BEFORE THE SNOW FLIES

PRELUDE

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are like the progress of an inchworm moving through time. It surges and then it flattens out, it surges again, and then flattens out. But in combat, the concept of time can be meaningless. Months and years are like millennia compared to the mere fractions of a second in which lives can be lost or momentously changed forever.

This book, though it deals with the difficult subject of suicide in the face of wartime catastrophes, is meant to be hopeful. When I first started to write it, my focus was on military suicides, but the deeper I got into it, the more I thought, it isn’t only military suicides. The root causes of suicide are the same regardless if you are a male or a female, black or white, gay or straight, military or civilian. It respects no race or religion.

The book’s hero is a member of the military. Why? Because that’s a culture I know. I was a professional soldier for a long time…twenty-seven years…and I write best when I write about things I know.

Major David Keller, at war for a long time, survives a life-altering injury inflicted by a roadside improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, but, mentally, he falls into a deep abyss. You are about to share several emotional journeys: Major Keller’s, his family’s, and his friends’, both old and new.

I write novels because I enjoy the challenge of turning out a good story that captures readers’ imaginations. However, I also like to think that in some small way, after the reader closes the book and reflects, even if only for the briefest of moments, on what they’ve read, there is a message of optimism, a message of what might be if we treat one another with caring and compassion. So, turn the page. I hope you enjoy the read.

CHAPTER ONE - Falling

No one saw it coming. The road had been swept twice this day. The improvised explosive device, IED in military parlance, should have been detected and cleared. What was about to happen shouldn’t have, but, this day, Murphy’s Law was about to be implemented: If something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.

1435 hours: During the final week of his combat tour, Major David Keller was looking down at his handheld GPS to see exactly where they were. He was traveling with his battalion’s operations officer, its command sergeant major and the sergeant major’s driver on their way back from a meeting with a local village leader when the explosion ripped into their Humvee. He sat on the side of the vehicle closest to the bomb and, at that short distance, the thunderous noise, the blinding light, and the blast of heat all came at them at once. The only one of the four not wearing a seat belt, that lapse of safety was likely what saved his life. The blast’s force literally blew him out of the fireball that their vehicle suddenly became.

1437 hours: It’s a dream, that’s all, just a dream. He’d dreamed it a thousand times before: the one where you’re falling. He expected to hear the wind whistling past him, but he couldn’t hear anything. The miserable sandy grit that had been the Afghan desert but now was a byproduct of the explosion swirled around him even at the fifty or sixty feet he’d been thrown clear of the burning vehicle. He couldn’t see anything, but then again, he was so out of it, the line between conscious and unconscious was razor thin.

1505 hours: The pilot deftly settled the Blackhawk helicopter onto the Maltese cross that marked the center of the concrete helipad and quickly rolled the throttles back to idle. A medic in an olive-green flight suit jumped out as soon as the aircraft touched down. Two corpsmen waited at either end of a gurney positioned well outside the slowing orbit of the rotor blades. A nurse hunkered down under the rotors and approached the helicopter’s medic. They stood close to one another, the medic bending down to speak into her ear in order to be heard over the shrill turbine-whine of the helicopter’s twin engines. “This one’s pretty bad, ma’am. IED. He took the brunt of the blast. Killed everyone else in the vehicle.” He threw a thumb over one shoulder, pointing to three stretchers inside the helicopter, each holding a body, concealed in a thick black plastic body bag. After taking care of the living, the helicopter would reposition onto another helipad in the same complex to unload those less fortunate at the hospital’s morgue. “No idea how he survived,” the medic continued. “One leg’s fully severed. We looked, but couldn’t find it. The other is just hanging there by a thread. He’s lost a lot of blood. He started to come to a few minutes out, so I started a morphine drip. He just went under. Thought it best…you know…I wouldn’t want to wake up to something like that.” The medic pointed to the patient’s missing and nearly missing legs.

1507 hours: David’s mind reeled. The only sense that seemed to be working was his sense of smell and it wasn’t like anything he could ever remember: an odd combination of cordite, blood, and the antiseptic scent of freshly opened sterile bandages.

