Chapter 13: The Ring

Erik read the text three times.

Then he called his brother.

It rang once and went to voicemail.

He called again.

Voicemail.

"Nils," he said to the recording. "Pick up. Pick up, or I'm driving to Two Harbors right now and asking him myself."

He hung up and looked at me.

The snow was catching on his knit cap.

"Is it true?" I said.

"I don't know."

"Would Nils lie about this?"

"Nils lies on the radio every morning," Erik said. "But he's never lied to me in a text. He doesn't text me at all."

He put the phone in his pocket.

"I'm going."

"Then I'm coming."

"Britta, your bail."

"Says don't leave Minnesota. Two Harbors is in Minnesota. I checked."

He almost laughed.

"Jodie's got her," I said. "She's asleep for the night. You've got a game tomorrow night. If we leave at five, we're back by noon."

At eight the next morning Erik parked his truck in front of the house he grew up in.

It was a big white farmhouse on the hill above the harbor.

There were three pickups in the driveway.

"His coffee guys," Erik said. "Every morning since I was ten. They sit at his kitchen table and tell each other who was the best defenseman in 1987."

"Should we wait?"

"No."

He didn't knock.

He walked in the side door the way he must have done ten thousand times, stamping snow off his boots on the mat.

I followed him.

The kitchen was hot and smelled like coffee and bacon.

Dag sat at the head of a long wooden table in a flannel shirt.

Three old men sat around him with mugs.

One of them had his mouth open in the middle of a story.

Every head turned.

Dag's face did something complicated.

Then he smiled.

"Well. My son. And his fugitive."

One of the old men looked at me, and I knew him.

He'd run the bait shop by the marina when I was a kid.

He used to give me free root beer.

He looked away.

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