There was only one house at the end of the logging trail. Earl had known that since Monday. He had just hoped he was wrong.
It was a little brown house with a big garden gone to seed and a mailbox that said LINDQVIST. A rusty state truck sat in the side yard on flat tires, with a faded seal on the door: OHIO DIVISION OF WILDLIFE.
Earl knocked on the door at four in the afternoon, when the school bus had just gone by.
A girl answered. Twelve, maybe. Thin, with dark circles under her eyes and her hair in a messy braid. When she saw the sheriff's uniform, all the color left her face.
"Hi," Earl said gently. "You must be Lily."
She didn't say anything.
"Can I come in for a minute? I'm not mad at anybody."
Abe Lindqvist was asleep in his recliner by the woodstove, with a quilt over his knees and a wildlife magazine open on his chest. He was eighty-one. For thirty-five years he had been the state wildlife officer for Calder County. Every hunter in the county over fifty had gotten a warning from Abe at least once.
Earl had gotten two.
Lily sat at the kitchen table with her hands in her lap. Earl sat across from her.
"Help me understand something, Lily," he said. "Why the cameras?"
She held out for about ten seconds. Then she put her head down on the table and cried.
It came out in pieces.
Grandpa had started forgetting things last spring. Little things first. Then bigger ones. In September he started getting up in the middle of the night and going out into the woods. He said he had to check on his deer. He said there were poachers. He said it was his job.
Lily's mom worked nights as a nurse at the hospital in Marietta. She didn't know. Lily had never told her.
"So I go with him," Lily said. "Every night. I hear the door, and I get up, and I hold his hand so he doesn't fall in the creek. And when he's done checking, he comes home and goes to sleep."
"And the cameras?"
"People started putting them up. For deer season." She wiped her face with her sleeve. "I knew if anybody saw pictures of Grandpa walking around in his pajamas at two in the morning, they'd tell. And then they'd put him in Maple Grove. And he'd hate it. He'd hate it so much."
She looked up at Earl.
"I used my mom's sewing scissors," she said. "The cameras are all in a box under my bed. I didn't break any. Except the one I dropped in the creek."
Earl sat back in his chair. He looked at the old man asleep by the woodstove. He thought about June, and the last year, and how he'd have done just about anything to keep her home.
"Lily," he said. "How much have you been sleeping?"
She shrugged. "Some."
She was twelve years old. She had been walking her grandfather through the woods in the dark every night for three months, alone, so nobody would take him away.
Earl took the box of cameras with him. He gave every one back himself, in person. He told each hunter the same thing: the thief had been found, it was a family matter, there wouldn't be any more trouble, and he'd consider it a personal favor if they didn't ask any more questions.
They didn't. That's how it's done.
Except for Pete and Ray Yoder, who asked about a hundred questions. Earl finally told them the truth, because he had a feeling about those two.
Pete listened. Then he was quiet for a long time.
"Abe Lindqvist gave me a ticket in 1974," he said finally. "Shooting from a road. I was mad for ten years." He looked at his brother. "He was right, though."
That Friday, Earl sat down with Lily's mother at the kitchen table. It was a hard conversation. She cried. Then she made phone calls.
Tyler came out on Saturday and put a little chime on the back door that would ring on her mother's phone and Lily's tablet if it opened after midnight. Ruth Ann found a support group for families in the church basement. Doc Park knew a doctor in Marietta who specialized in memory, and got Abe an appointment in two weeks instead of four months.
And the Yoder brothers started picking Abe up every morning for breakfast at the Liars' Table. Abe didn't always remember their names. But he remembered every ticket he ever wrote them, and he told the whole table about each one.
They'd never had so much fun.
On the last Saturday of deer season, Earl pulled the Crown Victoria up in front of the little brown house at nine in the morning. In daylight.
Abe Lindqvist came out wearing his old wildlife officer's jacket, which still fit, and his wide-brimmed hat. Lily helped him into the passenger seat.
"Morning, Officer Lindqvist," Earl said. "Thought you might want to check on your deer."
Abe's face lit up.
They drove the county roads for two hours. Abe pointed out every deer track and every rub on every tree. He told Earl which ridge the big buck was bedding on. He was right, it turned out. Pete Yoder got that buck the next fall.
When Earl brought him home, Abe went straight to his recliner and fell asleep with a smile on his face.
That night, for the first time since September, nobody went into the woods.
And Lily Lindqvist slept until morning.
