by Megan Crane
Kate read through the files, remembering the hours of investigative work she’d put into each case. The many witness statements, the careful compiling of evidence. She remembered long, cold stakeouts. The various interviews, ranging from tense to baffling to straight-up upsetting.
She wasn’t a woman who wanted to look back. She worked so hard to avoid it, save for a few weeks in the darkest stretch of every December. But it didn’t escape her notice that in looking through all these old cases, she might as well have hauled out the sort of happy, sparkly photo albums regular people kept on hand. These cases and the associated reports were the only memories that really mattered to Kate.
She read her own reports and remembered all the things she hadn’t put in them. The ways she’d learned how to be a better cop. The times she’d disappointed herself and had failed to make the necessary connections in time, or at all. There were triumphs, too. The children she’d saved from unfortunate circumstances. Unhealthy families she’d helped dismantle, and broken families she’d helped put back together.
Some people collected pictures of themselves on sandy beaches or documented every time they went off on a run or to drink something, or so Kate’s few forays onto social media had taught her. But Kate had always measured her life by what she did to make sure there were fewer bad people out there making other people’s lives miserable.
Her old cases were like thick, complicated balls of gnarled yarn to her, but stitched together, they all made something greater than themselves. They made a career. And more than that, they made Kate’s life more meaningful than the series of interchangeable furnished apartments she’d lived in or the relationships she’d never managed to hold on to or the thousands of ways she was never quite like all those regular people who’d grown up in normal families. No matter how hard she tried.
She’d made a serious dent in the list and was jotting down a few notes about her overall impressions next to Oz’s when there was a knock on her cabin door.
“Come in,” she called without thinking.
And immediately wished she hadn’t, because she wasn’t emotionally prepared for another round—
But it wasn’t Templeton. The door swung open, and Bethan came in, bringing a swirl of the cold with her.
“I thought you might be getting a little bit of cabin fever,” Bethan said when she’d closed the door behind her. “But you’re still working.”
Kate looked at her watch and saw that hours had passed. A lot of hours, in fact. It was edging toward seven o’clock at night. She stood and stretched, feeling the tension she’d been ignoring in her shoulders since the last time she’d gotten up and tended to her body’s needs. Which could have been hours ago now. “I think I lost track of time.”
Bethan looked open and friendly, which immediately put Kate on edge. Not only because she was always distrustful of friendly overtures, thank you, but because Bethan wasn’t any old approachable neighbor in an apartment complex somewhere, randomly offering baked goods. She was one of the most accomplished women alive.
“I’m here to offer you some dinner options,” Bethan said.
“There are options?” Kate blinked. “It just occurred to me that I’m on the part of this island that doesn’t have any restaurants. Or bars.”
“Correct.” Bethan grinned, which might have been disarming if Kate hadn’t been so aware of how the other woman was holding herself. Still and ready. “It’s Jonas’s night to cook in the lodge. We all take turns making dinner for whoever’s on shift. I think you saw the mess hall on your tour when you were here before.”
“It looked like more of a dining room than a mess hall.”
“That’s because you haven’t eaten there yet with the men. Believe me, it’s a mess hall. You’re welcome to join in on the communal dinner and experience this yourself.”
“I don’t think I have enough information to make that determination,” Kate said. She pressed her fingers into the place where her neck ached. “Is Jonas a good cook? What does he cook? If I don’t like it, will I be forced to choke it down anyway?”
“He’s actually a decent cook.” Bethan sounded so resolutely even-keeled that Kate found herself frowning slightly, trying to figure out why a discussion of Jonas’s cooking skills required diplomacy. “Tonight’s offering is a stew. A beef stew, I believe.”
“Okay. I like beef stew. But you said there were options?”
“Your other option is you come with me.”
It was Kate’s turn to smile. And hope she hit that open, friendly note that seemed to come so easily to others. “Again, I need more information.”
“Blue is on shift tonight. His fiancée, Everly, invited me up to their place for dinner. You’re welcome to join. I have no idea what she’s going to make, but every time I’ve eaten with her in the past, it’s been good.”
Kate studied the woman before her. Her hair was pulled back into the typical soldier’s bun at the nape of her neck. Her expression was neutral, her green eyes cool. She was dressed much the same way she had been the last time Kate had seen her. Sleek, competent, prepared for any variation in weather thanks to the layers of technical fabrics she wore. Every inch the elite soldier she was, in other words.
“I certainly don’t want to crash into the middle of your . . . intimate friend time,” Kate said after a moment.
And felt somewhat gratified when Bethan’s expression changed to faint alarm.
“I don’t know what ‘intimate friend time’ is.” Bethan sounded horrified. “I’m going over to dinner because Everly is the only other female in Fool’s Cove, until now, and sometimes I like to take a vacation from all the testosterone. And also eat. I like eating. With people. Who are sometimes friends, yes.”
The awkwardness was like the dark outside. Total and complete and choking.
“I’d like to state for the record that I’ve never had intimate friend time,” Kate blurted out, because the awkwardness was all her fault. “That’s not a thing I do.”
