Aurora's Gold

by K. J. Gillenwater

  I started with the silverware drawer. Putting each knife, spoon and fork into its proper place soothed me. I suppose I needed to begin with what I knew was real—and the stainless steel, mismatched set of utensils from the resale shop in town was very real. The cool metal in my hand. The tines and blades were something I could touch and see and categorize.

  When I finished one drawer, I moved to the next. Spatulas, pancake flipper, bottle opener, whisk, ladle. Real. Real. Real.

  I’d finished up the last kitchen drawer when someone knocked at my door.

  Nate Frazier stood on my door step.

  I held back a gasp. “What are you doing here, Nate?”

  His eyes were red-rimmed. “I need that map.” His words came out quiet and calm.

  How did he know about the map?

  The hairs raised on the back of my neck.

  “Right now’s not a good time, Nate.” I moved to shut the door.

  Nate put his foot in between the door and the jam. “You’re gonna give me that map.”

  My cell phone sat on my couch. If I let him in, I could maybe grab my phone and call the cops.

  Nate could be unpredictable. Confirming the map had been in my possession would do nothing but enflame him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Nate entered. “Your old man. He has it. I know he does.” He had a slight sway to his body. “He showed it to me.”

  “He did?”

  He snorted. “A long time before you ever were in the picture, honey.” He took a few steps closer. “You think you and your dad are so buddy-buddy? That he tells you everything?”

  “I just spoke with Kyle at the police station, and he told me the truth, Nate.” I maintained eye contact and stood my ground. Nate didn’t scare me anymore. “My dad stole that map from Kyle’s uncle. Buck found most of the gold using someone else’s hard work.”

  Nate’s eyes sharpened. “Kyle’s uncle?”

  “Arthur.” Sounded as if he had no clue about Kyle’s relationship to the map. “Yes. The map belonged to Arthur.”

  “I didn’t know—I couldn’t have known…” Nate’s expression collapsed from harsh to soft in a moment. “I wouldn’t have gone along with it if I knew it was stolen and that the kid was involved.”

  “Looks like my father lied to more people than just me.” ‘The Kid’ had been Nate’s nickname for Kyle. In fact, Nate had been more broken up about losing Kyle’s companionship on the Alaska Darling last summer than being fired from his job.

  “That’s fucked up. I knew Buck could be underhanded—but shit.” Unexpectedly, Nate sat on the lamp table next to the couch. “That ain’t right.”

  “I’m sorry, Nate. My father isn’t the man I thought he was.” Sure, Nate had his problems—the drinking, the anger issues, and now the drugs—but that didn’t mean he didn’t have feelings. “Look, I don’t know what the arrangement was between you and him. And now that I’ve found out the whole map story, I’m more inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt about your business relationship.”

  Nate stared off into nothing. “All that time on the dredge. The hours I worked for free to get that thing running, repairs over the winter to make sure it was ready for the summer season, the time we spent ice diving and I almost lost fingers because of his damned stupidity.”

  I’d never really paid attention to Nate before. He’d been my dad’s partner, sure, and he lived with us for a while, but I’d been a kid and more focused on myself and my own internal problems to really see what went on between Buck and him. As I reviewed the years of working on the dredge, the duties had been quite skewed. My dad had been the one to make the decisions, decide where we were dredging, how long we were dredging, who would be doing what. For someone who’d considered himself my dad’s equal, it must’ve been humiliating to put up with it for so long.

  “He brought me on when I was a nobody with nothing,” Nate reflected. “But I helped him put the Alaska Darling together, one piece at a time. I was the brains behind it all, and he was the one with the means to get it built. You think what he did was more valuable than what I did to get his operation up and running?”

  “No.”

  He pulled a face. “Then he brought this twelve-year-old kid on board one summer—outta nowhere.”

  “Me.”

  “Yes, you.” At that moment he actually cracked a bit of a smile and met my gaze. “And everything changed.”

  “I never meant to get between you and my father,” I said.

  “I know. But how could you prevent it? You’re his kid.”

  We both sat there in silence for a few moments.

  “I’m selling the dredge.” The words slipped out. “I want you to have half.”

  Nate raised his brows.

  “But only if you’ll use some of the money to get some help.”

  His eyes welled up with tears. “I’m into some serious bad shit, Rory.”

  I touched his hand. “I know. Let me do this for you.” We may have had our moments, but I couldn’t stand to see Nate in such a mess. It would be what my father would want. “I’m sure there’s a place down in Anchorage. And my dad’s going to be down there recuperating for a while. He’d like to know there’s a friend nearby.” Maybe they’d find a way to fix their relationship.

  “Thanks.”

  *

  I finished cleaning up the apartment after Nate left. He’d stuck around for an hour or so while we talked about the best price for the dredge as a whole and each piece of equipment, if I had to part it out for sale. Although he’d been sad to hear about my father’s financial picture being so dire, he agreed that selling was the best avenue. Before he left he asked me to let Buck know he wished him the best.

  With surgery scheduled for tomorrow, I had wanted to call my dad one last time, but the day had gotten away from me. And now, with the evening setting in I was emotionally and physically exhausted.

  My phone rang.

