Seeing me, this man gave me a smile that warmed my insides like the smoothest of whiskeys. What can I tell you? It was a smile without guile or cynicism or lust, just the earnest smile of a decent man. I liked him at once. In fact, sweetheart, you may or may not believe this, but I fell in love with him right then and there in that single moment. I saw his eyes and his smile, and I melted. Maybe it was the situation I was in. Maybe I needed to see a kind face when my nerves were stretched to the breaking point. But regardless, something about this man’s face made my heart soar.
“You must be an angel,” he told me, which was exactly what I was thinking about him. “I wasn’t sure I would make it through the night.”
I found myself at a loss for words, but then I finally recovered and said, “What are you doing out here, sir?”
“I’d tell you if I could, Deputy, but I don’t even know where I am.”
“Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s been a difficult day. My mother died this morning.”
Something about the way he said it wounded me like the sharpest of arrows. I guess that’s the way we all are about our mothers. Saying goodbye to the woman who brought us into the world is a loss like no other. And yes, I know, with you and me, it’s much more complicated than that.
“I’m very sorry,” I told him.
“Thank you. I guess I had a kind of breakdown after it happened. I just got in my car and started driving. I’ve been driving for hours through the snow, and at some point, I ended up here. Where am I, anyway?”
“This is Sunflower Lake,” I told him. “In Black Wolf County.”
“It reminds me of one of my favorite lakes back home. Shelby Lake.”
“Shelby,” I said, rolling it around on my tongue. “That’s a pretty name.”
“And it’s a pretty lake, too. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I stopped here. Something drew me to this place. Like this was where I was going all along. Do you know what I mean? I guess we all end up where we’re supposed to be.”
“I do know what you mean,” I said.
“Anyway, the snow kept falling. I didn’t really pay attention to it, but a little while ago, I realized I couldn’t get out. Disaster sort of creeps up on you like that. And as you can see, I’m not exactly dressed for the weather.”
He had such an easy way of talking. His voice had a gentleness that seemed unusual for a big man. I enjoyed listening to it the way I’d enjoy someone quietly strumming a guitar. With his beard covering everything but his lips, he seemed to speak with his eyes. They were chocolate-brown eyes, serious but also sweet. I didn’t think I’d ever had a man’s eyes look at me the way his eyes did. He studied me carefully, but with no demands, no expectation, no ownership, just appreciation. With one look, his eyes told me I was pretty, and then they backed away to give me space. Which, suddenly, I didn’t want. I wanted no space from him at all.
We had a kinship, this man and me, both of us arriving here from dark places. That’s the only way I can explain it. And as for breakdowns, I knew what that was like, because I was in the midst of one myself. Weird, though, all my plans for what I was going to do somehow vanished from my mind as soon as I met him.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Tom,” he told me. “Tom Ginn.”
Tom’s pickup truck wouldn’t be moving until the plows came. With my radio, I put in a request to have the campground cleared of snow, which normally they wouldn’t bother to do in this season. Even so, it would be hours before they got here. Snow continued to blanket the area, and the plows would be busy staying ahead of the drifts on the highways and town streets.
I could have — should have — taken Tom to the sheriff’s office. Essentially, I was AWOL from my job. I’d left a dead body on the ice and done nothing about it, but that night, I couldn’t face Darrell, or Ajax, or Jerry. As it turned out, Tom didn’t want to go to the sheriff’s office either. He was AWOL from his own job. I knew his name sounded familiar, and he reminded me that he was the sheriff of Mittel County, our distant neighbors on the eastern side of the state. He didn’t want to deal with questions, shoptalk, or false sympathy from the others in our office. This night was about him and his mother, and I totally understood his desire for privacy.
So I took him home with me.
Something about this man made me feel both protective and protected. Being with him gave me a kind of glow, as if I were part-mother, part-wife. He settled naturally into my house, stoking a fire in my fireplace. His clothes were wet, and he was almost blue with cold, so I let him change in my bathroom and take a hot shower. I put his clothes in the washer. He was a much taller, more athletic man than Ricky, so none of my husband’s clothes would have fit him. Instead, Tom put on a terry robe that was a little short for him and then modestly wrapped a blanket around himself. He sat down by the fire, and I showered and changed, too.
We both should have been hungry, because neither one of us had eaten in hours, but we weren’t. We sat next to each other on the worn carpet, hypnotized by the flames. He looked absorbed by his own thoughts as he stared at the fire, but I snuck glances at him. His skin had a tanned glow, even in winter, that made a contrast with my stark paleness. His brown hair was still wet from the shower. He was lean, maybe a little too skinny for his height, but strong and muscular. I felt small next to him, but a good kind of small.
“Was your mother ill for a long time?” I asked softly when we’d been silent for several minutes.
“Yes. She had early-onset dementia. It’s been getting worse for a while now.”
“How old was she?”
“Not even sixty.”
“Oh, you must be devastated.”
“Well, it’s hard to lose anyone you love, but I’ve been losing her day by day for five years. The cruelty of it is hard to fathom, to see someone so very strong and independent lose any sense of who they are. And unfortunately, my father is well on the same road, too. I expect he only has a few more months. He’s living with me now. I really should be there with him, but after Mom passed, I couldn’t go home. I asked a colleague of mine, Monica, to stay at my place, so at least I know Dad’s okay. But I feel guilty. I didn’t even call him to say that Mom — his wife — was gone. He wouldn’t have understood, and I couldn’t handle that. Thirty-five years together, and they didn’t know each other anymore. They were strangers. It’s such a lonely disease.”
“I’m so sorry, Tom.”
He smiled at me again. Then he reached out and took my hand. I liked it.
“You know what’s utterly terrifying?” he went on, turning back to the fire. “I know my time will come. It will happen to me, too. Sooner or later, I’ll be the man who forgets his past, his friends, his entire identity.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Let’s just say my family history makes it a pretty safe bet. Genetics spares no one. But it’s not all bad, not really. A cloud over my head like that reminds me to live a life that matters. If I lose my own memory, at least I want to believe that others will have good memories of me.”
It made me inexpressibly sad to hear him talk like that.
“Are you married, Tom?” I asked.
“No. Between my job and my parents, I haven’t had time for anyone else in my life.”
“You’re very young to be the sheriff.”
“I know.” He laughed at himself. “Don’t think I’m so special. Truly, no one else in Mittel County wanted the job, and I admit, I did. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It was my dream ever since I was a boy watching The Lone Ranger on television. Some people go through life never knowing what they want, but me, I always did. My dad was still relatively lucid two years ago. He insisted I go after it when the old sheriff died. I thought I should wait until I was older. I also didn’t think I could juggle being the sheriff with caring for the two of them, but he told me, you can’t ignore opportunity when it comes knocking or it just moves on to somebody else.”