Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters) (21 page)

Just like his heart.

The minutes ticked past and a stream of images began flooding in: Susan laughing at something he had said, Amy scampering around the house in her little pink party dress, her dark curls bouncing up and down on her shoulders.

“It was my fault,” he heard himself say, though the voice didn’t sound like his own; it was flat and bleak, as lifeless as the pain-filled words made him feel. “Every year we rented a condo up at Heavenly Valley. Susan loved to ski and it wasn’t that long a drive from San Jose. I was busy … the way I always was. As soon as we got off the hill, I shut myself up in one of the bedrooms I had set up as a temporary office and worked on my laptop. I was always working. I had so much to do. That’s what I always thought.”

He swallowed past the lump aching in his throat. “At the end of the week, Susan decided she and Amy would go down to Sacramento to spend a few days with Susan’s Aunt Mildred. I guess she got tired of sitting around every evening by herself, no one to talk to but a three-year-old child.”

He hadn’t talked about the accident in years. Now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “I was supposed to drive them down the mountain after we finished skiing that day, but American Dynamics was in the middle of a complicated, very profitable merger and a problem came up. At the last minute, one of the VPs set up a conference call. I thought it was really important I be there when it came in.” He swallowed past the lump, felt the familiar burning behind his eyes. “I didn’t realize back then … that nothing was as important … as taking care of my family.”

He could see it all so clearly: Amy in her fuzzy blue jacket with the little plush-trimmed hood; Susan dressed elegantly, as always, in black wool slacks and an expensive black cashmere sweater. She kissed him on the cheek as he walked them to the door of the condo.

“I’m really sorry about this, Susan.”

She smiled but he thought it looked a little sad. “Don’t worry about it. I can drive myself down the hill. It really isn’t a problem.”

But the sky was overcast and getting darker by the minute and he worried that it might be snowing somewhere farther down the road.

“Maybe I should cancel the call.”

“I’ll be fine. Amy, honey, give your daddy a kiss bye-bye before we leave.”

The little girl grinned and raced toward him and he hoisted her up on his shoulder. “Who’s little girl are you?” he asked, a private ritual they shared.

“Daddy’s favorite little girl!” She giggled and hugged his neck and he kissed her cheek and set her back down on her feet. He put her in the child seat in the back of the station wagon and Susan started the engine. It was an all-wheel drive Mercedes, so when she drove away he wasn’t really worried.

Call squeezed his eyes shut but the memory remained, seared into his brain like a negative image burned into film. Beside him, he felt Charity’s hand slide into his and it was nearly as cold as his own.

“I watched them drive out onto that snowy street,” he said, “but it was almost time for the conference call and I was eager to get back upstairs. I never thought of them again, not until the sheriff knocked on the door of the condo later that night. He said there’d been an accident. Susan’s car hit a patch of ice and slid off the road. It was a dangerous stretch, he said. The terrain in that section was really steep. The car rolled over half a dozen times before it came to rest in a gully at the bottom of a ravine.”

“Oh, Call …”

He tried to keep his voice even, knew he wouldn’t succeed. “A trucker saw them veer off the road. He pulled them out before the car exploded but it was too late. Susan was killed instantly. Amy … Amy never regained consciousness. She died … on the way to the hospital.”

His chest was aching. His throat hurt so much he had trouble getting out the words. “For days after the accident, I was numb. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. Then the pain set in. I tried to live with it for a while, but no matter what I did, it wouldn’t go away. Finally, I just gave up. I quit my job and moved up here.”

His vision was blurry but he didn’t realize tears were washing down his cheeks until Charity reached up and put her arms around his neck.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Sometimes it’s good to get things out in the open.”

“It was my fault. If I had gone with them, if I hadn’t been so driven to make the next deal, Susan and Amy would still be alive.” His voice cracked on the last and he shook his head, unable to continue.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Charity said, and he could feel her trembling. “Maybe you should have done things differently, maybe you made mistakes, but you didn’t kill them. Life and death are in God’s hands, Call, not yours. And that’s exactly the way it should be.”

He didn’t answer. He wished he could believe her, wanted to more than anything in the world. Even if it were true, he knew the guilt would never truly leave him. The best he could do was learn to live with it day by day.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said softly. “I’m glad you trusted me enough to share something so important.”

