“Hey, you. I heard my folks invited you and Dani to the house for Christmas supper. And I wanted to let know you I’m bowing out. I don’t want to create a problem or make her uncomfortable. I’ll be there Christmas Eve, anyway, and I have another invitation for Christmas supper, so it’s no big deal.”

She’d always been a lousy liar. There was no other invitation for Christmas supper. Stacey had friends in Maine, but not many. She had always been hard to know and blunt with her opinions. Before she’d left the state for Florida, she had been written off by most of the people we worked with as difficult and arrogant. And because she was a woman who did not defer automatically to men or use charm to win them over, she was described in the ugliest of terms. I’d never heard a woman called a bitch as often as Stacey Stevens.

Remembering this, I missed the second half of her message and had to play it again.

“Dani must think I came back to Maine to cause trouble,” Stacey said. “But I didn’t, and I’m sorry if my being here has been a problem. It’s just that I realized Maine is where I belong, where my heart is.” She paused. “That came out wrong. Maine is where I belong, is what I meant to say. The one favor I have to ask you, Mike, is not to avoid my parents. Please don’t punish them on my account. They love you like a son, and it breaks their hearts not to see you.”

For the past six months, ever since Stacey had returned, I’d known I needed to make a decision. Not choosing becomes a choice. Not acting becomes an action.

The last crows passed over.

Again I had to remind myself that nature was not sending me a message.

I watched the stragglers dwindle over the half-frozen river, and then I returned to my Jeep and the caged animal inside.

I wasn’t sure if wolves held grudges, but I had a feeling mine did. No expensive cut of meat would make up for being trapped in a box with a piss-stained blanket. The series of growls he let loose as I raised the lift gate made his resentments clear.

“I know, I know.”

Through the metal bars in the kennel door he glared at me with eyes the color of embers.

But when he saw me bring out the Nalgene bottle, he submitted to the drill. Even before I started squirting water, he opened his mouth wide. His muzzle always seemed longer with his jaws apart. His enormous fangs seemed more prominent, too, now that they had been brushed. He caught the liquid on his tongue and used the tip to curl it into his gullet.

“Your breath isn’t exactly minty fresh,” I said, opening the Ziploc bag of moose jerky.