He waited for an hour after the sound of the plane engines died away before he crawled out of the shelter. He stood at the opening for a long time, listening. She stared at the backs of his knees.

He turned and bent down to hold out his hand to help her to her feet. She came out clumsily, her hair catching on a spruce branch, a lost bead, red as a drop of fresh blood, spilling from her pocket. He brushed the twigs from her jacket and jeans, plucked a spider from her collar, adjusted the straps of her knapsack. He stood looking down at her, smiling. “Ive been looking for you everywhere, he said, “and now Ive found you. He traced her cheek with a finger and smiled. “And now we can go home.

She shouldnt have run off, he had told her reproachfully during the night. She was safest with him, he would protect her, watch over her, and their children. She almost came alive at that, but then he spread her legs and raped her again, and again she went numb.

It was all happening to someone else, anyway. She, Rebecca Hanover, had a husband and a home and a job. She, Rebecca Hanover, lived in Anchorage, and went ice-skating on Westchester Lagoon during the winter, and bicycling on the Coastal Trail in the summer, and took beading lessons at Color Creek Studio, and had coffee with Nina on Saturday mornings at City Market. She, Rebecca Hanover, did not hike through the backwoods, cold and tired and hungry and terrified. She, Rebecca Hanover, was not raped in those woods by a stranger who had murdered her husband.

So of course none of this could be happening to her. It was a dream, a bad one, from which she would soon wake up, warm and safe in her own bed.

All she had to do was wait.

Old Man Creek, September 3

The second morning began the same way the first had, with tai chi and a sweat. Afterward, Moses put Tim and Amelia in the skiff and took them down to his favorite fishing hole.

Bill sat on the front porch with a lap full of files that needed closing after the latest spurt of infractions during the most recent fishing period. She regarded the thick pile with some disfavor, wondering if perhaps she wouldnt rather be hip deep in fish gurry after all.

Bill was in the business of justice, not retaliation, and she evaluated every case brought before her with the same care and attention. The problem was, the fishermen against whom fish and game trooper Charlene Taylor swore out complaints kept saying the same things, over and over again, until they sounded like a sixth grader excusing the loss of his homework. The engine broke. The trooper didnt give us the signal. My clock stopped. The bilge pump went out. The engine broke. The mechanic got seasick. The net got caught in the prop. The engine broke.