by Nora Roberts
“Not bad.”
It was, Olivia thought, almost word for word from one of the books on sale at the lodge gift shop. All she’d done was to focus on bringing the page into her head and basically reading it off.
But she’d fix that. She’d learn to personalize her guides. She’d learn to be the best there was.
“Okay. As your guide, and the representative of River’s End Lodge and Campground, I’ll be providing your picnic lunch and explanations of the flora and fauna we see on our tour. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.”
“You’re a natural. Ready when you are.”
“Neat. The trailhead begins here, at the original site of the first MacBride homestead. John and Nancy MacBride traveled west from Kansas in 1853 and settled here on the edges of the Quinault rain forest.”
“I thought rain forests were in the tropics,” Jamie said and fluttered her lashes at Olivia as they moved toward the trees.
“The Quinault Valley holds one of the few temperate rain forests in the world. We have mild temperatures and a lot of rainfall.”
“The trees are so tall! What are they?”
“The overstory of trees is Sitka spruce; you can identify them by the flaky bark. And Douglas fir. They grow really tall and straight. When they get old, the bark’s dark brown and has those deep grooves in it. Then there’s western hemlock. It’s not usually a canopy tree, and it’s shade-tolerant so it’s understory. It doesn’t grow as fast as the Douglas fir. You see the cones, all over the place?” Olivia stooped to pick one up. “This one’s a Doug-fir, see the three points? There’ll be lots of them inside the forest, but you won’t see saplings because they’re not shade-tolerant. The animals like them, and bears like to eat their bark.”
“Bears! Eek!”
“Oh, Aunt Jamie.”
“Hey, I’m your city-slicker client, remember?”
“Right. You don’t have to worry about bear if you take simple safety precautions,” Olivia parroted. “The black bear lives in this area. The biggest problem with them is they like to steal food, so you’ve got to use proper storage for food and garbage. You never, never leave food or dirty dishes unattended in your campsite.”
“But you have food in your backpack. What if the bears smell it and come after us?”
“I have the food wrapped in double plastic, so they won’t. But if a bear comes around, you should make lots of noise. You need to be calm, give them room so they can go away.”
They stepped out of the clearing and into the trees. Almost immediately the light turned soft and green with only a few stray shimmers of sun sneaking through the canopy of trees. Those thin fingers were pale, watery and lovely. The ground was littered with cones, thick with moss and ferns. The green covered the world in subtly different shapes, wildly different textures.
A thrush called out and darted by, barely ruffling the air.
“It looks prehistoric.”
“I guess it is. I think it’s the most beautiful place in the world.”
Jamie laid her hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “I know.” And a safe place, Jamie thought. A wise place for a child to go. “Tell me what I’m seeing as we go, Livvy. Make it come alive for me.”
They walked at an easy pace, with Olivia doing her best to use a tour guide’s voice and rhythm. But the forest always captured her. She wondered why it had to be explained at all when you could just see.
The light was so soft it was as if she could feel it on her skin, the air so rich with scent it almost made her head reel. Pine and damp and the dying logs that were the life source for new trees. The deceptively fragile look of the moss that spilled and spread and climbed everywhere. The sounds—the crunch of boots over needles and cones, the stirring of small animals that darted here and there on the day’s business, the call of birds, the sudden surprising gurgle of water in a little stream. They all came together for her in their own special kind of silence.
It was her cathedral, more magnificent and certainly more holy to her than any of the pictures she’d seen of the glorious buildings in Rome or Paris. This ground lived and died every day.
She pointed out a ring of mushrooms that added splashes of white and yellow, the lichens that upholstered the great trunks of trees, the papery seeds spilled by the grand Sitka spruce, the complicated tangle of vine maples that insisted on growing close to the trail.
They wound between nurse logs, shaggy with moss and sprouts, brushed through feathery crops of ferns and spotted, thanks to Olivia’s sharp eye, an eagle lording it over the branches high overhead.
“Hardly anyone uses this trail,” Olivia said, “because the first part of it’s private. But the public trails start to loop there now, and you begin to see people.”
“Don’t you like to see people, Livvy?”
“Not so much in the forest.” She offered a sheepish smile. “I like to think it’s mine, and no one will ever change it. See? Listen.” She held up a hand, closed her eyes.
Intrigued, Jamie did the same. She heard the faint tinkle of music, could just make out the slick twang of country and western.
“People take away the magic,” Olivia said solemnly, then started up the upward slant of the trail.
As they climbed, Jamie began to pick up more sounds. A voice, a child’s laugh. Where the trees thinned, sunlight sprinkled in until that soft green twilight was gone.
The lakes spread out in the distance, sparkling with sun, dotted with boats. And the great mountains speared up against the sky while the dips and valleys and gorges cut through with curves and slashes.
Warmer now, she sat and tugged off her overshirt to let the sun play on her arms. “There’s all kinds of magic.” She smiled when Olivia shrugged off her pack. “You don’t have to be alone for it to work.”
“I guess not.” Carefully, Olivia unpacked the food, the thermos, then, sitting Indian style, offered Jamie her binoculars. “Maybe you can see Uncle David and Grandma.”
