That Perfect Place Read online

  Jake was sitting on the porch in the dark. Ida had called him around six to tell him she had decided to extend her stay a bit. Trying not to sound relieved, he asked if she were having a good time.

  “I know, Jakob, you are all not wanting me there anymore. I have no purpose. My sister, Sigrid, is alone too. Maybe we will keep each other company for a bit.”

  “I’m sorry if you feel that way. None of us set out to hurt you, but we’re all at a busy time in our lives. Between my practice and Callie, I barely had time for Brad.”

  “Yes, well a good mother knows when not to interfere.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that. “Give us a few weeks’ notice when you decide to return. I’m afraid we are behind on the renovations.”

  “I didn’t expect you would do them, dear.”

  “We’ll get it done, but we may have to hire help. None of us is a master carpenter. We all want you to be happy and not feel dispossessed.”

  “Your father built those rooms himself, and he did leave the house to Jeanine and Sam. I should have moved long ago. I think he expected I would move home to Sweden.”

  “We’re glad you didn’t. Sundays aren’t the same without you.”

  You tell Brad his Mormor misses him and I will send him a present from Sweden.”

  “Nothing expensive, and he won’t wear a sweater. Maybe some snowshoes? Talk to you soon. Love you, Ma.” He said it in Swedish hoping to placate her a bit.

  “I’m glad one of you remembers some Swedish. Good-bye, Jakob.”

  What his mother had said of not being wanted was somewhat true. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her around, but he wanted her to have a life of her own and not try to dominate his. His thoughts turned to Callie. He hoped she was doing all right. He’d had one enthusiastic phone call from her two days after she left and only a Disneyland postcard since. It was weird, he had never asked for the child, but now he felt empty without her.

  He was about to go inside when a vehicle turned up the drive and shut off its lights. He listened for the engine and heard it approach the clinic. The dogs gave a few muffled barks, and he shut them in the house. Thankful he had not yet removed his prosthesis, he hurried quietly down to investigate.

  As he unlocked the back door he heard the sound of wood shattering as the front door splintered. He grabbed an infrared flashlight used to examine eyes in large-animal treatment and crept into the hall. Donny was peeing on the wall. Jake rolled his eyes and kicked the offender to the floor. Donny tried to stand up, but Jake clouted him on the side of his head. McCaffrey went down in a pool of his own urine.

  The lights snapped on in the treatment room, and Jake heard glass shattering. Mad now, Jake came in through exam two and threw the flashlight at the other intruder. The man spun, and Jake saw the flash of a knife. The knife wielder lunged at Jake, slicing the back of his wrist. The ex-marine cursed his slowness as he kicked his attacker away.

  On the second lunge, Jake grabbed the intruder’s wrist and slammed his arm against the steel treatment table. The knife clattered to the floor as he twisted the offender’s arm up behind his back with a bit more force than was necessary. He heard the bone snap, and his opponent screamed. Jake pushed him away.

  “Get out, Doug, and take Donny with you. Don’t ever come after me or mine again or I will really hurt you.” He turned to clean up the mess in the drug cabinet and showed no further concern for the intruders. He didn’t turn around again until he heard their truck go screeching out.

  Jill was making the right turn to go to her house around ten thirty when a pickup came careening around the corner, nearly sideswiping her. She slammed on her brakes, her heart pounding. When she got herself pulled together she realized that the truck looked like Donny’s. Concerned now, she turned left and headed for the clinic. There were lights on in the hall to the exam rooms. Crossing the porch warily, she saw the front door was broken. Jill hesitated in the shadows, wondering if she should seek help first in case someone was still there. The front desk lights came on and to her relief it was Jake.

  “Jakob, what happened here?”

  He spun around, his fists up and clenched. “Jill? How did you know to come here?” His posture relaxed when he saw her.

  “They nearly ran me down. It was Donny, wasn’t it?”

  “And his cousin, Doug.”

  “Why?”

  “Donny got his license suspended because of the anthrax cow, so they thought they’d take it out on me.”

  “You’re bleeding. Come on back here and let me clean it up.”