  Zoe.

  A good distraction from a phone call I dreaded making. I plopped into the recliner chair and answered, “Hey, sister.”

  “Aurora, how are you doing? How is Buck? Did he have his surgery yet?”

  “It’s scheduled for tomorrow. And then he’ll be down in Anchorage for a couple of months before he can come back home.”

  “Sound rough.” Zoe’s tone sounded truly sympathetic. “I know things are tight financially.”

  “Well, I did some thinking since we last talked.” I didn’t have the energy to explain to her all the drama I’d experienced over the last few days. Sometimes simple was best. “I took your advice to heart.”

  “You did?” The shock in Zoe’s voice was evident. Her little sister never listened to her advice.

  “You were right, Zoe,” I said. “I’m selling the dredge.”

  “Wow. I’m surprised. That’s very mature of you. I know how hard a decision that must’ve been.”

  “You know, until I decided to sell it, I didn’t realize how much worry I carried around. My dad didn’t leave us in a very good position when he had his accident.” I thought about the stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen table I’d been avoiding for the last week. “I had no idea the kind of financial juggling he’d been doing. I’d just relied on him to take care of everything.”

  “You’re making the right move,” Zoe said. “Now the next step is figuring out where you’re headed.”

  I had barely made it through today much less thought about what I was going to do going forward. “I hadn’t even thought about it.” On the coffee table I spied the blank application for the Polar Cafe that Stella had given me earlier. “I’m kind of thinking short-term here. How to keep going through the winter.”

  “So not much leftover after the medical bills and such?”

  “I won’t know about the exact billing for a couple of months, according to the Patient Care Coordinator I’ve been working with. They’ll bill his insurance first and then they’ll come after me for the dedu
ctible and any other costs that weren’t covered by insurance. At least I have a clue what the deductible will be. This health insurance junk is a nightmare.”

  “Welcome to the real world.”

  “Yeah. Thanks a lot.” I smiled to myself. Although I wasn’t pleased with the responsibilities that had been tossed in my lap in the last few weeks, I’d somehow muddled through it and came out the other end as a more informed person. “For right now I’m more concerned with the recovery costs—rent, in-home nursing care, food—that kind of thing.”

  “Are you going to be okay? You know you’re always more than welcome to come stay with us for the winter, if things get too tough up there. Nobody says you have to do this alone.”

  I thought about the idea for a moment. I could get away from the mess I’d made of my life in Nome—the humiliation of failure, the embarrassment of my one-night stand with Ben that everyone in Nome probably knew about, the knowledge my father had stolen from a local. I could take the easy route, the escape hatch offered. Let someone else be responsible for me and my life again. Let Zoe and Henry dictate the best course for me after my ‘crazy period’ in Alaska.

  “I want to do it alone,” I said. If I’d learned anything about myself, it was that I was capable of a lot more than I’d given myself credit for. And a lot more than my fellow dredgers cared to give me credit for. “I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. Where I want to go in the future. What I want to be doing and who I want to be doing it with.”

  “That sounds like relationship talk. Are you not telling me something, Aurora?”

  Weird, but I hadn’t even thought about Ben since I’d made up my mind about the dredge. “I don’t know if I’m ready to really have a serious relationship, Zoe. I think I’ve made a few pretty awful mistakes lately, and I’m probably better off figuring myself out first, you know?”

  “Yeah, I totally know where you are coming from, Aurora.” My almost-30 unmarried sister hadn’t quite figured out the dating scene herself.

  The specter of my mother and how she’d torn apart our family hovered over both my sister and me. I was half Cindy Pomeroy. Half of that distant, but beautiful woman who’d made her way through life in the messiest way possible. Interested only in her own happiness, her own desires. Leaving a path of destruction in her wake. She’d abandoned two daughters and a husband. I’m not even sure why I thought about her at all. But how can a girl avoid thinking about her mother or desiring her love and approval? I’d only found disappointment in another parent—my father. Buck Darling was supposed to be my savior. The dad who loved me unconditionally and would do anything for me. But then I discovered the truth. He had his own ambitions, too. His own desires. He’d wanted me to believe he was Super Dad. Because without that, what was he? An aging dredger using someone else’s information to get ahead. A cheater and a liar. He really had accomplished very little on his own. He’d gotten my mother pregnant and then had run off to keep searching for his fortune—and instead had stolen someone else’s.

  Both my parents had pretty bad faults.

  Then my mind turned to Zoe and Henry, my stepfather. They had always been there for me. They’d worried about me, sure, and wished I’d chosen to stay with them rather than move in with a father I barely knew, but they’d never forced me to live my life any way but mine. And how hard that must have been to watch me navigate life from a thousand miles away.

  “Look, once you figure out what you’re doing, call me back,” Zoe insisted.

  I never thought a few weeks ago I’d be having a chummy conversation with my older sister. But, somehow, without even trying, we’d repaired the rift in our relationship.

  *

  The next day I selected Alaska Regional Hospital’s number on my cell phone and asked the operator to put me through to my father’s post-surgical room. I’d found out his surgery had gone well from a message left on my phone while I had been asleep.

  I bit my lip while the phone rang.