1508 hours: The nurse motioned for the two corpsmen to come forward. She patted the helicopter’s medic on the shoulder: “OK, we got it from here. Good job.” Turning to the corpsmen, who were leaning in to hear her, she said, “OK, the docs are waiting. Let’s get him prepped for OR.” They slid the stretcher out of the helicopter and lifted it onto the gurney while the nurse took the IV drip from the medic. She gave the pilots a thumbs-up with her one free hand and hustled away from the helicopter blades, which were already starting to turn faster as the engines throttled up.

1510 hours: The falling sensation lingered. Nothing made any sense to him. What? Where am I? What the hell… His mind’s eye captured a bird’s eye view of a snow-covered field. How did I? He recognized where he was, but could not comprehend how he got here. This field was just outside his hometown of Onekama. Inwardly he laughed. No one except folks from there ever could figure out how to say that name. One comma was the typical mispronunciation. He always corrected them: “It’s pronounced Oh-neck-ah-ma.” Even then, they’d have to say it a few times before they got it right. The field grew nearer and nearer. It was as familiar to him as his own name. He recalled trudging through it, rifle slung over his shoulder, on his way to his father’s deer blind. He remembered tearing across it on his snowmobile with Maggie holding onto him for dear life as she screamed for him to slow down. Maggie…How long ago has it been? He couldn’t focus sufficiently to come up with the answer exactly, so he settled on fifteen years…give or take… He felt himself settle into the snow.

“Don’t you just love the snow when it’s fresh like this?” Her voice was clear and familiar. He struggled to turn his head. Lying there in the snow next to him was Maggie, just as he remembered her from his senior year of high school. “Let’s make snow angels,” she said.

He watched her raise her arms from her side to above her head while sweeping her legs from side to side. She was giggling.

How? It isn’t possible.

“It’s your turn, David. Make your snow angel,” she urged him.

Her smile had always dazzled him. No, it can’t be. You can’t be here…I can’t be here.

“Go ahead, David. You’re never too old to make snow angels,” she chided him.

He could feel himself raising his arms from his side to over his head and then back down to his side. But when he tried to move his legs, there was no equivalent sensation.

1511 hours: The patient spasmed on the stainless-steel operating table. The doctor looked across at the surgical nurse. She shook her head. He looked at the nurse anesthetist who nodded and said, “OK, he’s out. He won’t move again. BP’s a little low, but heart rate is stable. He’s all yours, Doctor.”

“Let’s stabilize this left leg first as best we can. We’ll let the docs at Landsthul see if maybe there’s some miracle they can perform on him. I’ve got a friend in orthopedics there…I’ll call him when we’re through here.” The nurse nodded and immediately began gathering surgical instruments she knew he would need. The doctor turned to a technician behind him who was working at a computer station: “Notify scheduling that Major David Keller here will require an ICU spot on the next C-9 headed for Landsthul…highest priority.”

CHAPTER TWO - Maggie McCall

M-22 is one of America’s most scenic byways. It meanders in a series of lazy curves through open fields, dense forests, and across spectacular inland lakes as it makes its way from Manistee all the way to Northport along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, a distance of about eighty-five miles. The first village along that route, as one drives north, is the village of Onekama, an expandable resort town that boasts a year-round population of about four hundred, but swells to fifteen thousand summertime visitors who crave its mild weather and lake accesses between Memorial and Labor Days. It is imbued with all the pleasures of small-town life and all of its tribulations as well.

As locals in Onekama go, Maggie McCall was a relative newcomer. She’d been in town a little over sixteen years. But today, she wished she was anywhere else in the world. She wasn’t going to answer the knock at the front door, but, as she peeked out the kitchen window, she could see her friend Emily Weber’s car in the driveway. Still holding the ice pack against her right eye, she opened the door.

“Oh, God! He hit you?” Emily swore an expletive under her breath.

“Not exactly,” Maggie replied.

As the two settled over fresh cups of coffee, Emily gently took her best friend’s hand in hers and asked, “You all right, Mags?”

“Yeah…I am…just damn glad it’s Tuesday and I don’t have to open the Yellow Dog today.”

