44.
Back in Chinook, the sheriff stood on the bluff outside the cabin, watching the sun rise over the river. Grandfather stood
next to him. He was missing the bone, but he knew it was for the best. It still talked to him.
“I guess today is the day,” the sheriff said, and the grandfather stared, sightless, feeling the memories of the river. He
was remembering Mitchell as a child, chasing dragonflies down the shore.
“Is that why you’re here?” the grandfather asked. The sheriff had never willingly visited before.
“Yes. I . . . wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. At this time.”
“You never cared before.”
“That’s true. I was so wrapped up in my own pain, I couldn’t see it.”
“See what?”
“That maybe neither of them ran off.”
There. It was said.
The grandfather listened, his nose alert, his white eyes seeing. He couldn’t actually see, of course, but he knew in that
moment that the sheriff was having a rare moment of honesty.
And it was too late.
The sheriff thought of his daughter, Emma.
He wanted to call her, say, Come home, Emma.
I will fix everything. But he knew he never would, because that was a promise he couldn’t keep.
He could not change the past or himself.
The die was cast. People changed, he had found, one small step at a time, and he had never taken the first step.
His wife, Rosanna, had wanted him to. She had railed at him often enough, You can change, Jim.
You can change. But he did not, and now it was too late.
The grandfather was silent, sniffing his memories.
The sheriff looked at the river. He saw a lifetime spent near it, in a town he had tried to protect—and failed. That’s mostly
what he saw.