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and me from the rainy coastal areas in the south to the barren tundra
     of the North Slope, where my seventy-year-old mother still works as a nurse for the U.S. Public Health Service. She thought
     I was joking when I told her there is a Mexican restaurant in Barrow, three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle. I think
     it’s called North of the Border.
    Today was a new day. She was a redhead now. She came downstairs sometime after eight wearing a pair of my gym shorts, another
     one of my T-shirts, and a scowl. This vision inspired me to start singing the theme song from
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
. “Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing date and suddenly make it all seem—”
    She glared at me, and I interpreted that to mean she did not appreciate my humor or my singing, so I stopped.
    After enjoying her first cigarette of the day in my unheated garage, she poured herself some coffee and joined me at the table.
     “I never used to drink this shit until I went into treatment,” she said.
    “Coffee’s a comparatively harmless addiction,” I said. I had finished the paper, except the crossword puzzle, and slid the
     rest of the paper over to her. I needed an eight-letter word for “coward” and couldn’t think of one.
    “Is today Thanksgiving?” she asked.
    “Sure is,” I said.
    “We should do something special.”
    “I promised a nephew I’d have Thanksgiving dinner with him,” I said.
    “Am I going?” she asked.
    “I guess so,” I said.
    “You don’t sound too excited,” she said.
    “It’s not you,” I said. “Nancy’s kind of nighty.” Last year she’d insisted on making a goose for Thanksgiving, and it had
     been the stringiest fowl I’d ever sampled.
    “Who’s Nancy?”
    “My nephew’s mom.”
    “Your sister? Or your sister-in-law?”
    “Neither, she was married to my cousin.”
    She looked puzzled. “Then he’s not really your nephew,” she said. “He’s your second cousin.”
    “I know,” I said, “but I call him my nephew because he’s only fourteen.”
    “So Nancy was married to your cousin?”
    “Yeah.”
    “They’re divorced?”
    “My cousin’s dead,” I said.
    “Oh.” I told her the short version. My cousin, Hal Keane, had been a high school chemistry teacher, a football coach, and
     a reserve officer with the Denver Police Department. He had died four years ago in a gun battle with a couple of punks he’d
     caught pistol-whipping a Nigerian immigrant. My brother and I had been close to Hal during our youth, when we had lived within
     a few miles of each other, but we’d drifted apart as we’d grown older and fashioned our own lives. I didn’t even know he’d
     been a police officer until after his death.
    Nancy had been a guidance counselor most of her adult life, but she’d earned a master’s degree in social work after Hal’s
     death and moved from Denver to Boulder more than a year ago. Since then I’d taken on the role of an uncle to their son, Jimmie.
    I walked to the kitchen, poured myself another cup of coffee, and resumed my seat at the table.
    “Tell me about Bugg,” I said.
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Does he have any family?” She allowed a bitter smile.
    “The gang is his family.”
    “Aside from that?”
    “He’s got a brother in Arkansas—Tommy. They don’t see each other much, but they talk on the phone every week.” She sipped
     her coffee. “He’s got an ex-wife named Linda out in California somewhere.”
    “Any kids?”
    “He had some kids with Linda, but he doesn’t have any contact with them. They’re probably in their twenties by now.”
    “Poltroon,” I said. The puzzle master would have to do better than that to stump Pepper Keane.
    “Huh?”
    “An eight-letter word for ’coward,’“ I explained.
    “Oh,” she said.
    “What does Bugg do for fun?” I asked.
    “You mean, like, hobbies?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’d list drinking as number one,” she said.
    “Anything