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was one of them. But I wasn’t there to get drunk, capable as I was of pounding back a few. Men were my diversion of choice.
    Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.
    I hoped I would have a better selection in an hour or so. Then again, I had no idea what would crawl in from the mountain. Not that I’d ever been picky. They did need to have showered in the last twenty-four hours, though, and have all their teeth.
    I ordered a beer at the bar, a cheap domestic brew, and noticed an older man sitting there with a club soda, talking to a slouched waitress. He saw me, too, and I didn’t like the odd way his mouth twitched as he pretended he wasn’t looking.
    “Hey,” I said to the bartender, jerking my head toward the man. “He okay?”
    “Who, Doc?” The woman wore three shades of purple eye shadow. “He’s harmless.”
    I sat against the far wall, near two scraggly-haired men smoking and arguing across the billiards table. Another man hunched under a stuffed moose head, his table littered with empty shot glasses. The décor went past rustic; antlers jutted from the walls and the chandeliers.
    I needed a second drink. Before I could signal the waitress, however, the man from the bar came toward my table.
    “Can I join you?” he asked.
    “No.”
    He hesitated for a moment, wiry eyebrows sinking slightly. I stressed my point, saying, “I’m not interested, old man.”
    “You’re Luke Petersen’s daughter,” he said, sticking his hand out toward my face. “Crandall White.”
    I feigned disinterest. “The bartender called you Doc. Are you a real doctor?”
    His hand fell. “If I answer yes, do I get to sit down?”
    Kicking an empty chair toward him, I shrugged. “Whatever.”
    He sat, and motioned to the waitress. “Two more of whatever Sarah is drinking,” he said.
    It didn’t surprise me he knew my name. He said nothing else until our drinks came, the waitress dropping them on the table. Beer sloshed onto my pants. Doc watched as I muttered a couple of obscenities and chugged half the glass.
    “You look like him,” he said.
    “People always say I look like my mother.”
    “Do you?” Doc asked.
    “No. But I guess they consider it bad form to say I look like a murderer.” Like Rich the Mushroom, Doc didn’t react to my words. “So, does the whole mountain know? About my father, I mean.”
    “Not the whole mountain,” he said, taking a small sip of his beer, “but all of Jonah. News travels fast in a place like that. From what I gather, Luke was quite open about what happened before he moved here. Told the whole church, which is just about everyone in town, except me. But I caught bits and pieces of the story from time to time.”
    I waited. Doc didn’t offer any more, so I asked, “What exactly have you heard?”
    “That Luke was in prison for a while. That he was convicted of killing his wife.”
    We fell silent. What more could be said about my father’s sordid, not-so-secret past? Call me foolish, but I’d always thought uxoricide was something to be ashamed of, like beating your kid or drowning a sack of puppies. Luke appeared to treat it as if he had indigestion, a bit irritating but gone after a couple of Rolaids and a good night’s sleep.
    Shoving the mostly empty glass around the table with my thumbs, I asked, “You live there, then, in Jonah?”
    Doc nodded.
    “Why?”
    “Doctors are scarce in this area of the mountain. I see patients in a dozen towns, and Jonah is fairly central.”
    So, he was really a doctor. I looked at him, in his threadbare sweater and outdated plastic-rimmed glasses, his middle-aged jowls drooping along a once-strong jaw. I could recognize a bleeding heart, having seen enough of them while living in New York City, in those save-the-world-hug-a-tree types. If it weren’t snowing, Doc would probably be wearing leather-free sandals with organic cotton socks.
    The noise in the small building distracted me, and I glanced up. The bar was filling, but not with