Indivisible by Kristen Heitzmann Page A

mother stepped out, face slack. “What do you want?”
    He hung his hands on his hips. “Seeing if you need anything.”
    “Not from you.” She had thickened at the waist, and he hoped that meant the ulcers had healed and she could eat. She wore her gray-blond hair loose, having learned the inadvisability of a ponytail early in her marriage. But it made her look old and unkempt.
    His brother, Pete, sent her money each month, though he’d gotten as far from Redford as he could. Jonah tried, but she wouldn’t take any assistance from him. And he’d made no escape. Redford was in his blood. He cared about the city he protected, the responsibility he’d been given.
    He glanced at the empty chair on the porch.
    “You questioning me?” His absent dad mocked him.
    “What happened last night?”
    His father’s withering stare. “None of your business. ”
    “Someone died. That’s everyone’s business.”
    “ Walk away now. Just walk away.”
    “Go.” His mother’s face crumpled, her tone venomous. “Get out of here.”
    Why didn’t she go live with Pete or her sister? What could possibly hold her to this place? She went inside and closed the door. He stood long moments, knowing she would watch him drive away, every mile he put between them a gift. He retraced his route back to the cabin.
    The sound of a saw greeted him when he walked in his door. “Jay?”
    Half Cherokee, half Dane, Jay Laugersen came from the back room, safety goggles hanging around his neck. “You can’t give it up, can you?” One hazel and one husky blue eye gave the impression of superimposed images, a startling contrast in his dark-complected face. He wore his black hair banded at the nape to form a stubby tail.
    Jonah tossed his keys on the table. “She’s my mother.”
    “And you’re the Raven Mocker’s spawn.” A heart-eating soul-stealer’s offspring was not far off—literally or figuratively. But only Jay could get away with calling him that. Jay had brought him back from the shadow-lands, sweating out the whiskey’s poison and spooning broth and other potions between his parched lips. He had taught him carpentry, making him work his way out of the hole. He had taught him self-respect.
    Jonah said, “Hungry?”
    “Got steak?”
    “What else?” The whole Angus steer Lorraine Goetthe had raised would last until she’d fattened another for his freezer. He kept a week’s worth of beef, most of it steaks of varying thickness, thawed in the refrigerator to throw on the grill when he got off work, whenever that happened to be.
    As the steaks seared, he boiled corn and tore lettuce for a salad. Jay had brought O’Doul’s, the nonalcoholic beer that marked you a recovering drunk. They sat on the front porch to eat, these damage-control meals a Sunday afternoon ritual.
    They talked and ate and laughed.
    The bands around his heart expanded. He might never convince his mother he wasn’t responsible. Ultimately he had been, for daring to hold the man accountable. He shook his head. For now—
    His phone vibrated, and with a sigh he checked it. Moser. “I need to take this.”

    Hiking up through towering pines along an exuberant, tumbling creek, Tia moved at a brisk pace, planting the walking stick she carried, more to wave at bears or cougars than for assistance on the path. The breeze titillated the trembly aspen and bore the scent of golden banner and Queen Anne’s lace. Thorny wild roses drew a few bees in the sunny patches, and flat-leaf ferns burgeoned in the shadows.
    On she climbed, pulling with hands and feet over rocky terrain where the trees thinned, and she drew abreast of their spired tips. The sun beat down beneath the brilliant blue sky. She looked up. With a low drumming of its pinions on the air, an eagle mounted the sky from a crag overhead—her destination. She had climbed it only once before.
    “No, you can’t come; you’ll blab it around.”
    “I won’t.” She’d zipped her lips.
    “That would