Next morning, Cork rose in the dark, stumbled to the kitchen and started coffee dripping in the Mr. Coffee. He showered, shaved, and dressed. Back in the kitchen, he poured himself a cup of coffee and looked out the window. Over the lake, the sky in the east was just turning a faint, powdery blue. He put on his coat, went to the back room, scooped a quarter bucket of corn from the sack, and made his way down to the shore of the lake.
In the night, the storm had moved east beyond Lake Superior and into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Its passing left the sky clear and with a few stars still shining. The snow lay smooth and deep, cast in the pale blue-gray light of early morning. The air was so still the white smoke from the chimneys in town rose up straight as birch trunks. Cork loved the painful cold of the morning, the brittle new snow beneath his boots, the breathless clarity of the sky. He loved Aurora deeply in such moments.
The geese were on the water. He was glad to see that they’d made it through the storm. They honked and paddled nearer when they saw him, but they wouldn’t come all the way to shore. He kicked a big circle in the snow, clearing it, as he had done with Anne, down to the frozen ground underneath. He shook the grain out of the bucket. After he’d stepped well away, the geese came quickly.
The sun still wasn’t up when he left the cabin, but a big bubble of yellow light showed where, in half an hour, it would rise over the bare trees on the far side of the lake.
At Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler, Cork found Johnny Pap out front shoveling snow. Johnny was first-generation Greek. His real name was John Papasconstantinou, but his father had shortened it when he arrived in the States. He was fifty, stout, a man of great but nervous energy.
“Winter’s here, that’s for sure,” Johnny observed. “Knew it had to happen.”
“Coffee ready yet?” Cork asked.
“Molly’s doing it now. Ski’d in from her place. Got here before me even.” Johnny leaned on his snow shovel. “Wish Maria was like that,” he said, speaking of his wife. “Takes a couple sticks of dynamite to get her out of bed most mornings.” He wiped the drip from his nose and eyed Cork man to man. “Wish she was like Molly in a lot of ways, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll see you inside,” Cork said, and left Johnny to his shoveling.
Except for Molly, the place was empty.
“Well, well.” Molly smiled, glancing up from the big stainless steel coffeemaker. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Anybody ever tell you you look mighty good in the morning?”
“Not for a long time.” She leaned across the counter to where Cork sat on a stool. “Thought about you all night,” she said.
“Long night?”
“It went on forever.”
“Try reading a book next time. It’s what I do.”
“I knitted. I’m working on a Christmas present for you. Something for cold nights.”
“Wool condom?”
Molly laughed, poured him a cup of coffee, and slid it across the counter. Then she turned to the kitchen. She fixed him bacon and eggs and wheat toast. By the time he’d finished eating, the place had begun to fill with men. The Broiler was a popular stopover for people on their way to work. The clientele were regulars, men mostly who ordered the same breakfast every day, said the same things day in and day out. They worked at the brewery or the sawmill or for the highway department. Or they were shop owners killing time before they headed to the task of clearing the walks in front of their stores. Johnny had taken over the cooking. Two other waitresses had arrived, but it was Molly who caught everyone’s eye. She moved quickly and efficiently from table to table, booth to booth, slipping easily among men who eyed her just as keenly as Cork did. He liked how she cocked a fist on her hip and said something hard and funny to the ones who made passes, and there were a lot of them. He liked the combination of her plain good looks, her efficiency, and her elusiveness there in a place where men hungered around her in a lot of ways. She was a woman who knew how to take care of herself.
At the register, he spoke to her quietly. “Got it on good authority there’s an ex-law enforcement officer heading out your way later. Maybe that civic minded ex-officer could give you a lift.”
“Wouldn’t accept anything from an ex-officer of the law. But I’m a definite pushover for any man who knows how to flip a burger. Is there a charge for this ride?”
“That’s negotiable.”
“Then you’ve got me over a barrel,” she admitted with a smile.
Cork lifted his eyebrow. “Now, that sounds interesting.”