He did trust her, he realized. More than he had trusted anyone in years.

The hard truth was—she probably shouldn’t trust him.

Call’s meeting with the Ransitch brothers, the owners of Wild Card, was set up for the coming Thursday. He felt a little safer, knowing the contact had been made and they were moving toward a resolution.

“We got lucky,” Bruce Wilcox said. “The Ransitch boys were in the States, some business in Las Vegas, I gather. I pressed them to meet us in Seattle, the way you said, and they agreed. Their asses are out a mile on this and they know it. They wanted to meet somewhere neutral. I’ve got a conference room reserved at the Four Seasons Hotel for Thursday at 1:00 P.M.”

“Good work, Bruce.”

“I’ll have a car waiting to pick you up at the private terminal when you get there.”

Call had picked Seattle because it was a doable flight for him and not too far from Datatron in San Jose, where Bruce would be flying in from, and because he wanted to see Peter Held.

Call hung up the phone, thinking of myriad other calls he needed to make and beginning to miss his secretary, Marybeth Allen. Beth was beyond efficient and when he had left four years ago, had no trouble finding another high-paying job. He could sure as hell use her right now.

He smiled faintly. Somehow he doubted Marybeth would be willing to relocate to the Yukon.

Instead, he dialed a charter company called Mile High Air and asked to speak to Bill Bandy. Bill and his partner, Bing Wheeler, once flew private jets for American Dynamics. Now they owned their own small charter firm. They were crack pilots, but more importantly, he trusted them.

He scheduled a Hawker-Raytheon to pick him up in Whitehorse, the closest airstrip able to handle a jet, and asked them to arrange a chopper to get him there. He would arrive in Seattle Wednesday night, get a good night’s sleep, and be ready for his meeting on Thursday.

In the meantime, he had a lot more phone calls to make. Call sighed and started hitting numbers.

The sun was still bright, though the afternoon was waning. Toby walked next to Jenny along the creek, listening to the sound of the tumbling water. They were finished dredging for the day, Maude and Charity sitting on the porch sharing a soft drink before Maude took Jenny back down the hill to their cabin.

Jenny paused on the bank and plucked a leaf off one of the bushes growing down into the water. She looked pensive as she twirled it in her hand.

“You’re always so quiet,” Toby said. “But sometimes I get the feeling you’re not really that way. That you don’t talk because you don’t want to say what you’re thinking.”

Jenny looked out over the valley. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon, warm and clear, just a few puffy clouds floating by overhead. She didn’t seem to notice.

“I used to be different,” she said. “Happier, I guess. Things just got so screwed up.”

“Everybody gets screwed up once in a while. I got into some trouble last year, fistfighting and drinking and stuff. I lost my scholarship. My mom didn’t have the kind of money it took to put a kid through college, but I got lucky. I met Call when I was kayaking up on the river. Maybe we were both feeling so low we kind of bonded or something, I don’t know. Whatever it was, a couple months later, he offered me this job. He helped me get into a college in Calgary starting this fall. Call’s loaning me the tuition money, interest free. He says I can start paying it back when I get out of school.”

“That’s great. Mr. Hawkins seems like a really nice guy.”

“He is. But Call’s had his own share of trouble, just like everyone else.” Toby took the stem from her hand, started twirling it in his own. “His wife and daughter were killed, you know. Really tore him up.”

“Grama told me.”

Toby smiled, handed her back the stem. “Okay, so now that you know my life story, what’s yours?”

Jenny looked away. As she stared out over the valley, her pretty green eyes filled with tears. It was obvious something bad had happened and for a moment Toby wished he hadn’t asked.

“If I tell you, you won’t like me anymore.”

Toby took her hand. It felt icy cold. “That’s not true. There’s nothing you could tell me that would make me not like you.”

But Jenny just shook her head. “I gotta go. Grama’s getting ready to leave.”

He didn’t let go of her hand. “Listen … I’ll be going into town after work on Friday night. If you went with me, you could stay overnight at our house and I’d bring you back home in the morning. My mom will be there. She’d like the company and I’d really like to take you out.”