“Maybe Uncle David dived overboard and swam home.” With a laugh, Jamie lifted the field glasses. “Oh, there are swans. I love the way they look. Just gliding along. I should’ve brought my camera. I don’t know why I never think of it.”
She lowered the glasses to pick up one of the sandwiches Olivia had cut into meticulously even halves. “It’s always beautiful here. Whatever the season, whatever the time of day.”
She glanced down, noticed that Olivia was watching her steadily. It gave her a little chill to see that measuring look in a child’s eyes. “What is it?”
“I have to ask you for a favor. You won’t want to do it, but I thought about it a lot, and it’s important. I need you to get me an address.” Olivia pressed her lips together, then blew out a breath. “It’s for the policeman, the one who took me to your house that night. His name is Frank. I remember him, but not very well. I want to write to him.”
“Livvy, why? There’s nothing he can tell you that I can’t. It can’t be good for you to worry so much about this.”
“It has to be better to know things than to wonder. He was nice to me. Even if I can only write and tell him I remember he was nice to me, I’d feel better. And . . . he was there that night, Aunt Jamie. You weren’t there. It was just me until he came and found me. I want to talk to him.”
She turned her head to stare out at the lakes. “I’ll tell him my grandparents don’t know I’m writing. I won’t tell lies. But I need to try. I only remember his name was Frank.”
Jamie closed her eyes, felt her heart sink a little. “Brady. His name is Frank Brady.”
seven
Frank Brady turned the pale-blue envelope over in his hands. His name and the address of the precinct had been handwritten, neat and precise and unmistakably childlike, as had the return address in the corner.
Olivia MacBride.
Little Livvy Tanner, he mused, a young ghost out of the past.
Eight years. He’d never really put that night, those people, that case aside. He’d tried. He’d
done his job, justice had followed through as best it could, and the little girl had been whisked away by family who loved her.
Closed, finished, over. Despite the stories on Julie MacBride that cropped up from time to time, the gossip, the rumors, the movies that ran on late-night television, it was done. Julie MacBride would be forever thirty-two and beautiful, and the man who’d killed her wouldn’t see the outside of a cage for another decade or more.
Why the hell would the kid write to him after all this time? he wondered. And why the hell didn’t he just open the letter and find out?
Still, he hesitated, frowning at the envelope while phones shrilled around him and cops moved in and out of the bull pen. He found himself wishing his own phone would ring so he could set the letter aside, pick up a new case. Then with a quiet oath, he tore the envelope open, spread out the single sheet of matching stationery and read:
Dear Detective Brady,
I hope you remember me. My mother was Julie MacBride, and when she was killed you took me to my aunt’s house. You came to see me there, too. I didn’t really understand then about murder or that you were investigating. You made me feel safe, and you told me how the stars were there even in the daytime. You helped me then. I hope you can help me now.
I’ve been living with my grandparents in Washington State. It’s beautiful here and I love them very much. Aunt Jamie came to visit this week, and I asked her if she could give me your address so I could write to you. I didn’t tell my grandparents because it makes them sad. We never talk about my mother, or what my father did.
I have questions that nobody can answer but you. It’s awfully important to me to know the truth, but I don’t want to hurt my grandmother. I’m twelve years old now, but she doesn’t understand that when I think about that night and try to remember it gets mixed up and that makes it worse. Will you talk to me?
I thought maybe if you wanted to take a vacation you could even come here. I remember you had a son. You said he ate bugs and had bad dreams sometimes about alien invaders, but he’s older now so I guess he doesn’t anymore.
Christ, Frank thought with a stunned laugh. The kid had a memory like an elephant.
There’s lots to do up here. Our lodge and campground are really nice, and I could even send you our brochures. You can go fishing or hiking or boating. The lodge has a swimming pool and nightly entertainment. We’re also close to some of the most beautiful beaches in the Northwest.
Even as Frank felt his lips twitch at her sales pitch, he scanned the rest.
Please come. I have no one else to talk to.
Yours truly,
Olivia
“Jesus.” He folded the letter, slipped it back in its envelope and into his jacket pocket. But he wasn’t able to tuck Olivia out of his mind so easily.
He carried both the letter and the memory of the girl with him all day. He decided he’d write her a gentle response, keep it light—sympathetic but noncommittal. He could tell her how Noah was starting college in the fall, and how he’d been named Most Valuable Player in his basketball tournament. Chatty, easy. He’d use his work and his family commitments as an excuse not to go up to see her.
What good would it do to go to Washington and talk to her? It would only upset everyone involved. He couldn’t possibly take on a responsibility like that. Her grandparents were good people.
He’d done a background check on them when they’d filed for custody. Just tying up loose ends, he told himself now as he’d told himself then. And maybe in the first couple of years he’d done a few more checks—just to make sure the kid was settling in all right.
Then he’d closed the book. He meant it to stay closed.
He was a cop, he reminded himself as he turned down the street toward home. He wasn’t a psychologist, a social worker, and his only connection to Olivia was murder.
It couldn’t possibly help her to talk to him.