  There was a four-inch gash on his left wrist that was deep enough to need stitches. He asked her to do it so he wouldn’t have to waste half the night at the hospital.

  “Should I ask how you got this?” she said as she numbed the area with Novocain.

  “Doug had a knife. He doesn’t have it now.”

  “You disarmed a man with a knife using what?”

  “Jill, I was a marine, Fifteenth MEU. An expeditionary unit is a mobile search-and-destroy group. One local puke with a knife isn’t a big deal.”

  “Yes, but there were two of them.”

  “Donny went down pretty easy. I took him out of action first.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “This is the sheriff’s jurisdiction, and nothing was taken. He won’t do anything about it.”

  “If you’re sure. Are you hurt anywhere else?” She finished stitching and cut the excess suture material.

  “Nope. Thanks, Jillian. Go on home and I’ll board up the door behind you.” He was thankful she didn’t fuss but did what was needed, calmly.

  “Take some Tylenol. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, Jake.” How can you be so matter of fact about a knife fight? You must have ice water in your veins.

  Jeanine must have heard the ruckus because the farmhouse lights were on, and Jill passed a sheriff’s SUV on her way out.

  Fortunately, the deputy who took the call was a friend.

  “Jakob, what happened here?”

  “Doug and Donny, up to no good. Donny pissed on the wall in the hall, and Doug attacked me with a knife, which is still where he dropped it. I’m afraid I broke his arm. I got a bit hot, I guess.”

  “Oh Lord. Anything missing?”

  “A few things smashed in the treatment room and the door as you see it. I got here before they had much time to wreck the place.”

  “You wanna press charges?”

  “I want someone to pay the damages. This door is probably five hundred bucks. Let’s see what was broken in the back.”

  Sven spoke up from his perch— “Dumb doggie, go home”—as the dogs bounded in ahead of Jeanine and Sam, followed by Brad, SJ, and Vanessa.

  Jake had to tell the story again. His patience was wearing thin, and his wrist was starting to sting.

  “Could we just deal with this in the morning, please?”

  Sam said, “Let me fix this door for you, Jake. You go on to the house.”

  “Thanks, Sam. Buck, you got what you need from me?” He turned to the deputy.

  “Just read over your statement and sign it, and I’ll get the ball rolling on picking those two up.”

  By the time he got to the house, Jake had the shakes pretty badly. It had taken a great deal of self-control to keep from hurting Doug even more when he had come at him with the knife. It would have been so easy to break his neck and beat Donny to a pulp. He clenched and unclenched his hands trying to relax. Finally, he took a heavy dose of sleeping pills to stop his violent thoughts. Groggy and irritable the next morning, he didn’t get into work until nearly eight and was grateful his partners had done the morning chores.

  Eight o’clock brought insurance inspectors and lots of questions from everybody. Jake was glad to escape to his farm calls. He was able to put the incident out of his thoughts for the rest of the day.

  Doug and Donny McCaffrey were nowhere to be found. Law enforcement checked hospitals as far away as Dubuque
, but no record of treatment came to light. The deputy who had responded kept them in the loop on what was happening—or rather wasn’t.

  On Wednesday,5 Caroline showed up at the end of Jake’s appointments. He hadn’t eaten all day, so they went up to the house.

  “Make it quick. Newton and I have a search-and-rescue practice tonight.”

  “I thought he was already trained?”

  “You have to keep practicing to keep them sharp,” he answered, munching on a piece of cheese.

  “This place hasn’t changed a bit,” Caroline said, looking around.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “You know I’m not fond of the whole rustic thing, but this place is laid out nice with the master on one side and the rest of the bedrooms on the other.”

  “I like my privacy. Ma was always barging in on me. She drove me nuts.”

  “Doing things you didn’t want watched, huh?”

  “Why are you here?” he asked, changing the subject. Caroline would never understand the need to escape Ida’s smothering attention.

  “Donny is no good and never will be.”

  Jake nodded. No argument there.

  “I filed for divorce, and I’m heading for Las Vegas to see if I can get a dealer’s job there. If not, I’ll pick somewhere else. I just gotta get out of here and make a life for myself. Brad is a big boy now. He won’t mind seeing me just a few times a year instead of every week. So we need to redo the custody thing legally.”