“Well, the coffee shop and its patrons can just wait a while,” Emily opined. She stirred cream into her coffee, took a sip, and then proceeded, “It’s all over town already. I’ve heard a couple of versions, but the only thing they had in common is that the sheriff’s office was here last night. What the hell happened?”

“Ray showed up here about seven o’clock. He still has a key. I was out here in the kitchen. I didn’t hear him until he was right there in the doorway.” She pointed to the kitchen entry from the living room. “He scared the bejesus out of me.”

“We’ve got to get these locks changed,” Emily offered, realizing that the suggestion was a nickel late and a dollar short. “Was he drunk?”

“He was, and you know what he’s like when he’s like that.”

“Oh, Maggie.”

“Yeah, well he starts yellin’ at me about the Yellow Dog being more important to me than him…” Tears came to the corners of her eyes. Maggie dabbed at them and continued. “I guess Mrs. Burney across the street could hear him yellin’ and swearin’. She’s the one that called the sheriff’s office, and me and Jack are just lucky there was a deputy close by that could take the call. He got here quick.”

“Jack was here?” Without waiting on the answer, Emily repeated, “Oh, Maggie.”

“He came in the middle of it, just before the deputy got here. Ray was swearin’ at me, calling me all kinds of foul names. Jack told him to stop. I told Ray to get out. He made a move toward me and Jack moved in front of him. Ray grabbed him and when he did that, Jasmine lunged at Ray. Ray gave her an awful kick to the belly…bounced that poor dog halfway across the kitchen. Ray still had a hold on Jack, so I tried to get him to let go. That’s when I caught Ray’s elbow in the eye.”

“Quite a shiner you got there, kiddo!”

It was the way she’d said that. Maggie chuckled, “Yeah, well I wish I could say ‘you should see the other guy,’ but truth is Ray didn’t even get a scratch. The deputy got here just before things really started to get out of hand. He made sure Jack, Jasmine, and I were OK, then he took Ray home to his dad’s. At least, that’s where I think they took him. I think Ray’s dad has the sheriff’s office trained to just bring him to his place. Honestly, I don’t know, and I don’t really care. I just know I don’t want to ever see him again. I’m thinking about going to Chicago for a while.”

“You think he won’t follow you there?”

Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“He will, you know. He’s crazy like that. It won’t matter to him that he’s a nobody in Chicago. He thinks his daddy will protect him, no matter where he is, no matter what he’s done. No, Maggie, you need to stand up to this asshole once and for all and you need to do it right now. You can stay with me and Chuck until you can get the locks changed on the house. We can get a restraining order that keeps him away from you. And, you can file for divorce and full custody of Jack.”

That was a lot for Maggie to digest and it all seemed so overwhelming to her. “Chicago would be a lot easier.”

“Would it? Take a minute and think about it, Maggie. The court would have to be on your side right now, especially since the sheriff’s office had to come out last night. Hell, I’ll go to court and testify that he’s been an asshole ever since you married the guy. But if you leave and take Jack with you, who knows what Ray and his father might do? I wouldn’t put it past them to accuse you of kidnapping Jack and running away to Chicago.”

Maggie sat at the kitchen table with her head cradled in her hands, the ice pack still jammed against her right eye. Jasmine, her five-year-old golden retriever, got up and walked over to her and laid her head gently in Maggie’s lap.

“He kicked that sweet dog last night?” Emily asked disdainfully.

Maggie nodded and added, “Doc Wickern checked her over this morning. He said she’s OK. Maybe a bruised rib or two, but nothing broken. He took some X-rays. She seems OK.” She smiled down at the dog and rubbed her head with her unencumbered hand.

“How’s Jack?”

“I dunno,” she said shaking her head. “He says he’s OK, but no son should hear his parents fight like we were last night, and, certainly, no son should ever have to step in front of his father because he thinks he’s about to hit his mother.”

“Jack’s a good kid, Maggie. You’ve done a good job with him, no thanks to Ray. Besides, Ray isn’t…”

Maggie sat bolt upright and put her hand up toward Emily. “Stop right there, Em. Ray’s the only father the boy’s ever known. That isn’t going to change.” The kitchen fell silent. Emily looked away from her best friend. Then Maggie offered, “Besides, Ray wasn’t always like this, Em.”

