She liked it that Liam read recreationally. The does-he-read test was the only test she required the men she allowed into her life to pass. She didnt care if they were tall, short, fat, thin, old, young, she didnt care if they were Yupik from Bethel or Hindu from Indiaor Caucasian from Anchoragethey had to read. She didnt care what they read, they didnt even have to read the same things she did (a good thing because she read fiction, mostly, and Liam read non, mostly), but if they didnt read, they were out.

Shed read out loud to Tim while he lay in the hospital. Half the time she didnt know if he heard her or not. She read to him anyway, books from her childhood like Little House on the Prairie and The Lost Wagon and Nancy and Plum and Anne of Green Gables and The Lions Paw. It was make-believe, but it was what Tim needed, and she read them all to him every minute she could spare. The business suffered some that month.

When he came home with her from the hospital, she had already furnished the second bedroom in her house, empty until then. Just the basics, a bed, a nightstand, a reading lamp, a desk with another lamp, some new clothes in the closet, khakis and T-shirts shed ordered over the Internet from the Gap. There was also a bookshelf shed filled with books, the Heinlein juveniles, all fourteen of the Oz books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, everything by Gary Paulsen. By then he was reading on his own.

Hed stopped for a time earlier this year, when hed gotten in with a group of kids who had maximum security written all over their futures, but hed begun easing away from them after Liams arrival, and hed broken with them entirely after Kerry and Michael Malone had died. He had respected and admired Michael, who played opposite him on the basketball court, and Wy suspected he had been a little in love with Kerry, a pretty cheerleader.

Liam had handled that with Tim, talking to him honestly about what had happened to the two kids, offering intelligent sympathy without ever once resorting to “Bad things happen to good people.

Liam was good with kids. Shed never seen him with Charlie, the son who had been killed by a drunk driver before he was two, but shed bet Liam had been great with him, too. He wanted more kids. Well, so did she.

She had to tell him. She could feel something like tears well behind her eyelids and blinked them away.

There was a sudden snapping of twigs and cracking of branches and she shot to her feet, checking that both barrels were loaded and that the safety was off.

It was only Teddy and John. The smell of beer preceded them into camp by a good twenty feet. “Oh hell, she said, disgusted all over again.

“Lets go, John said shortly, brushing by her to head for a caribou haunch hanging from a tree. Teddy barreled after him. Both of them were pale of face and sweating. Both seemed a lot more sober than she had expected. “How much can we take with us?