Dream Country Read Online Free Page A

father and the foreman had to go find him, bring him home.”
    “And he didn’t find Jake?”
    “No.”
    “What about Sage? Where was she in all this?”
    “With me,” Daisy said, remembering how her daughter hadn’t left her side all that time. How quiet the little girl had been, as if she’d sensed that her mother needed calm, that no question she might want to ask could be answered just then. Daisy had made a necklace for Sage that week, praying while she worked, sending all her love for Jake into the stones and bone. Sage wore it still: She never took it off.
    “James will never leave Wyoming,” Daisy said. “In case Jake comes back.”
    “Is there any reason to believe—” the detective started to ask.
    Daisy shook her head. Hathaway’s hand rested on her shoulder. Daisy stared at the detective, thinking of the things that had run through her mind during all these years of not knowing where her son had gone: buzzards, bears, coyotes, rattlesnakes. The fissures in the red rocks. Chasms and caves. The vast open space. The sound of his voice calling for help, no one hearing.
    “There’s animosity between the two of you?” the detective asked. “You and your ex-husband?”
    “Maybe so. I’m not sure animosity’s the right word,” Daisy said, wondering what was.
    Detective LaRosa nodded. She just stood there, examining the things on Sage’s desk. She flipped through a pile of notebooks, looked in drawers. Opening a plastic film canister, she looked inside and sniffed. She touched the top of Sage’s wooden box. Dark mahogany, it had a cowboy riding a bucking bronco carved into the lid. This was where Sage kept her jewelry, her ticket stubs, her father’s notes—all her most important mementos. Daisy bit her tongue: She knew the detective was searching for drugs.
    “This is beautiful.” The detective held up a bracelet Daisy had given Sage last Christmas. She touched the delicate carving, examined the finely inked etchings. “Very unusual.”
    “Daisy made it,” Hathaway said.
    “I know your work.” The detective smiled, glancing at Daisy. “My sister has a pair of your earrings. ‘Moon Goddesses,’ I think they’re called.”
    Daisy nodded. She named all her pieces. The bracelet Detective LaRosa held in her hand was called “Pine Ghosts.” It came from the voices Daisy heard whispering in the wind, rustling the pine boughs, saying the word “love” over and over, telling people to love their families. The pine ghost faces were wise and knowing, old women who had lived forever in the trees’ bark and needles. Wherever Sage was right now, Daisy wished she had taken the pine ghosts with her for protection.
    “What are these?” the detective asked, staring at a tiny series of concentric rings etched on the face of one of the ghosts. “My sister has them on her earrings, too.”
    “Just symbols,” Daisy said.
    “Daisy often uses circles in her work,” Hathaway said, stepping in because Daisy was staring at the bracelet, momentarily unable to talk. “They’re an ancient image of protection—the clan gathering around to keep out intruders, evil spirits, wild animals . . .”
    “Intriguing,” the detective said.
    “Just let her be safe,” Daisy said out loud.
    “Is there anything she always does, a place she always goes?”
    “She loves nature,” Daisy said. “She hikes, canoes . . . she knows all the parks. I’ve taken her camping in Vermont and New Hampshire. We’ve rented a cottage the last three summers in Maine.”
    “Where in Maine?”
    “Near Mount Katahdin,” Daisy said. She had chosen the wildest place she could find in New England, the closest in spirit to Wyoming. They had seen eagles, moose, and black bears. The roads were unpaved. The night sky was black velvet. The stars were great globes, low and luminous. Standing on the ramshackle porch while Sage slept inside, Daisy had talked to Jake, and she could swear she’d heard him talking back.
    Detective