  “That will be no problem.”

  “I’m catching a flight out on Sunday for job interviews. I’ll be gone a whole week. My folks still want Brad to go on the annual retreat with them.”

  “Sure, he likes that. I want him to stay close to his grandparents. Good luck, Caroline. I hope you find the life you want.” Funny, Iowa was everything to you when I left for California, now you can’t wait to go.

  The week went by; the damage was repaired, but the culprits had not yet been found. Jake wondered how hard Sheriff McCaffrey was looking. He also wondered if Donny had had anything to do with the anthrax cow or if it had just been a random occurrence. Two more cows had died on that farm, and Jim had been vaccinating cows in the immediate vicinity. Jake hoped that would be the end of it.

  avecare held a customer-appreciation week to celebrate its new name. Jeanine bought balloons, and everyone made treats to pass out. Jill was surprised at the number of people who stopped by for a quick tour. It was difficult to get any work done with all the interruptions, but an occasional stolen cookie made it better. Jill’s chocolate-chip-and-peanut-butter cookies were the first to disappear. She caught Jake and Jim grabbing quite a few, so she made an extra batch and put them on their desks.

  On Sunday Jeanine organized a float down the Wapsie for the staff and their families. Getting into the canoe was the one time Jake’s handicap became noticeable. He couldn’t get his new prosthesis wet, so he needed help getting into the canoe with the low-tech one he used for showering. Brad and SJ had taken kayaks, so Jill wound up in Jake’s canoe. She was a bit dismayed at first, but the boats were all tied together and everyone was joking and bantering, especially Jim and Jake, so she quickly relaxed.

  Jeanine’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Vanessa, was sulking. Jake must have known what was going on because he was very attentive to her, holding her tube and offering her a Coke.

  “Boy troubles,” he mouthed to Jill when she looked askance at him.

  Jill suggested a game and started quoting movie lines, inviting everyone to guess which movie the quote was from. “I can’t do the voices and sound effects like my brothers, but here goes,” she said. “We don’t need no stinking badges.”

  “Blazing Saddles,” Jim called out. “I was born in Iowa. I only work in outer space.”

  “Star Trek, the one with the whales,” Jeanine yelled and continued with the game. “Men, can’t live with them, can’t kill ‘em.”

  All the men yelled, “True Lies!”

  “But it was women, can’t kill ‘em,” Sam said, “not men.”

  “Not from my point of view,” Jeanine replied. “There is a reason every prayer ends in ‘amen.’ We say it reverently when you are behaving and ‘ugh, men’ when you’re not. Which is most of the time,” Jeanine added.

  A big water fight broke out when Jeanine produced water guns for the women. The men used their paddles to retaliate. Jeanine’s sour-faced daughter was soon laughing, her broken heart forgotten.

  “Well done. There’s nothing worse than a broody teen to put a damper on things,” Jake said to Jill when things had quieted down. “I know how you have been helping out Knucklehead over there. His grades improved noticeably this last report card. You’re very good with kids.”

  “Am I? Well, maybe teenagers. They fascinate me. There’s so much they can do and so little they understand about life.”

  “They’re not alone.” He’d said it as a joke, but Jill sensed some genuine anguish behind it. They floated quietly for a while after that. Both were content to listen to the others.

  Brad and SJ paddled up to the group while they were loitering in a shady spot on one of the numerous sharp bends of the river.

  “Dad, can you do the story of the Vikings coming to Minnesota? SJ’s never heard it.”

  “Please, Uncle Jake,” Vanessa begged.

  “OK.” Jake started his yarn with an exaggerated Swedish accent that elicited giggles. “A couple of hundred years ago, our ancestors lived in a frozen paradise where the fish wus plentiful and cows wus shaggy and fat. Soon, udder countries came and fished their waters and ate their butter. Man-y people wanted to move to a more private fishing spot so they loo-aded their boats and headed southwest becuss all the udder ways was iced over, don’tcha know.