She looked like she was going to refuse.

“Don’t say anything. Just think it over for a while and maybe you’ll say yes.”

Very slowly, she nodded. Toby watched her walk back down the hill toward her grandmother’s beat-up old blue pickup. He wondered what she could have done that she was so ashamed of. Whatever it was, it was over and done. Bad things happened. Life went on.

Watching her climb up in the truck, he wished more than anything he could make her understand that. Maybe once she did, he could make her smile again.

Cell phone in hand, Charity walked up the hill behind the cabin. Trotting along at her side, Kodiak stopped once or twice to sniff the bushes along the path, then ran to catch up with her. Already, the darling little puppy was almost house-trained. He slept with her at night and every day wove his way deeper into her heart.

She reached down and ruffled his fur, then started punching numbers into her phone. As much as she loved her life in the Yukon, she couldn’t help missing her family and friends. Nearly dying in a plane crash had shown her the fine line between life and death and she had phoned her loved ones more often since then.

She had also come to realize that as much as she embraced the majesty and thrill of living in the North, she could never give up the outside world the way Call had, not completely. She wanted a home and family, wanted children, wanted them to have that sense of community that she had enjoyed as a child. She tried not to think of Call and how much it was going to hurt when she left.

The phone began to ring in her old apartment but no one answered and eventually the machine picked up. Charity listened to Hope’s voice, then left a message after the beep:
Wherever you are, I hope you’re having fun. Love you—middle sis.
Next she called her dad at home in Boston.

“Did you get the stuff I sent?” he asked.

“I got the e-mail list of names. Thanks for sending them.”

“I mailed a package of old newspaper clippings, too. They were in one of your mother’s old family albums. I figured you might find something helpful in them.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“So how’s your friend—McCall Hawkins? I knew that name sounded familiar. The guy’s a member of the Forbes 400. I remembered reading about him several years back in
Time
magazine. Not a bad-looking man, if memory serves.”

She got the hint. Her dad was no fool. “I told you he’s just a friend.”

“He kind of dropped out of sight for the last few years … some family tragedy, as I remember. I guess now we know where he’s been.”

Charity made no reply and eased her father into a different subject. They talked a little longer, getting family updates, giving her dad a rundown on the amateur gold-mining business she was running. When she finally hung up, she dialed New York.

Her best friend, Deirdre Steinberg, didn’t answer till just before the machine picked up.

“So you’re there,” Charity said. “If you’re busy, I can call some other time.”

“No, no, now’s fine. I, ah, had company, but he just walked out the door.”

“Anyone exciting?”

“Actually … God, Charity, I hope you don’t get mad. It was Jeremy. We’ve been seeing each other lately. I wanted to call you, but you know how hard you are to reach. I should have sent you an e-mail or something, but it seemed so impersonal. I really feel bad about this but—”

“Look, it’s okay, Deirdre. I’m not upset. In fact, I’m happy for you. I never really thought about you and Jeremy, but now that I do … maybe the two of you aren’t a bad combination.”

The relief was clear in Deirdre’s voice. “You think so?”

She considered the notion. “Yeah, maybe I do.” Deirdre was definitely a nurturer, the sort of woman who was happiest doing things for someone else, certainly not the type to go off on an adventure by herself. She was intelligent, well dressed, and attractive. But Deirdre and Jeremy? Hard to say for sure, but maybe they would be good for each other.

“If Jeremy makes you happy, I think it’s great. Tell him I said so, will you?”

They talked a little while longer, filling each other in. It was obvious Deirdre had worried about getting involved with her best friend’s ex-lover, and that she was relieved their relationship was finally out in the open, and that it hadn’t destroyed the friendship Charity and Deirdre had shared for so many years.

“So what about you and Paul Bunyan?” Deirdre asked. “Jeremy told me all about him. I can’t believe you didn’t mention you were seeing someone—and don’t give me that ‘just friends’ crap, either.”

Charity laughed. “Well, mostly we are.”

“But you’ve slept with him. Jeremy was insane when he got back.”

“I’ve slept with him, but the relationship—if there really is one—isn’t going anywhere. Call’s made that clear.” She explained to Deirdre who Call was and about the death of his family.

