Winter Study

19

A

He started to follow.

“Sit down,” A

Menechi

Eat cake or die.

A

Adam made it back as the cake and ice cream with chocolate sauce was being dished up. “What took you so long?” Ridley asked when Adam came into the kitchen. The question was not friendly. Adam’s coming to the rescue was canceled out by the fact that, had he been there in the first place, no one would have needed rescuing.

“I went back for the Sked,” Adam said mildly. “It wasn’t all that far. Maybe three hundred yards from the trail.” He dished up what was left of the stew, took a spoon from the deep-fat fryer with the clean flatware and settled in the chair Robin had vacated.

Three hundred yards. Every cell in A

“I put her in the carpenter’s shop with the wolf,” Adam said as he slathered a piece of bread with peanut butter.

“She would have liked that,” Bob said gravely, and all of them stared at him for a moment.

“That she will, Bob. I know how much she meant to you.” Adam spoke in the same mild way he had when Ridley snapped at him. It was impossible to tell if he mocked Bob or sympathized with him. A

“She did, Adam. Thank you. There’s been a distinct lack of feeling around here. Robin’s the only one who seems to care and she’s being left to isolate herself.”

Jonah clunked a full plate of cake and ice cream in front of Bob.

“GENTLEMEN AND GENTLE LADY, it is time to get naked,” Jonah a

“I’ll see if poor little Robin wants to sauna,” Bob said, pushing his chair back from the table. “Lord knows, it would do her good.”

“Allow me,” A

Bob did his pulled-back smile.

Sauna was a tradition in the north. On Isle Royale, during Winter Study, it took on its early importance; it was the most efficient way to get clean in a cold climate where there was no ru

Robin was sitting on her bed, staring at her hands.

A

“What happened?” she asked simply. Normally the shock of seeing a chewed-up corpse might account for a young woman’s imploding, but Robin had not gone catatonic at the sight of the dismembered body. It had been later, while the body was being packaged, or shortly thereafter.

“We-” Robin began, then stopped. The decision to keep a painful secret was clear on her young face. Robin wasn’t a practiced liar.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got to work some things out.”

A

“No.” Robin tipped her head farther down and her hair fell around her face.

“You smell like Ridley’s feet,” A

Robin stood obediently and stripped, as did A

“Pure sex,” he said and slapped a wiry thigh frosted with white hair. “You girls control yourselves.”

Robin actually smiled.

“Even worn down as we are, it’ll be tough,” A

Jonah dashed out ahead of them.

They left through the door of the working kitchen. Snow fell into A

In the small anteroom was a single bench and a row of pegs. Three towels already hung there. A

The sauna was built of fragrant cedar and heated by a cast-iron potbellied stove. Benches rose in tiers on two of the walls. The stove and a woodpile took up part of the third. On top of the stove was an iron tank filled with water heated to just short of boiling. To the left of the door was another tank with cold water. A single candle placed on the lower bench near the cold water lit the room.

Candlelight made the walls golden brown, the corners fading into darkness. Jonah and Adam sat side by side on the top bench, arguing good-naturedly about whether Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio was the greatest actor of the twenty-first century. Ridley was standing by the cold-water tank filling his bucket.

Oddly enough, the sauna, close and dark and hot, never struck A

A sauna was the closest thing to a womb a person could find. In the north, where the tradition was untainted with the fear of nudity that most of the U.S. labored under, men and women took saunas together. And for the length of the sauna, they were fraternal twins, or, in this case, quintuplets. Jonah made no sexual jokes. No one exchanged loaded glances.

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