“What did she want?”
“She was informed of our visit and the reason, and it got her to thinking. She checked the record of the visitors LaPointe has had recently. And guess what.”
She waited as if she really expected him to hazard a guess.
“Got me,” he finally replied.
“His last visitor was Evelyn Carter, two days before she disappeared.”
CHAPTER 29
When Anne opened the door to Rainy’s cabin, Stephen wasn’t sure how to read her face, there seemed such a broad range of emotion reflected there. Surprise, dismay, anxiety. Even anger? He missed the old Anne, the ease of her smile, the soft pillow of her acceptance. The woman standing before him was someone different, someone, it seemed to him, afraid. And that had never been Anne. Skye Edwards, he believed, was to blame. But he didn’t say that. He said, “Mind if I come in for a few minutes?”
She moved aside, and he stepped in. She closed the door against the sweep of cold air that came with his entry. She had a fire going in Rainy’s woodstove, and the room felt cozy. There were some books stacked on the stand beside the bed. He didn’t know if Anne had put them there, or if Rainy had left them. It was an austere room, similar to the way he imagined a nun’s or monk’s cell might be furnished.
“Would you like to take your coat off?” Anne asked with a note of politeness that made Stephen feel even more like a stranger.
“Yeah, I guess. Thanks.”
She took it from him and laid it on the narrow bed.
“Would you like to sit down?” She held out a hand toward one of the two empty chairs at the small table in the center of the cabin.
Stephen sat, and after a long moment of consideration, Anne did, too. There was a quiet in the room that should have felt familiar. When Meloux was on Crow Point, Stephen often spent time with the old Mide, and part of being with Meloux was feeling comfortable with silence. The quiet in Rainy’s cabin was different. It felt oppressive to him.
“How’s your hand?” Anne asked.
He’d removed the gauze. His knuckles looked bruised, and they hurt a little when he made a fist, but it was a pain he could live with. In answer to her question, he simply shrugged.
“Jenny told me what you saw, Stephen,” Anne finally said. “If you’re wondering whether you misinterpreted it, you didn’t. You probably don’t understand. The truth is I’m not sure I do either.”
“Does it mean you’re not going to join the order?”
“I don’t know what it means. That’s one of the big reasons I came here. I have a lot to figure out.”
“Do you love her?”
She’d been looking at the floor, but now she raised her eyes and looked at Stephen like a woman in a daze. “I think so.”
“That pretty much seals it, doesn’t it? How can you join the sisters now?”
“People don’t become nuns or monks or priests because they have nothing to give up, Stephen, nothing to lose. It’s a question of calling. I’m trying to figure out here what my calling is.”
“I thought you were happy about joining the sisters. Now you seem so, I don’t know, confused.”
“I am confused.”
“Skye did this.”
“No, Stephen. Skye just woke me up to something about myself I’d never looked at before. She’s helped me make sense of a lot of emotions that I didn’t understand. I’m grateful to her for that. I just . . .” She appeared lost again. “I just don’t know what to do with this understanding.”
Stephen looked away. The sunlight through the south window threw an oblong box on the cabin floor. The top of the box touched the pile of wood next to the stove, and Stephen watched a spider crawl from under one of the logs into the light and sit there, as if warming itself. He thought it was odd to see a spider in the cabin in winter; it seemed so out of place, out of time, and he stared at it, as if mesmerized.
“Stephen?” His sister’s voice brought his eyes up to her face, and he found that she was smiling, gently. “I’m still Annie, you know? I hope you still love me.”
“Shoot,” he said. “Of course, I do. I just-I just want you happy, that’s all.”
“I think that’s what I want, too. And I’m trying to figure out how to get there.” She folded her hands on the table. “Does Dad know?”
“I haven’t said anything, and I don’t think Jenny has either. Are you wondering if it’ll matter to him? Because it won’t. He’s Dad and he loves you.”
“Oh, Stephen, I don’t know anymore what might matter and what won’t. But . . .” She stared at the stack of logs by the stove and seemed to be studying the spider that still sat in the sunlight there. “I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“You know what Dad would say? He’d say you have to do what you have to do, and the people who love you will understand.”
She laughed, and it felt so good to Stephen to hear that sound. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’m really glad we’re talking.”
“That was only part of the reason I’m here,” Stephen told her.
“What’s the other part?”
“I want to do a sweat.”
“Today?” Her eyes shot toward the north window, where the pane was laced with ice crystals. “It’s got to be zero out there.”
“Two below when I left Aurora.”
“Can you even get a fire going at two below?”
“I could if I had some help.”
“Where are you planning to do this sweat?”
Stephen waved toward the east. “The frame is still up from the sweat lodge we helped Henry build last spring at the edge of the lake. I brought tarps from home, and I know Henry keeps blankets in his cabin.”
“What about the rocks for the sweat?”
“The Grandfathers? He keeps those with the blankets.”
“Why is it so important that you do a sweat now, today?”
“I had a dream, Annie. It seemed a lot like the vision Henry had, the one he told me about on the phone the other day. Someone, or maybe something, was watching our house. It didn’t go on long enough for me to see it clearly. If it was a vision, and if it’s a warning of some kind, I want to try to get a better handle on it. I’m hoping a sweat might do the trick.”
“You understand these things better than I do, but how will the sweat help?”
“I need to be cleansed. The truth is,” he confessed, “I’ve been holding on to a lot of negative stuff because of Skye and . . . well . . . you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It’s my stuff to deal with. But I think it might be getting in the way of seeing this vision clearly. I figured if Henry was here, he’d have me do a sweat.”
“I’ll be glad to do whatever I can to help.”
He grinned. “Believe me, there’s plenty.”
* * *
The frame of the sweat lodge stood at the edge of Iron Lake, a hundred yards east of Rainy’s cabin, behind a stand of aspen, half buried in snow. Stephen had brought two snow shovels, and he and Anne spent an hour clearing the frame all the way down to the frozen earth. They also cleared an area nearby in which Stephen intended to build the fire that would warm the mishoomisag, the Grandfathers, stones that would heat the lodge for the sweat. They carried wood from the stack that had been piled against Rainy’s cabin, and Stephen built the fire. While it blazed, they covered the frame with the tarps he’d hauled in on the Bearcat. They brought the blankets from Meloux’s cabin, and the Grandfathers, and also a pitchfork, which Meloux used to handle the stones after they’d been heated.
When there were good, hot coals, Stephen laid a number of the stones on them, then he said, “Let’s go back to Meloux’s cabin. He has sage there. We’ll smudge, then I’ll begin the sweat.”
“It’s lunchtime,” Anne said. “Want to eat first?”
“I’m fasting. But you go ahead.”
Anne shook her head. “I’ll eat later.”
Meloux kept many herbs in a cedar box under his bunk. Stephen pulled the box into the light and took out a bundle of dried sage the Mide had tied with a hemp string. He put the bundle on top of Meloux’s woodstove, untied the string, and lit the loose sage with a kitchen match. He waved the smoke over himself, and Anne did the same. He said a prayer: “Great Spirit, cleanse my heart and mind. If there’s some truth that you want me to see, take away the fog from my thinking. Help me walk the path ahead without anger or fear, and with a clear, unblinking eye. You are the weaver, and I am a thread. Help me accept your design, whatever that may be.”