A fine and bitter snow (27 page)

"How did she find the doctor?"

"Adopted children can apply to find out who their birth parents are nowadays."

"I know, but I thought there were safeguards, that there had to be consent on both sides before any information could be revealed."

"This girl learned how to work the system at a very early age," Jim said. "I doubt that a bureaucracy as byzantine as Social Services stood a chance."

"She contacted John first," Kate said after a moment. "She told me."

Jim nodded. "Would have been a hell of a scene."

Kate tried not to think about just what kind of scene it had been.

"John would have hated that," Ruthe said.

"And that's how he knew who she was," Kate said, "and why he knew who had killed Dina."

"And he made a false confession and killed himself to deflect suspicion?" Jim said, still skeptical. "Why bother? I never would have been able to prove anything."

"Guilt," Kate said. "Seventeen different kinds of guilt." Especially after Christie had seduced him, with the full knowledge of who he was. She still couldn't think of it without feeling sick.

"Dina was dead," Ruthe said.

They looked at her.

"He really loved her," Ruthe told them. "John really loved Dina. She left him, he didn't leave her."

"Why did she leave him?"

"She never said."

Kate thought again of the tiny, crowded cabin and the enormous, empty lodge. She knew why Dina had left John.

"He was too proud to fight the divorce, and he was angry at her for making him look ridiculous, but there was never anyone else for John but Dina. And then she was dead." Ruthe shifted, and Kate brought the blanket up around her shoulders. "And here was the only thing left to him of her, a daughter he hadn't even known existed, a daughter who told him she hated him, a daughter who might have just confessed to matricide. Maybe he thought he could save her. Maybe he couldn't do anything but try."

There was little of the martyr about John Letourneau, Kate thought. But she understood a little about guilt.

Families. Mothers, fathers, children. There was no explaining them, and there was no understanding the wonderful and terrible things they did to and for one another. She thought of her mother, passed out in the snow, dead of hypothermia before her daughter was four. And Stephan, Kate's father, following so soon afterward. If Stephan had loved Zoya so much that he could not bear to live life without her, even if he had to leave his daughter behind, why couldn't John love Dina enough to die for the sake of their only child? Maybe it didn't matter that John hadn't known of her existence until that fall, when she had shown up on his doorstep and pushed herself into his life.

Kate thought of Johnny, who had pushed himself into her life.

"Poor John," Ruthe said sadly, breaking into Kate's thoughts. "And poor Christie. Poor lonely little girl."

Kate thought of Dina, dead, and Ruthe, nearly so. Not to mention herself. Her hand fell to Mutt's head and tightened in the thick gray ruff. Christie could have killed Mutt, too. She would have if Mutt hadn't been smarter and faster and stronger. She gave the ruff a shake and Mutt sat up and leaned against her chair. "What about that other girl, the one who testified at the trial of Christie's adoptive parents?"

"What about her?"

"She went through the same things Christie went through, and she didn't have to kill anyone to get to where she is now. I mean, damn it. At some point, I don't care what kind of life you've had, how awful your parents were to you or how mean your teachers or how nasty your classmates, at some point you have to step up and take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Okay, I admit, Christie Turner had it rough, few rougher. That doesn't mean she gets a free ride. Not from me anyway."

There was a brief silence.

Ruthe looked at Jim. "Does she have a lawyer?"

"I don't think so," Jim said.

"Get her one," Ruthe said. "I'll pay."

"Ruthe—"

"A good one, Kate."

"Ruthe—"

"Right away, Kate," Ruthe said sternly. "Before the storm troopers"—Jim made an inarticulate sound of protest at this—"beat a confession out of her."

"All right, Ruthe," Kate said, bowing her head. "I will." She looked at Jim. "What about Riley Higgins?"

"He's out of jail. He's got a job sweeping out the Kinnikinick Bar, but I don't know how long he'll last."

Kate wondered who had gotten Riley Higgins his job.

"He can come back to the camp if he wants to," Ruthe said.

"I'll tell him," Jim said.

Ruthe wanted to return to the cabin as soon as possible.

"Maybe you should think about finding somewhere closer to town," Jim suggested.

"Like where?" Ruthe smiled. "Camp Teddy is my home. I want to get back to it as soon as possible."

As Jim was wheeling Kate out the door, Mutt padding along behind them, Ruthe said, "Kate? Do me a favor? Find out who's John's heir, and if they'd like to sell the lodge."

"Are you serious?"

"Never more so," Ruthe said, with a fair assumption of her usual good cheer. She actually winked. "Someone's going to get hold of that prime piece of riverfront property. It might as well be the Kanuyaq Land Trust."

13

Jim brought the Cessna from Tok and flew Kate home to Niniltna two days later. Bobby, Dinah, and Katya and Auntie Vi were there to greet her on the airstrip. Auntie Vi wanted her to come stay while she recuperated, but Kate refused. She was like Ruthe. She wanted to go home.

So Bobby tucked her into his truck and ferried her twenty-five miles down the road, and Dinah and Jim, who had followed in Billy's Explorer, walked her down the path to the homestead, Mutt trotting anxious circles around them as they went. "Johnny's at Ethan's; he's got Gal with him. He's going to leave you alone for a couple of days," Dinah said as if by rote. "Ethan says he'll be over this evening."