She realized she hadn’t felt this way in a long time. Because she could navigate her colleagues well enough. Her work buddies. She could have a drink after her shift, tell stories, do the whole thing. She’d even, on occasion, let what happened in those congenial, after-work bars turn in to her attempts at relationships with men. Because she understood that, too. It was the same as the work-friend thing, but with sex. Transactional, really, because sex was just an interactive story people could tell each other. And whatever her faults, Kate could tell a story.
Where she fell down every time was intimacy. What the hell was that, anyway? Why would anyone want it? She thought maybe she was allergic to it.
But she was all too aware that sometimes there was a crucial moment in any level of friendship, especially with other women, when something else was clearly supposed to occur. If it was a man, Kate knew that sex usually bridged that gap, and she either did it or didn’t and then dealt with the consequences. She knew how to navigate it, more or less. But with women, Kate was keenly aware that whatever was required in those moments of blossoming friendships, she failed to provide it. And once that happened—and it always happened—things got awkward, fast.
She’d apparently jumped more quickly than usual into that space today. She blamed it on the gray area she was currently occupying and Templeton and everything else that had happened this month that didn’t make sense.
“If we could retire the phrase ‘intimate friend time,’ preferably forever, I would be good with that,” Bethan said into the weirdness.
“Agreed,” Kate replied quickly. Gratefully, really. “For God’s sake.”
Bethan let out a laugh, and Kate didn’t know why she had the oddest sense that for once, she hadn’t ruined the thing. That Bethan might find her weird and awkward and all the other things Kate always was without even trying when she was expected to suddenly be social
. But none of those things appeared to be deal breakers tonight.
Almost like she was more one of these people than not. But that was impossible.
Kate nodded. “Right. So. Dinner with Everly?”
“Let’s do it,” Bethan said.
Kate stamped her feet back into her boots, tucking the cuffs of her technical pants in to keep her legs warm. She went into the other room to grab her hat, her headlamp—because she’d seen one around Bethan’s neck—and the gloves she preferred. Then she shrugged on her coat and followed Bethan out into the night.
The lodge felt like some kind of mystical tree house, suspended there between the trees and the water with running lights to mark the pathways. But Bethan led her past the common room, then on past the last connected cabin. Then off the wooden walkways altogether, onto a trail. She stopped only briefly so they could both adjust their headlamps to see where they were going, and then she led Kate into the woods.
And Kate was already predisposed to like Bethan after that scene in her cabin, but she liked her even more as she followed her on this hike into the trees, and the other woman stayed quiet. So there was nothing but the murmur of the woods all around them. The darkness acted like an embrace, close and tight. The sounds of their feet crunching on the cold ground beneath them, over roots and stones and the frozen earth. The harsh sea in the distance, hurling itself at the rocky shore. And up above, the winter wind in the trees, the only kind of carols that Kate had ever known.
Kate felt something inside her grow still, then seem to open up wide. She could see Bethan’s feet in front of her, right there at the edge of her light. Her headlamp cocooned her in its little ring of brightness. It felt like the intimacy she didn’t know how to have with people.
And she was glad to move. To stretch her legs, feel her muscles kick in, and apologize to her body for keeping it curled up tight the way she had for so long today. She loved being outside, even though the temperature was dropping and the wind slapped at her face, leaving her cheeks feeling red and raw. It was invigorating, the way it always had been. She liked the crispness and the chill. The stillness inside and out.
It made that thing inside her open up wider, as if she hadn’t realized that she’d been waiting all this time to take a real, deep breath.
She saw the cabin through the trees at first, giving off a bright light in the overwhelming darkness. As they came closer along the trail, she could hear the generators humming, and then they were in the clearing. The cabin was larger than the ones connected to the lodge, with a porch that she imagined looked back out over the water. She switched off her headlamp and pulled it down around her neck, following Bethan up onto the porch. Bethan knocked on the front door but pushed her way inside without waiting for an answer.
“I’m in a crucial pasta moment,” sang out another woman’s voice.
Kate shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it up in the entryway and stepping out of her boots. Then she padded in after Bethan, who had done the same, taking in the cabin the way she would assess any place she walked into. On the job or not.
It was a proper log cabin that felt cozy and expansive all at once. The entryway led into a living area that had everything from a television to bookshelves packed tight with books and comics, to what looked like an artist’s drafting table, to a set of neatly organized free weights. Yet somehow, it didn’t feel cluttered. There were stairs to the second level on one side and on the other was a wide doorway that led into the kitchen, where Bethan had already gone and the woman Kate knew to be Everly Campbell was pouring out a huge double boiler of pasta water into her sink. Steam billowed up all around her, making the red curls she’d piled on top of her head seem to curl even further.
Everly set down the pot, wiped at her face, then turned around and smiled broadly at Kate.
“I’m Everly,” she said. “But you’re the Alaska State Trooper, so I’m guessing you already know that.”
“Guilty as charged,” Kate said. And reminded herself to smile. Friendly and open, which she was perfectly capable of doing when she was on the job.