“Paul Bunyan is McCall Hawkins—the billionaire?”

“One and the same, though he didn’t look like much of one when I met him.” She went on to say how badly Call had taken the loss of his wife and daughter and that there was a good chance he would never love anyone again.

“If that’s the case, you’d better be careful, girlfriend, or you’ll wind up getting hurt.”

Now
there
was some good advice. Too bad it was too late to take it. “Thanks, Dee, I’ll keep that in mind.” They talked a little more, then she hung up and walked back down to the house.

Since last Saturday night when she and Call had made love on his kitchen table, they hadn’t had sex again. She had been ending the workday early, stopping work on the dredge and going over for a couple of hours to use his computer, but she hadn’t been spending the night. Perhaps talking about his family had brought up the barriers again, or maybe it was worry for her safety.

Though he hadn’t said anything more about the attempt on his life, she thought maybe he believed staying there might be putting her in some kind of danger.

This afternoon, he had gone into town. He had checked her mail along with his and brought back the package from her father. As soon as she finished work, she started poring over the stack of newspaper clippings, hoping something of interest would turn up.

Charity stared down at the yellowed slip of newsprint, the Portland
Oregonian
dated August 18, 1869. For the first time since she had started this project, something actually had.

Up until now, she had spent most of her research efforts piecing together the Doakes side of the family, easier since they all carried the same surname, from Emma Doakes, her grandmother on her mother’s side, all the way back to Campbell Doakes, whose father, David Doakes, had emigrated from Ireland to Tennessee in the 1860s.

It was darned hard to ferret out the information and though it was exciting to know who her long-lost relatives were, none had traveled to the Yukon or even crossed the Mississippi River. She was getting more and more discouraged, beginning to think maybe Call was right and whatever had compelled her to the North would forever remain elusive, that what had seemed like memories were nothing but a figment of her imagination. It bothered her more than it should have.

Until today.

Charity reached out to touch the stack of old newspaper clippings her father had sent. The one on top was more yellowed and tattered than the rest of the stack and when she had carefully unfolded it, it had simply fallen apart. With meticulous care, she taped the clipping back together, then sat down to read it.

The article centered around a man named Jedediah Baker. According to the clipping, after a trip on the recently completed Transcontinental Railroad, Baker had arrived in Portland late in the summer of 1869 to join his older brother, Nathan, who had earlier migrated west over the Oregon Trail. The brothers were reunited at a special celebration, the article said, held at the local Grange Hall.

Charity felt a bubble of excitement. Portland was one of the major starting-out spots for ships heading north to the Yukon. The clippings had been found in her mother’s old family photo album. There was a good chance Jedediah and Nathan Baker were related to her somehow.

She was anxious to go over to Call’s, see what she could dig up. For the first time in days, her spirits lifted. She couldn’t wait to see what she might find.

When she got there, Call was packing. Toby told her as he let her into the house, getting ready for his trip to Seattle the following day. She didn’t want to bother him so she motioned to Toby where she was headed, walked into the kitchen, and slipped quietly into his office.

Sitting down at her borrowed computer, she logged onto the Internet. A couple of clicks and www.ancestry.com popped up. Charity typed in
Jedediah Baker.

For the next several hours, she searched one site after another: the Oregon marriage index, historicaltextarchive.com, familysearch.org, anything that might turn up information.

In some ways, trying to go forward in time was harder than trying to go backward. She found Jedediah’s son, Thaddeus Baker, born in 1878, and saw where he had married a woman named Frances Fitzpatrick. Their six children were Jonathan, Sarah Thankful Baker, Melvina, Frederick, and Daniel.

One name sounded familiar. She scrambled for her notes, the printed chart she had been keeping that matched the one on the computer, and suddenly—there it was!

On May 3, 1920, Sean Doakes married a woman named Sarah Baker. Sarah
Thankful
Baker—it had to be. The connection of the Doakes to the Bakers was the reason the clipping had been in the album. Charity could feel her heart racing. The Bakers linked her family to the Pacific Northwest. Even more hopeful—Thaddeus Baker, Sarah’s father, would have been in his early twenties during the Gold Rush era.