marybeth's father, was a small-time defense attorney in Denver. The second was the owner of a real estate company. The third was a developer and state senator in Arizona who was eventually convicted of fraud. Each man had more social status than the last and a bigger bank account. Missy had each new potential husband lined up, thoroughly smitten, and locked-in before announcing her intention to divorce. As a game warden, Joe had observed predators like coyotes, eagles, and wolves for years. None of them held a candle to his mother-in-law.
"Who do you suppose is the target?" Joe asked as Marybeth joined him on the couch. The log home was sturdy, dark, and comfortable, despite its age. Generations of ranch foremen and their families had lived there before Joe and Marybeth, and they'd taken good care of it and, like so many old ranch structures, added on. There were three bedrooms. The kitchen was bright and sunny and looked out over the Twelve Sleep River, and the living room where Joe sat-the original room of the home-had elk and deer antlers on the walls and cattle brands burned into the logs. A rarely used stone fireplace dominatedthe north wall. A family photo covered a section of the wall where, for a reason never explained, someone had fired six bullets into a log from inside. Walking through the house in the dark was an adventure. Corners of rooms were out of square and floors weren't level from room to room. The house had character and was filled with the benevolent legacy of past cowboysand their families. Joe loved the place, despite the circumstancesof how they had come to live there.
Marybeth said, "I've been thinking about it, and I can come up with one man. Earl Alden."
"Ah," Joe said. They called him the Earl of Lexington. Alden was a Southern multibillionaire media mogul who had recently bought the former Scarlett Ranch. He divided his time between the ranch and three other residences in Lexington, New York City, and Chamonix. The rumor was that Mrs. Alden didn't like their ranch, and she rarely came with him. The fact that there was a Mrs. Alden had never posed much of a hurdle to Missy before.
"The Earl just gave a couple hundred thousand to the Twelve Sleep County Arts Council," Marybeth said. "So it's possible he'll be at the meeting tonight."
"Where Missy can begin her charm offensive," Joe said.
"Exactly."
Joe said, "How did you turn out so well?"
Marybeth smiled. "My mother wouldn't agree. She wonders where she went wrong." Missy made no secret of how she had hoped Marybeth-the smartest of her children-would become a corporate attorney or a U.S. senator, or at least follow her exampleand marry one.
Joe patted himself on the chest. "I was your downfall."
Marybeth sat back and facetiously looked him over, nodding."Yes. Marrying you doomed me. Then you made me have our children. Now I'm trapped."
Joe thought, She's kidding but her mother is not. Joe told her about the offer from the governor. He gauged her reaction carefully as he laid it out. He noticed that while he spoke, she glanced several times at the file folder in his lap.
When he was through, she hesitated for a beat and said, "Can we trust him?"
"The governor?"
"Yes."
He wasn't sure how to answer. He said, "If we can't trust our governor, who can we trust?"
She rolled her eyes. "I need a glass of wine."
Joe thought about her question while she was gone. He dug deep. Did he trust Spencer Rulon?
When she came back with two glasses, he said, "No, not completely."
"The deal as you describe it makes me uncomfortable," she said. "They either hire you back or they don't. From what you tell me, you'll be operating on your own with no backup and no support. If you get into trouble, you're on your own. We're on our own. What is that phrase politicians like to use?"
"Plausible deniability."
"Right. And how do we know Randy Pope won't do everythinghe can to undermine you at every turn?"
"I expect him to do that," Joe said.
She sighed, sipped her wine. "Remember how frustrated you were with the bureaucracy, with fighting against the system? Do you think you could live within it again-do you think it's changed at all?"
Joe shook his head. "Not a bit."
"Do we move back to our house?"
"I don't think so. He never mentioned it. Would you want that?"
"No, although I wouldn't mind a change of scenery if that meant we could get our lives back."
Me too, he thought.
"The last time you had to leave us it wasn't very good," she said, not meeting his eyes.
When he was assigned temporarily to Jackson, Joe thought. No, it wasn't very good for them. In fact, his absence and the things that happened with both of them had damaged their marriage.It was only now healing. Time and their joint determinationto right the ship had created scar tissue. But the wound was still there, and would always be there, he supposed.
"I'd want you to come this time," Joe said. "Bring Sheridan and Lucy every chance you get. It'll be tough with school and activities, but let's make sure we stay close and in contact."
She nodded, thinking it over. "I've always wanted to go to Yellowstone, as you know."
"I know."
"But we've never gone."
Joe sighed, and found himself staring at the woodstove.
"Are you going to be able to do this?" she asked.
He looked back. "I have to."
Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world's first national park-a set-aside of 2.2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife-so no man or corporationcould ever own it. As a boy, Joe had been to Yellowstonedozens of times. Many of his earliest memories were of geysers, mud pots, bears, and tourists. He had once loved the park unlike anywhere else, and announced to his parents he wanted to live there, to fish, hike, and camp for the rest of his life. It was a magical place and he had preferred it to heaven becauseat that age Joe didn't think there could be trout streams in the clouds.
His father shared his love for the park, which was the reason they vacationed there year after year. Their mutual love for it was one of the few things they ever agreed on, other than the movie Shane. It was the one place, Joe recalled, where his fathercame alive, stopped drinking, and played at being an amateurgeologist-explaining to his two young sons that there were three kinds of thermal features in the world: geysers, mud pots, and fumaroles (steam vents), and Yellowstone featuredthem all. He remembered his father running down a boardwalk in the Upper Geyser Basin-actually running!- and shouting over his shoulder to his boys to follow him becauseOld Faithful itself was about to erupt. It was a place where one could look into the cruel molten heart of the earth itself, and Joe had once done exactly that. Or thought he had. It was in a huge lung-shaped hot pool, the water vivid aquamarine,steam hovering above the calm surface. A shaft of sunlight plunged deep into the pool, which looked so inviting but was nearly two hundred degrees, illuminating bleached-whitebison bones resting on rock shelves as far down as he could see. Bones! And no bottom to the pool; it simply descendedfar past where the sun could reach. For years, he had nightmares about those bones, about falling into the pool, about sinking slowly as the water got hotter and hotter, his bones coming to rest on an outcropping.