“I know, Maggie, but he’s like this now and you, Jack, and Jasmine deserve better.” The dog lifted her head when she heard her name, but then put it back down again on Maggie’s lap.

Maggie looked at her friend and said, “I’m more afraid of Clipper than I am of Ray.”

Paul “Clipper” McCall, Maggie’s father-in-law, started out as a barber in Onekama back in the early 70s, hence the nickname “Clipper” which had stuck with him to this day. His foray into politics began as a member of the village of Onekama’s city council. It was difficult to tell what he liked best about politics, the exposure or the power, but it wasn’t long before he’d set his sights on higher office. In the late 80s he was elected as state representative. By 1990 he’d become the speaker of Michigan’s House of Representatives. Then in 1992, the state of Michigan imposed term limits on their state legislators and Clipper decided it was time to run for the US House of Representatives, where he served until 2005. His political career ended with his defeat in a Republican gubernatorial primary race. But Clipper had kept careful track of his friends over the years and he was not bashful about calling in markers, especially when his son needed bailing out of “unfortunate misunderstandings,” as Clipper preferred to call Ray’s not infrequent brushes with the law.

Emily waved her hand dismissively. “That ol’ bag of wind. He’s pushed people around long enough. It’s time someone stood up to him, Maggie, and there’s no better reason I can think of than Jack.”

CHAPTER THREE - Landstuhl

Dr. Philomena Goldstein, at only thirty-five years of age, had risen rapidly to become the director of the Department of Psychiatric Care at the miitary facility, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany. She was, by ten years, the youngest department head at the hospital, but everyone on the staff loved and respected her. Most of the other department heads were damned glad she was there so they didn’t have to deal with all of the mental and emotional trauma associated with war wounds. Yet, she knew she was nonetheless a disappointment to her father, Dr. William Goldstein, head of neurosurgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. When she had decided to enter psychiatry upon graduation from Harvard Medical School, he had said to her, “Philomena, you have a gift: the hands of a concert pianist. You are called to be a surgeon.”

“Surgery is too routine,” she’d said to him. “I want my days to begin with me having no idea how they will end.” Five years ago, she’d arrived at Landstuhl. With combat-wounded service members arriving almost daily, her work there had lived up to her every expectation and then some. There had been two docs in the department then, an army lieutenant colonel and herself. Though she was not in the military, her contract was through the Pentagon and so she had to learn how to function within that new and very different milieu. The lieutenant colonel turned out to be more of a mentor than a boss, but he’d retired two years ago and was not replaced. Dr. Goldstein’s contract was rewritten, her salary increased marginally, and she was promoted to department head. Within her department, she was the only one with a medical degree. The other five practitioners were licensed professional counselors, or LPCs, for short. All had received formal training in the nuances of dealing with combat-wounded service members. But the real test was working in the crucible that was Landsthul Regional Medical Center. Her least experienced LPC had over five years’ experience, all of it right here, working almost exclusively with wounded service members who’d been evacuated to Landstuhl from either Iraq or Afghanistan. Their job, one of the hospital’s most difficult, was to interview every one of them and assess, as best they could, the mental health care needs of each patient and make sure that assessment was well documented in their medical records. It was an impossible task, not because the department wasn’t fully dedicated to their mission, or because its practitioners weren’t skilled at what they did. There simply wasn’t enough time. The average length of stay for a wounded service member at Landstuhl was a mere two weeks. Landstuhl was where recovery began, not where it was completed.

It was, indeed, very rare for Major David Keller to have been here for six weeks, four of which found him in a medically induced coma. A week ago, David’s surgeons made the decision to lift him out of the coma. Two days ago, two of Philomena’s LPCs began talking to him. Now, on this early January morning, it was Philomena’s turn after both of her LPCs came to her indicating their concern for this particular patient’s mental health.

David, from his bed, turned his head toward the door when it opened and then went back to blankly staring out the window at the opposite end of the room. Dr. Goldstein had been warned that he was not very responsive to visitors, especially doctors, and her knee-length white clinic coat was a dead giveaway. “Major Keller, I’m Dr. Philomena Goldstein. How are you feeling today?”

