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sting of learning her husband had secrets would serve to pick at the scab of the old wound. The one they didn’t talk about.
    The pain of having their life-dreams side-tracked by a force beyond their control. Something her husband wasn’t, by law, allowed to discuss with her. The pain of leaving her home, her family, everything she had known until that moment for no better reason than it was necessary. Things would never be the same. How could they be?
    And now this. Again.
    Gilbert attempted to breech the gap with a travelogue. “This is the only private piece of property in the whole Kaibab National Forest,” he said. “Somebody way back in my mom’s family homesteaded the place.”
    She separated herself from his hand and walked toward the edge of the roof. For the briefest of moments, he thought she might be going to throw herself to the ground. Mercifully, the awkwardness of the moment was broken by the reappearance of the kids, who came stomping out the front door of the cabin, down over the porch and out to the yawning rear of the SUV.
    “Did you see a TV?” Becky asked her brother.
    “No TV,” Michael said.
    “No waaaay,” Becky said, as if confronting the reality of time travel. She stopped and looked around. “What are we gonna do?”
    “Come on.” Michael held one end of the plastic storage bin in both hands. The other end rested on the tailgate.
    “Come on,” he said again.
    They’d packed enough food for a week, ensuring they wouldn’t be seen in the Jacob Lake Store or anywhere else. He’d seen to it that all the cell phones were back home in the safe. The SUV didn’t have any kind of GPS technology. He’d never bothered to put the cabin in his own name but could prove he had a right to be there. Clean as current technology would permit, he imagined.
    Becky jerked the container from the tailgate and took off toward the house at a pace faster than her younger brother could muster. Needing two hands on the handle, Michael trotted doggedly along, carrying and then dragging, until finally disappearing under the porch and out of view.
    Gilbert, for reasons he couldn’t explain, immediately began talking. “My Uncle Hugo left it to me. He didn’t have any kids of his own which made me his nearest male relative, which he had to do, because leaving it to somebody in the family is the only option. It can’t be sold. If we don’t own it, it reverts to the forest service.”
    From five paces away, from behind, he heard her sigh. A somber moment passed before she turned and walked across the roof, threw her arms around him and leaned against his chest. She heaved a deep sigh. “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m just mad. Mad that our lives are being interrupted again. Mad that I can’t talk to my family on the phone. Mad…” Fearing the list could go on for hours, she stopped herself. “I’m just mad,” she said finally.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “It’s not your fault. All you were doing was being a good cop. Doing what you got paid to do. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “Just the same,” he said.
    She looked into his eyes. “It is what it is, I guess.”
    “Yeah.”
    The kids made another pass at the car, this time loading up with camping gear. When they once again faded from hearing, Gilbert took a half a step back. “This afternoon the kids and I are going to set up a perimeter.” He anticipated her objection to including the kids in anything threatening. “Don’t worry,” he soothed. “I’m going to make a game of it. Wildlife pictures…you know, that kind of thing.” He bobbed his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. Emelda smiled.
    “Tonight, after the kids hit the sack, I’m going to drive over to Saint George, Utah. Make some calls. Send a few messages that can’t be traced back to here.” He eyed her closely. “You think you can hold down the fort?”
    “Do I have a choice?”
    “This needs to be over. We need to get on with our