And not to start carrying on about intimate friend time again.
“I should warn you right off the bat that cops make me a little anxious,” Everly announced before Kate could do or say something embarrassing. She was wearing that faintly glazed look that always made Kate smile. She’d seen it so many times before. A little too alert. A little too worried. A little too ready to be arrested for no reason. “I can’t help it. I had a whole thing with the Chicago PD. Although if I’m entirely honest, I’ve never been comfortable around the police, without ever having interacted with them much. Does that mean that deep inside, I’m a criminal waiting to get out?”
“You’re talking a lot,” Bethan observed.
“I am,” Everly agreed. “I really am.”
“Alternatively,” Kate said calmly, “we could drink some of that wine over there. Like normal people do.”
“Wine,” Everly breathed, her eyes lighting up as if Kate had offered her the Holy Grail. “Of course, wine.”
“You finish cooking,” Bethan said. “We’ll handle the wine.”
Glasses were found and filled. Everly fussed around with the meal, putting a big bowl of pasta in the middle of the little table in the kitchen, and then, soon enough, they were all sitting down with wine in hand, freshly baked bread that smelled deliciously of butter and garlic, pasta with a red sauce, and a bowl heaped high with meatballs to add as desired.
And for a few moments, there was only quiet as they passed the bread around. Helped themselves to pasta, sauce, and meatballs. Then settled in to take the first few bites, with sips of wine in between.
The next time they all looked up and around at one another, Everly’s shoulders had gone down from around her ears. Bethan was smiling. And even Kate felt nice and mellow all the way through.
“How do you like living in Alaska?” Kate asked them.
“This is my second winter here,” Everly replied. “Blue keeps telling me not to get all full of myself that I made it through one winter. He says the second one is harder, because you can’t pretend you don’t know exactly how long the snow is going to last. And how dark it’s going to be, and stay, until the spring ice breaks up.”
“He’s not wrong,” Kate said with a laugh. “But that’s a little dramatic. It’s a hard winter, there’s no getting around that. But the trick is finding out what you find beautiful about it. Even on the grayest, gloomiest, most bitter and uninspiring day, there’s always something beautiful.”
If she was sentimental about anything, it was Alaska.
“I’m personally excited,” Bethan said. “I like a challenging environment.”
Everly smiled. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Not to ruin the challenge for you, but this is the coast, so you’ll have a pretty mild winter,” Kate told Bethan. “Relatively speaking.”
“I’m from Chicago.” Everly rolled the bowl of her wineglass between her palms. “I would not describe the winters there as mild. I can’t decide which I found worse, if I’m honest. They’re different.”
“It always surprises me when people move to Alaska from places like Hawaii. Which they do a lot, for some reason.” Kate shook her head. “It seems like such a bad idea. It’s the absolute opposite.”
“Opposites attract,” Bethan said with a shrug. “I grew up in Santa Barbara. I used to think the weather was harsh if the thermometer dipped below seventy-two degrees.”
“Alaska’s a whole lot like California, really,” Kate said, surprised to find herself grinning. And without having ordered herself to produce a grin for a specific purpose. “California has three seasons, as far as I can tell. Summer, Fire, and that one day of Rain. Up here in Alaska we also have three seasons. Ice, Mud, and Dust.”
And it was much later when she waved Bethan off, back
down on the wooden paths that connected all the cabins close to the waterline, that Kate realized she’d enjoyed herself. Really, truly enjoyed herself. That laughter and easy conversation that didn’t center on work was what enjoying herself was. Most surprising of all, though she’d long since accepted the fact that she was neither charming nor entertaining unless she was playing a part in a work scenario, Everly and Bethan hadn’t seemed to get that memo.
Maybe she would find that baffling, but not tonight, when she was nice and warm from wine and pasta.
Kate shoved her headlamp in her pocket as she made her way past the lodge and the still-lit cabins connected directly to it, where she knew Alaska Force members were taking their shifts and running missions all over the world. Somewhere inside, she knew she should look into that more deeply. Maybe nose around a bit, here in the darkness, with fewer eyes on her.
A week ago—even twenty-four hours ago—she wouldn’t have hesitated.
But tonight she kept going, following the path away from the lodge and off to where her guest cabin sat back from the water, built into the hillside.
Because for once—just for once—she wanted to keep holding on tight to this odd, buoyant feeling. Maybe it was the wine. It probably was. But whatever the cause, Kate didn’t have a lot of bright, happy sorts of nights tucked away in her memory. That wasn’t what her life was like. She’d never sat around a table telling stories like that.
Her stories were usually depressing and told at the direction of attorneys. Or chock-full of grim gallows humor appropriate for conversations over hard alcohol with other cops.
She’d never found herself telling stories about her childhood that focused more on the gritty survival element—in a lighthearted sort of way, which she would have said was impossible. She’d never told anyone about what it was like to forage in the frozen tundra when she was a grumpy twelve-year-old who felt nothing but grotesquely misunderstood when her grudging contributions had been unappreciated, or what it was like to grow up so off the grid that her first experience with a television had terrified her into nightmares.