David turned back toward her. His expression was one of disdain. “How am I feeling? You’ve got to be kidding me, Doc. Look down here,” and he pointed to the lower half of his hospital bed. “See anything there? No, you don’t, because both my legs are gone. So, how the hell do you think I feel?”

She opened her laptop and David’s medical records were there in front of her. She glanced through them to see if he was on any type of medication that might heighten his anxiety as a side effect.

“What kind of a doc are you?”

She looked up from the computer. “I’m a psychiatrist.”

His face lit up in a sarcastic sneer. Dr. Goldstein could see it coming.

“Well, dammit, if I had a thigh, I’d slap it,” he chortled.

Dr. Goldstein steeled herself.

“Dr. Phil, as I live and breathe! Where am I? I thought I was in Landstuhl, but it must be Hollywood if you’re here. Where’s the studio audience, Doc? I know you probably have millions of bored housewives looking in.” Keller faked combing his hair. “How do I look, Doc? Is this good enough for TV? Yeah, OK, go ahead and save me in the next hour, will ya?”

She’d been here before. When she first arrived at Landstuhl some of her professional colleagues had made the same joke. She’d shot them down with a piercing stare, and then the comment, “Is that the best you’ve got? I’ve heard that since my first day of residency…so no points for originality.” The word quickly got around not to ever call Dr. Goldstein Dr. Phil.

She closed the lid on her laptop and shot Keller a look.

“Oops, touched a nerve did I, Doc?”

She smiled at him. “You did, Major.”

The smile faded from his face and he turned back toward the window. Barely audible, but sufficiently loud enough for her to hear, David said, “Yeah, well, at least you still have your legs.”

“They are doing some incredible things with prosthesis these days, Major.”

David continued to stare wordlessly out of the window. Dr. Goldstein didn’t pursue the thought any further because she really had no idea if prosthesis was possible for him or not. Landsthul didn’t have a prosthetics department. When she’d asked the orthopedic surgeon who’d removed the remaining leg about the possibility of prosthesis, he shook his head and said he wasn’t sure. All she knew for sure was that whatever recovery he was facing, prosthesis or not, it was going to be long, difficult, and, at times, even torturous.

Dr. Goldstein changed the direction of their conversation. “We’ve kept your family updated on your condition.”

David turned toward her. “I have no family.”

Dr. Goldstein was prepared for this. Both of the LPCs who’d talked with him earlier said he denied having any family. So, she decided to press the point. Thumbing through his computerized file, she started to say, “Your DD Form 93…”

David shot her a look, “I know what my form says, but I have no family.”

“Your father…”

“Haven’t seen him since I graduated from high school.”

“Your younger brother…”

“What about him? I haven’t seen him either.”

The picture was becoming clearer now for Dr. Goldstein. In David’s records she’d read the Report of Casualty Officer Visit. The casualty officer, whose job it was to notify the next-of-kin that Major Keller had been wounded, had gone to the address listed on David’s DD Form 93, Record of Emergency Data, looking for Mr. Thomas Paul Keller, who was listed as Major Keller’s father. However, at that address he’d found a young couple with a completely different name who explained to him that Mr. Keller no longer lived there. He’d moved in with his son, PJ, and his wife. They gave him the new address, right there in the same town, Onekama, Michigan. At that new address, the casualty officer met PJ, his wife, Natalie, their two sons, Max and Sam, and Major Keller’s father, his next-of-kin, Tom Keller.

By regulation, the casualty officer is required to notify that person listed on the DD Form 93 as the next-of-kin, but in this case, there had to be some slight bending of the rules when Tom told the casualty officer that he didn’t have a son named David. It was at this point that PJ, short for Paul John, pulled the casualty officer into the adjoining kitchen. “Listen, you’re in the right place. My brother, David…uh, Major David Raymond Keller...that’s who we’re talking about right?”

The casualty officer confirmed, “Yes, sir.”

“Uh, yeah. OK, then. He’s my brother. That’s our dad in there,” he said, pointing to the other room. “But he has his days. Sometimes he can recall David, and sometimes he can’t. Today is one of those days when he can’t, apparently. It’s dementia.”

The casualty officer gave the information to Tom because that was what the army required him to do, but he made sure that PJ and Natalie heard everything and when he asked if Mr. Keller had any questions, he looked first at the old man and then to PJ.

