I took a deep breath. "My name is Ben Gustefson and I'm living in Keene, New Hampshire with my wife Betsy." I felt like a POW giving up military secrets. "Do you need the names of the others?"
"No; hold off on that. Maybe later if need be. I'll tell the world at this end I'm off on a ten day fishing trip and can't be contacted. My wife will back me up. That will give me some time to get to work. I won't contact you directly." He asked for a contact phone number and gave me an emergency number to call.
"I'll pick up a throwaway phone," he said, but didn't indicate when I'd hear from him. I gave him Frank Vasapolli's phone number and told him I would pass along his number to Frank if I thought it was needed.
It was a reverse of our prior relationship. Now I was the one to anxiously await contact. He hung up with me wondering if I'd get to meet Daniel Brennan. I hadn't even known he was married and now he was shinnying out on a skinny limb on my behalf.
I cleaned up a few paper details and left the office for home, driving around town the long way, just to clear my head. I passed the golf course, as green as an Irish post card and envied the couple strolling down the fairway. Not a worry in the world but a little white ball. A motor home passed by, with California plates, only the open road of the entire country ahead of them. It wasn't the open road wanderers I envied but the home town golfers; they seemed so content in their pastoral surroundings.
I was growing to love this town, with its simple history, proud of its old homes and field stone fences, telling the world it was a place worth staying. It was a community where I could see Betsy and me raising children and watching grandchildren while four distinct seasons rolled slowly by, marking the years one by one. But something; no someone, was threatening that tranquility. Until the attack was defended and defeated, Christmas mornings, autumn leaves, spring flowers and summer picnics were no more than passing dreams.
Molly is fun to be around, chatty and inquisitive and far less reserved than at our first meeting. She helped Betsy in the kitchen and hovered around Bumpus like a hen with chicks. She displays no indication of homesickness. School, which will begin tomorrow, is only a few days from summer recess. I would have been as nervous as a mouse on a cheese hunt at her age but Molly is raring to go.