"No," Kate said. "Dinah, could you stop in and ask him not to? I just want to see if I can get up the ladder and sleep in my own bed. Tell him I'll be over tomorrow."

"Okay." Dinah exchanged a glance with Bobby. They both looked at Jim, who remained impassive.

They settled her in, fussing over the woodstove, over-filling the kettle, and bringing her comforter down from the loft. "I'm okay, guys," she said when she could stand it no longer. "Go."

"Okay," Dinah repeated. "I'll be back out tomorrow." She saw the look on Kate's face and said, "If I don't come and report back to Auntie Vi, she'll be here, and she'll bring all the other aunties with her."

It was only too true. "All right. See you tomorrow, then."

Jim waited until Dinah was out the door. "By the way, Kate."

"What now?" she said grouchily.

He grinned at her, the wide white grin that made her want to reach for her rifle. "I wanted you to be the first to know," he said, settling the ball cap over his ears. His uniform jacket was neat and clean, the lighter blue uniform slacks with the gold stripe down the sides creased to a knife edge, his boots freshly polished. He looked every inch the trooper today, immaculate, authoritative, totally in charge.

"Know what?" Kate said, dragging her eyes to his face with difficulty.

The grin widened. She measured the distance between the couch and the gun rack over the door. "I'm moving my post," he said.

"Moving your post? You mean you're being transferred?" She tried to tell herself that she was feeling relief, not dismay.

"No, moving my post from Tok."

"Moving it?" With sudden foreboding, she said, "Where?"

"To Niniltna."

She gaped at him.

His dimples deepened. How had she never noticed those dimples before? "Yeah. I'll be around all the time now." He stepped to the door and tipped his hat.

"Be seeing you, Kate." The grin flashed. "A lot of you."

14

Two days later, Dan came to the homestead. "I'm sorry, Kate," he said. "Get your ass in here and close the door," Kate said. "You're letting the cold in."

"I didn't know if I'd be welcome or not."

"You want to drink your coffee or wear it?"

His face cleared.

"What did you think you knew?" she said as they ate homemade bread, her first batch since she'd gotten out of the hospital, spread with butter and strawberry preserves.

He sighed and put his bread down, half-eaten. "She asked a lot of questions about Ruthe and Dina."

"So did everybody. They weren't exactly low-profile."

"Don't try to make me feel better about this, Kate," he said, looking sober. "Christie asked a lot of questions, and when Dina died, I should have told you or Jim. She wanted to know about the restrictions on developing privately owned property within Park boundaries, for god's sake. Why would she care, unless she owned some? She didn't, not then. I should have noticed. I should have figured she was only using me to help her get what she wanted. Damn it, Kate, I just feel so damn stupid."

"You were in love," she said.

"No, I was in heat," he said. "You can lead even the smartest man most anywhere by his cock."

She tried not to wince.

"Sorry," he said. "Hey, did you hear about Jim Chopin moving his post to Niniltna?"

"Yes," she said.

"Sure will make life easier for me," he said. "Long as I've got my job anyway."

"They haven't fired you yet, I take it?"

"No. They even revoked my suspension. I think Pete might have had something to do with that."

"Why?"

"He stopped by the Step, told me not to worry." Dan's grin was a pale shadow of its former self, but it was out where you could see it. "Told me I owed him."

"He would."

"Well, I do. And I won't mind paying off when the time comes." He finished his bread and coffee. "You going to be okay?"

"I'm going to be okay," she said.

She watched him leave from the doorway. Snow was falling, coating the semicircle of buildings in the little clearing with a fresh layer, filling in the old blemishes, covering up the new. A new snowfall was a great place from which to start over.

The next day, she walked up to the steps of the Int-Hout homestead and knocked on the door.

She had rehearsed what she was going to say all the previous night, that morning, and all the way to Ethan's. Not the truth, of course, never the truth, not if she could help it, not even when she figured out what it was herself.

Ethan, she was going to say, I'm just not ready, and I don't know if I'll ever be. What we've been working on is the residue of a high school crush. If we'd ever managed to make it to bed together in college, we wouldn't be sniffing around each other now. I'm moving on. You need to, too.

Short, to the point, and the absolute truth, and only she needed to know it wasn't all the truth. She knocked again. Footsteps came toward the door. She squared her shoulders and prepared to lower the boom.

The door opened. A large woman with freckled skin and wild red hair stood in the opening.

"Hello, Margaret," Kate said.

"Hi, Kate. I want my husband back."

Over Margaret's shoulder, she saw Ethan with his lap full of twins. He looked over their heads at Kate, his face full of shamefaced apology.

"He's all yours," Kate said, and with those words, a huge weight fell from her shoulders.

"Good. You can have this back, too." Margaret reached behind her and pulled Johnny forward. Johnny was dressed in a parka and down pants and was carrying a duffel bag. Gal's indignant face poked out of the front of his parka and she yowled at Kate and hissed at Mutt. Margaret must have started assembling the package when she first heard Kate's snow machine coming.

"I'll take him," Kate said.