David’s denial that he had a family was disconcerting to Dr. Goldstein, to say the least. Even though the wounded warriors she saw, her warriors, as she liked to think of them, were merely passing through the hospital, she also thought of Landsthul as her hospital. Standing now next to David’s bed, she said to him, “Your brother, Paul, has asked to be kept apprised of your status. So, you do have people out there that are concerned about you, Major.”

“My dad’s a handyman and I heard my brother is an attorney…the county prosecutor, I’m told. They’ve got their lives, I’ve got mine,” he said, gesturing toward his missing legs, “such as it is. I don’t want anything from them, least of all their pity. So just write up whatever you have to write up and tell me where to next, and when.”

Dr. Goldstein tried a different approach, one that had worked for her before with people who were service oriented. “Major Keller, you damn near died twice. The first time was from blood loss, the second time was from an infection. That’s why the coma was induced, so that your body could concentrate on fighting the infection and not worry about any burdens that the mind might put on it. You’re on the right path now, but you are going to need a lot of help going forward. It’s quite likely, I think, that your family will want to be a part of that.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see much in my future without my legs, so let’s just stuff the psychobabble. You aren’t going to keep me here in Landsthul to work on my psyche. You need the bed for the next poor sonuvabitch that gets blown to bits. So, just answer the questions. Where to next? When?”

Even Dr. Goldstein’s patience was wearing thin at this point, but she stayed on course. “I don’t make those calls. You are correct, we aren’t going to keep you here to work on your head. But, know this, if I could keep you here, I would. And I will make sure that wherever you go from here, they know you have a family back in Michigan that cares about you. Dammit, Major, you’re alive today because a lot of good people cared about you and did their jobs as best they could under some difficult conditions to save your ass. We aren’t going to stop now just because you’ve got a shitty attitude.”

David smiled wryly. “So, Dr. Phil, that’s it? That’s what’s wrong with me…shitty attitude. How about if I just take two aspirins? Then don’t call me again, Doc. I’ll call you if I need you…which I won’t.” He turned back toward the window.

She turned on her heel, and as the door closed behind her, she stopped, lowered her head, and realized that for the first time in a long time, she’d let a patient get to her. She hadn’t helped him one little bit with her visit, but she had gained some professional insights into David’s psyche. She knew he wouldn’t be here much longer. Back at her desk, she resolved that her write-up in Major David Keller’s medical records was going to reflect her very deep concern for his mental health. It was her grim assessment that, if left to his own devices, without proper mental health treatment David could become suicidal, and that was an outcome that Dr. Goldstein considered absolutely unacceptable.

CHAPTER FOUR - Good News, Bad News

Margaret Lassiter McCall was known for her perkiness, her ever-fresh look. Naturally attractive in a California-girl sort of way, she needed little makeup to make heads turn. Her hair was a mahogany brown, long and wavy, and today she wore it pulled back in a ponytail. Under her apron, she wore a pair of black slacks that hugged her trim frame and a white blouse with the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow because she didn’t want them dragging in a customer’s food. At work, the ever-present apron was a habit she’d learned from her mother, who’d been the one that taught Maggie her way around the kitchen, especially when it came to baking.

However, that morning, looking at her reflection in the coffee shop’s powder-room mirror, she pulled down on the bags under each eye and let go. The bags returned. “Shit!” she muttered under her breath, stepped back from the mirror, washed her hands, and returned to the front of the Yellow Dog Café. It had been a busy morning. Only one breakfast bagel sandwich remained in the case and she was already halfway through her supply of lunch sandwiches. The construction business was once again robust around Onekama as people of means were building mammoth homes along Lake Michigan or around Portage Lake. Framers, plumbers, electricians, masons, tilers, HVAC mechanics, and laborers of all types stopped at the Yellow Dog on their way to their job sites and stocked up on Maggie’s sandwiches for their breakfasts and lunches. She poured herself a steaming cup of dark roast, plunked down in one of the easy chairs in front of the café’s expansive glass window, and took a moment to enjoy the warm sun streaming through. Sunny days in January in northern Michigan were a rarity, and she told herself she had earned the break. But she’d no sooner settled into the chair when the door opened and Emily walked in. She took one look at Maggie and said, “Still not sleeping well?”