  “They hit land and kept walking west until they came to a snowy place filled with great chains of lakes teeming with fish. There wus abundant grasslands to fill with fat cows. Now, they had the two main staples ob the Viking diet: fish and butter. Soon they learned that not only did the sun rise in the winter here but it set in the summer, and the temperature didn’t dip below zero fer more than a month out ob every year. They thought they had found Valhalla and stayed, you betcha.

  “After killing off the native inhabitants, they settled in to become farmers and provide fishing excursion boats for the tourists. They erected a huge monument to their newfound trade of capitalism and called it ‘Mall of America.’ But they kept their native heritage of eating fish cured in disgusting ways and food dripping with butter. To remind them of the old country they imported Volvos and a giant IKEA® warehouse. They wus fruitful and multiplied, and that is why to this very day, you can’t attend a Lutheran church without hearing Sven and Ollie jokes, fer sure. And that, my friends, is the story ob the Vikings here in the mild Midwest.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Jim wanted to know after the giggling died down.

  “He made it up to annoy our parents,” Jeanine answered for him. “Both of them insist that the Swedish are the most sensible people on earth, and Jake always figured Americans were fairly accomplished.”

  “That was before I grew up and got around a bit. Now I think common sense is the rarest commodity anywhere. Anyway, Granddad liked my version of history.”

  “No doubt he helped you concoct it.”

  “Could be,” Jake admitted.

  “Well, I think it’s funny,” Jim said, and the others nodded.

  “Oh, wait. I remember a Sven and Ollie joke,” Vanessa said.

  “Let’s hear it,” several of the others requested.

  “You need to remember a song called ‘Camptown Races’ to get it. It goes ‘Camptown ladies sing this song’ and so on. OK, so Sven, Ollie, and Dooda are out fishing, and a huge Muskie overturns their boat. Sven and Ollie make it safely to shore, but Dooda is nowhere to be found. Sven goes for the authorities and sends Ollie to tell Dooda’s wife. Think of a gentle way to tell her so she is not too upset, Sven told him. Ollie thought an
d thought all the way to her house. He thought of something just as she opened the door. ‘Hello, Ollie, what can I do for you?’ she asked. He answered, singing, ‘Guess who drown in the lake today?’”

  Everyone chimed in with the chorus: “Dooda, Dooda.” They all started laughing and wound up back in the river, which led to more eating and eventually, too many beers for the adults.

  It was a fun and relaxing day, and the adults were rather tipsy by the time they reached their destination. They were picked up by the canoe-rental people and taken back to where they started. Vanessa was allowed to drive her parents home for a change.

  When Jill got home she felt restless. She had had a good time and Jake had put no pressure on her to get closer, but when she looked around and saw Jeanine and Sam, Steph and Troy, and her own sister with Jim, all so close and loving, she felt empty. I am not infatuated with Jakob Gundersen. It’s just the effect of the wine coolers and too much sun. But that night she dreamed of a tall figure in bathing trunks and a camouflage hat. She was close enough to take in his scent as he handed her into the canoe. His masculine presence had aroused her more than she would have thought possible.

  Monday morning and again in the evening, she made sure she had business that would bring them in close contact. She was definitely reacting to him in a way she hadn’t before. Her heart would pound in his presence, and she couldn’t look at him without smiling. This must be the rebound effect Trish had warned her about, she figured. Hopefully he hadn’t noticed any change in her. She had to be on her guard. It wouldn’t do to lose the best job she had ever had, and it was much too soon to get involved with anyone.

  Tuesday, they had to make do without Jake. He had been invited to Iowa State to give a lecture on lameness in performance horses. She asked Jeanine as they stocked shelves together if this was the first time he had done something like this. Jill was reluctant to go home without seeing him, so she was helping out as an excuse to stay late. A glimpse of Jake was the only way to assuage the longing ache she was feeling.

  “It’s pretty much an annual thing with the 4-H. He usually goes a few times during the school year to lecture the vet students on lameness exams and talk to them about chiropractic. The profs recognize my little brother’s talent,” Jeanine answered as she turned the dog-food cans so they faced out.