He pulled into the drive behind a bright blue Honda Civic. It had replaced his wife’s VW four years before. Both bumpers were crowded with stickers. His wife might have given up her beloved Bug, but she hadn’t given up her causes.
Noah’s bike had been upgraded to a secondhand Buick the boy pampered like a lover. He’d be loading it up and driving it off to college in a matter of weeks. The thought of that struck Frank as it always did—like an arrow to the heart.
The flowers that danced around the door thrived, due to Noah’s attention. God knew where he’d gotten the green thumb, Frank thought as he climbed out of the car. Once the boy was away at school, both he and Celia would kill the blooms within a month.
He stepped in the front door to the sound of Fleetwood Mac. His heart sank. Celia liked to cook to Fleetwood Mac, and if she’d decided to cook it meant that Frank would be sneaking into the kitchen in the middle of the night, searching out his well-hidden stashes of junk food.
The living room was tidy—another bad sign. The fact that there were no newspapers or shoes scattered around meant Celia had gotten off early from her job at the women’s shelter and was feeling domestic.
He and Noah suffered when Celia shifted into a domestic mode. There would be a home-cooked meal that had much more to do with nutrition than taste, a tidy house where he’d never be able to find anything and very likely freshly folded laundry. Which meant half his socks would be missing.
Things ran much more smoothly in the Brady household when Celia left the domestic chores to her men.
When Frank stepped into the kitchen, his worst fears were confirmed. Celia stood happily stirring something at the stove. There was a fresh loaf of some kind of tree-bark bread on the counter beside an enormous yellow squash.
But she looked so damn pretty, he thought, with her bright hair pulled back in a smooth ponytail, her narrow, teenage-boy hips bumping to the beat and her long, slim feet bare.
She carried a look of competent innocence that he’d always thought disguised a boundless determination. There was nothing Celia Brady wanted to accomplish that she didn’t manage to do.
Just, he thought, as she’d managed him one way or another since she’d been a twenty-year-old coed and he the twenty-three-year-old rookie who’d arrested her during a protest against animal testing.
The first two weeks of their relationship they’d spent arguing. The second two weeks they’d spent in bed. She’d refused to marry him, so they’d fought about that. But he had his own share of determination. During the year they’d lived together, he’d worn her down.
Unexpectedly he came up behind her and hugged her tight. “I love you, Celia.”
She turned in his arms and gave him a quick kiss. “You’re still eating the black beans and squash. It’s good for you.”
He figured he’d live through it—and he had mini-pizzas buried in the depths of the freezer. “I’ll eat it, and I’ll still love you. I’m a tough guy. Where’s Noah?”
“Out shooting hoops with Mike. He’s got a date with Sarah later.”
“Again?”
Celia had to smile. “She’s a very nice girl, Frank. And with him going off to college in a few weeks, they want to spend as much time together as they can.”
“I just wish he wasn’t so hung up on this one girl. He’s only eighteen.”
“Frank, after a half term in college, Sarah won’t be more than a vague memory. Now, what’s really wrong?”
He didn’t bother to sigh, but took the beer she held out to him. “Do you remember the MacBride case?”
“Julie MacBride?” Celia’s eyebrows lifted. “Of course. It was the biggest high-profile case of your career, and you still get sad if one of her movies comes on TV. But what about the MacBride case? You closed it years ago. Sam Tanner’s in prison.”
“The little girl.”
“Yes, I remember. She broke your heart.” Celia rubbed his arm. “Softie.”
“Her grandparents got custody, took her up to Washington State. They own a place up there, lodge, campground on the Olympic Peninsula. Attache
d to the national forest.”
“The Olympic National Forest?” Celia’s eyes went bright. “Oh, that’s beautiful country. I hiked up that way the summer I graduated from high school. They’ve really kept the greedy bloodsuckers at bay.”
To Celia greedy bloodsuckers were anyone who wanted to chop down a tree, demolish an old building, hunt rabbits or pour concrete over farmland.
“Tree hugger.”
“Ha ha. If you had any idea how much damage can be done by loggers who don’t have the foresight to—”
“Don’t start, Cee, I’m already eating beans and squash.”
She pouted a moment, then shrugged a shoulder and started to rise. Since putting her back up hadn’t been part of his strategy, he reached in his pocket for the letter. “Just read this, and tell me what you think.”
“So now you’re interested in what I think.” But after reading the first couple lines, she sat again, and the light of battle in her eyes melted into compassion. “Poor little thing,” she murmured. “She’s so sad. And so brave.”
She smoothed her fingers over the letter, then handed it back to Frank before she went back to stir her pot. “You know, Frank, a family vacation before Noah heads off to college would be good for all of us. And we haven’t been camping since he was three and you took an oath never to spend another night sleeping on the ground.”
Half the weight the letter had put on his shoulders slid off. “I really do love you, Celia.”
Olivia did her best to behave normally, to tuck the nerves and excitement away so her grandparents wouldn’t notice. Inside, she was breathless and jittery, and her head ached a little, but she did her morning chores and managed to eat a little lunch so no one would comment on her lack of appetite.