“It shows that much?”

Reluctantly Emily offered, “Yeah, Mags, it shows. What’s the matter, kiddo? Don’t tell me that soon-to-be ex of yours is coming around. Just call the cops…”

“No,” Maggie interrupted her, “it’s not that. He’s abiding by the PPO. He knows all the locks have been changed and I think his father has really cracked down on him after I called the sheriff that day he was parked across the street just staring in here at me.”

“What’s the attorney telling you about the divorce?”

Maggie got up and got her friend a cup of coffee. As she handed it to her, Maggie sat back down in front of the window and Emily settled into the chair next to her. “I’m losing sleep over this damned divorce,” she said.

“It shows,” her friend said nonchalantly.

“I’ve finally managed to get angry about this, Em. Dammit, I’ve been married to Ray for sixteen years. The attorney says that’s considered ‘a long-term marriage.’ He says I should be able to get what I want out of any settlement we reach.”

“OK. So, what’s the problem?”

“Clipper.”

Emily was a very successful businesswoman in her own right. She owned one of the largest real estate firms in all of Manistee County. In any given year she and her hand-picked group of associates did a volume of business measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. She knew lots of powerful people in the region. She was in fact considered to be one of them, but when she heard the word Clipper she just threw up her hands. “What’s he trying to do now?”

“Invoke something his attorney is calling grandparents’ rights,” Maggie responded.

“Well, where the hell was he when that no-good son of his was slipping further and further into the bottle and leaving you and Jack out on a limb? He’s got some nerve. There’s no such thing as grandparents’ rights, is there? What’s your attorney telling you?”

“He says that there really isn’t any such thing, but…”

Emily, shaking her head, chirped, “There’s always a but with Clipper, isn’t there, Mags?”

“Yeah, Em, there is. He’s pushing me for a compromise that I’m not sure I should make.”

“May I ask what might that be?”

“I want primary custody of Jack. I want the house. The mortgage has a balance of ninety thousand. I want Ray to take that on or he can get Clipper to pay it off. I don’t care as long as I still have the house. The Yellow Dog is in my name, so Ray and Clipper, neither of them, can get their hands on my business. And I want five-hundred dollars a month in child support, along with a guarantee from Ray or Clipper, again, I don’t care which one, that Jack’s college tuition will be paid for.”

“Sounds fair to me. You put up with a lot from that jackass for a long damn time. So, what does Ray want?”

“That’s just it. So far, the jackass doesn’t want anything. It’s Clipper that’s made the demand for visitation every other weekend.”

“I thought Ray was living at Clipper’s.”

“Now you’re seeing my dilemma,” Maggie replied.

“But the PPO…”

“The personal protection order just keeps Ray away from me. It doesn’t include Jack.”

“Screw that. Let’s just go get one for Jack. Ray doesn’t deserve to be around that sweet boy.” Emily was furious.

“The word from Ray’s lawyer, who is actually Clipper’s lawyer as well, is that if I try something like that, they will fight me tooth and nail in court, and wouldn’t I be better off just allowing Clipper and Ray to see Jack every other weekend.”

Emily looked at her old friend. “What’s Jack say about all of this, Maggie?”

“We’ve talked a couple of times about it. Jack’s OK with it. He doesn’t care for his father at all. He thinks he’s treated me rotten for as long as he can remember. But Jack has a soft spot for his grandfather.”

“This would be a lot easier for me to swallow if Trudy were still alive,” Emily offered.

“Yeah, me too. Truth be known, I think a part of Ray died with his mother. He was always a bit of a hell raiser, but Trudy could always settle him down. After she died, Clipper never tried. All he does is make excuses for Ray. He bails him out whenever he gets sideways with the law.”

“So, I guess it comes down to one question, ‘Do you think Clipper and Ray can be trusted with Jack every other weekend?’”

Maggie thought for a moment and then answered, “If Jack were younger, I’d say no. But he’s sixteen, Em. In two years, he’s off to college. Who can I trust then, except Jack, to make good decisions? Maybe this next couple of years with Clipper and Ray will be good experience for him. Jack’s the one who said to me the other evening, ‘C’mon, Mom. Stop worrying so much about me. I’m a big boy now.’ ”

“Is he driving yet?”