  “Rory.” My dad’s voice sounded stronger than it had the last time I’d talked to him. More confident. The deep timbre had returned.

  “Dad.” Without wanting to, I burst into tears. The last few days, what I’d found out about Kyle, and the financial and emotional burdens I carried around caught up to me.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” my father soothed. “Don’t cry. Everything’s okay. The doc said the surgery went well. I’ll be out of here in two shakes. I promise.”

  Where to begin? How would I even broach the topic I’d been dreading? “I’m glad you’re okay.” I sniffed and willed myself to get my emotions in check. “A lot’s been going on since your accident, dad.”

  “The dredge okay?”

  Always the dredge. Constant worrying about the dredge. Dredge first. Daughter second. “The dredge is fine.” I didn’t have the guts to tell him the truth yet. I hadn’t yet put the Alaska Darling up for sale. I took a breath. “This is about the map.”

  “What map?”

  “Dad, I know about Arthur Stroup’s map.” My heart filled my throat. “Everything. Kyle told me. But I need to hear from you: is it true?”

  Buck paused. I could hear his heavy breathing on the other end. “Goddamn it.”

  His tone of voice surprised me. “Dad?”

  “Rory, Kyle is a goddamn liar. Whatever he told you. It’s not true.”

  “But how can you say that when you don’t even know…”

  “Arthur couldn’t tell the difference between his ass and his elbow by the time I knew him. His mind was going—and that map? He was gonna burn it.” He repeated the last words slowly, “Burn it.”

  “What?” This didn’t sound remotely like the story Kyle had relayed to me.

  “I saved that map from being destroyed. The motherlode was on there somewhere.”

  “But it didn’t belong to you,” I pointed out. “It belongs to Kyle, his family.”

  “So I was supposed to let Art throw it away? When he was so senile he couldn’t remember where to piss much less where to park a dredge to get the best gold?”

  “Everything you taught me. It was all a lie.” I could feel the tears coming on, the thickness in my throat. “You made me think you knew everything about finding gold. I believed in you. I looked up to you. I even bragged about you to my friends. And all along you were cheating using stolen information.”

  “If I didn’t use that map, you know where you’d be right now? Back in Seattle with Henry. Is that what you wanted, Rory? I did whatever I could to keep you with me. Whatever I could. And if that meant using that map then, goddamn it, I was gonna use it. And I don’t feel bad about it one bit. Not. One. Bit.”

  “I never asked you to steal for me.” I spoke the words quietly. My mind raced to understand who the man was on the other end of the phone. This was not my father. This was not Buck Darling. I had hoped for some kind of explanation that made sense. For a way out of the idea my father lied and stole. But he fully admitted it.

  He sucked air through his teeth. “I’m not going to apologize for doing what I had to do.”

  The phone clicked. He’d hung up on me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I parked at the docks and carried a couple of cardboard boxes to the dredge so that I could box up the few personal items still on board. I needed to wipe the GPS clean of data points, sort through the odds and ends that had collected over the years, and make sure equipment was in working order before I could show it to a couple of interested parties. The vultures always came around this time of year when they smelled a failed operation. Rumors brought buyers to my doorstep before I’d truly made up my mind.

  My heart had been numbed by the truth. Although half my life had been built around the Alaska Darling, to think most of my father’s success had been stolen wouldn’t leave my mind.

  Maybe I truly wasn’t cut out for dredging. Maybe I’d fooled myself into believing my dad knew what he was talking about when he dreamed of me being the first female dredge operator
in Nome. A dream built on deception and lies. He knew I couldn’t live up to the expectation without cheating. Without using ill-gotten information from a poor, old man who’d died without knowing the truth behind the disappearance of his map.

  Nome had looked up to my dad. Seen him as a success, a good businessman, a risk-taker who had been rewarded for his efforts. And I was to be his successor. Buck Darling had been the ‘local’ who made good. A consistent presence on the water even when other operations failed.

  I’d thought it had been smarts and tenacity.

  My whole life in Nome had been a lie, and I’d bought it hook, line and sinker.

  I stepped onto the dredge, and it dipped in the water as I added my weight. I’d miss that feeling of free floating and drifting with the tide and the waves. The wind in my face, the sun in my eyes, my body shivering after peeling off my wetsuit, the joy of discovery, my gut telling me to push, push, push for one more hour of dredging rather than giving in to my body’s weaknesses. A woman who set out every day to make her father proud had been reduced to the daughter of a thief. Everyone in Nome knew it. After the attack and the truth came out, I’d felt their eyes on me.

  “Bobby at Ernie’s told me I might find you out here.” Ben appeared on the dock. “Need some help?”

  Heart beating. Breath stuck in my lungs. He’d caught me off guard. I’d written him off. Assumed he’d disappeared or gotten shuttled back to Boise. I hoped I’d never see him again, but then I hoped I would see him again. Mixed emotions. Confused thoughts. Easier to avoid them than confront them.

  I hadn’t seen Ben since he’d tried to run Stella and me down on the way to her place. I’d texted him one last time to let him know his final payout check would be with Stu at Alaska North. He’d tried contacting me a few times after that, but I didn’t answer hoping he’d get the hint.