“He’s got his learner’s permit and he’s chomping at the bit. I expect he’ll be ready to take his tests in a month or so. Why do you ask?”

Emily shrugged. “I wouldn’t let him go over to Clipper’s unless he’s got a car. If the cheese should get binding while he’s there, Jack would have the good sense to leave and come home, if he’s got a car. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, well, where am I going to get a car for him? All I’ve got is my old pickup.”

Emily smiled and gave her good friend a conspiratorial look. “Add it to the list for Ray’s lawyer and tell him, while he’s at it, to tell Clipper to make it a new car…maybe a nice Chevy Equinox or a Jeep, so Jack can make it back and forth from college when that time comes.”

Maggie smiled at her friend and simply nodded. “No wonder people like the real estate deals you negotiate for them. Thanks, Em.”

“You’re welcome.” There was a rather long pause between the two, then Emily changed the subject. “Have you heard the news about David?”

“David Keller?”

Emily knew her friend knew exactly which David she was talking about. But David Keller lived in a really dark place inside Maggie’s memories and she knew Maggie did not like to go there, so she gave her a pass. “He’s been hurt, Mags.”

Skeptically, Maggie replied, “So what will this be? Purple Heart number five?”

“No, Mags, I mean he’s been really hurt this time.”

Maggie, who’d moved behind the counter and begun to tidy up, stopped what she was doing and looked at Emily. “What happened?”

“He’s lost both legs. A roadside bomb. He’s the lucky one. The other three in the vehicle were killed. PJ says he’s being transferred to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington.”

“PJ told you about this?”

“I’d heard a rumor. I got wind of it from a client of mine…the young couple that bought Tom Keller’s house after PJ and Natalie took him in…that an army officer had turned up on their doorstep one night looking for Tom. They gave him PJ’s address. You know me, just can’t let sleeping dogs lie. So, I had some business in Manistee yesterday afternoon in the courthouse, where I just happened to bump into PJ...”

“Just bumped into him, eh,” Maggie smiled at her. “How coincidental.”

Emily smiled back, “Well, that is, I bumped into him after his secretary told me he was in courtroom four.”

Maggie nodded knowingly.

“Anyway, while I was in there I bumped into PJ. He wasn’t going to just volunteer the information about David. You know they don’t talk. So, I just up and asked him. He told me old Tom didn’t even remember having a son named David when the officer told him what had happened. That dementia is such a terrible thing.”

Maggie didn’t say a word and for the briefest of moments, Emily felt like she never should have said anything to her.

Then, in a voice gone raspy, Maggie asked, “What’s PJ going to do?”

“He doesn’t know. Talk about having your hands full. I mean county prosecutor, married, two young sons, Tom living with them…and now…this. I tell you my heart goes out to him and Natalie as much as it does to David.”

Maggie didn’t respond. Emily checked her watch. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t want you to hear about David from the grapevine…better, I thought, if it came from me.” She gave Maggie a hug and whispered, “You OK?”

Maggie, her voice even more raspy, said, “Thanks, Em. I appreciate it.”

“OK. I have to go to an appointment in Pierport in fifteen minutes. I’ll call you later.” She hated leaving her like this.

Maggie nodded.

When the door closed, Maggie watched her friend slide into her late model Cadillac Escalade and pull from the curb. While Maggie’s beauty was wholesome and natural, Emily was the more glamorous one of the two. Her makeup and hair were always perfect. She dripped diamonds, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings, first because her lucrative real estate business let her afford them, and two, because “showy” is what she had to be for the clients she dealt with. They were looking at million-dollar properties along Lake Michigan. She’d said to Maggie, “Hell, Mags, if it’s showy they want then it’s showy they will get.” But Maggie knew that under that glamorous façade was a true friend. She watched the Cadillac disappear around the curve in M-22 just north of Portage Street, then she turned the deadbolt lock on the door and flipped the Open sign to Closed. As she headed for the powder room, she put her hands over her face and let the tears she’d been holding back begin to flow.