by Stan Jones
“Amazing Grace, at your service.”
“And you - - who the hell was Shakespeare’s girlfriend, anyway?”
“Emily Lanyer. The dark lady of the sonnets.”
“I thought she was a big mystery. Didn’t he make her up or something?”
She shook her head. “The mystery’s been solved for some time now. Emily was this gorgeous brunette who made quite a career for herself as girlfriend to the high and mighty, not to mention Shakespeare. When she was in her forties and she heard his sonnets were finally going to be published, she rushed into print with her own version of the events recounted in said sonnets.” Grace was grinning broadly now. “By that time she was quite churchy and probably not so gorgeous anymore, which may explain why she took such a strong feminist stance against the same activities she had embraced with such enthusiasm as a young dish.”
“Such as men defacing the wombs wherein they were bred? Was that the line?”
She nodded with another grin. “Um-hmm.”
“How many people in Alaska would know that?”
“At least two, now.”
He shook his head. “And you had Charlie Hughes and Jim Silver chasing their tails on your father’s murder. And that stunt with the shell casing in my pencil cup …”
“I didn’t plan to embarrass you with it, not at first. But when I found it in my parka pocket that day in your office here, I had to do something with it. I was going to ask you to help me keep them away from Ida till she died. But then you assumed right away I did it and gave me that Miranda warning and you were so …” She shrugged and smiled. “That’s when it dawned on me. I could let you keep them focused on me.”
“So you basically winged all of this. Made it up as you went along.”
She nodded with a smile. “Mostly. But it worked out well, wouldn’t you say?”
He said nothing as she looked into herself for a moment. Then, “What if I don’t leave? I could work on my degree through the community college here, I think.”
He laid the pen down to cover up his reaction, but she must have seen something in his face.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing. Stay, go, do what you like.”
“You don’t want me around?”
“It would be very painful to see you every day, considering.”
“Considering what?”
He waved his hand in a semicircle to take in all the things too agonizing to enumerate. “It’s more than I can explain.”
She was silent for a long moment, fiddling with the zipper of her parka. “Nita and I were wondering if you’d like to come to dinner tonight? I mean, for signing the adoption letter and all.”
“You cook, too?”
“I can take things out of packages and heat them up, yes. And I’m sure if it became necessary, I could learn to baste and season and mix and blend and fold and do all those other Martha Stewart things.”
He thought it over. It wouldn’t hurt to see Grace and Nita together if his name was going to be on a letter of recommendation to the tribal court in Isignaq. “Sure, where are you staying?”
She gave him an odd look. “At our place, of course. My place, now. Roy and I worked it out.”
“You’re living in Jason’s house? Isn’t that kind of … creepy?”
She shook her head, teeth showing in a wolfish grin. “Nope, I’m enjoying it for the first time since I was twelve years old, now that the son of a bitch is dead.”
She looked at the letter, still lying on his desk, and smiled. “Well, you going to sign it or not?”
He looked at it, too. “Who really killed him?”
“I told you. Ida.”
He looked down at the letter, then back at her.
“You’re never going to know, are you?”
He shook his head. “Never. And I just can’t, without knowing. Sorry.” He pushed the letter across the desk to her.
“Christ, Nathan, how do you know anything?”
“I see it with my own eyes.”
“And if you don’t see it with your own eyes?”
“I don’t know.”
Her face softened and she leaned over the desk and touched his hand. “You poor thing, such a man. Don’t you know that belief is all we get? Knowledge is too much to ask.”
He was silent.
“Can you think of one thing I ever said to you that turned out to be untrue in any way?”
Suddenly his eyes were hot with tears and he was blinking rapidly, belief welling up inside him and illuminating the past few months like a sunrise.
“You lied about Nita.”
“What?”
“She’s not your cousin, is she?”
“No, I - -”
“When was she born?”
She lowered her eyes. “Does it matter?”
“Where was she born?”
“Why does that matter?” Her voice was tight.
“She’s your daughter isn’t she? And Jason’s? You had her in Anchorage while you were at the university and somehow you gave her to your aunt to raise and … a tribal adoption, right?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Look at me and say that.”
Instead she turned away and her shoulders began to shake. “Don’t tell anyone. Please?”
“Is this what this was all about, you trying to keep the case out of court because we might find out about Nita somehow?”
She nodded, still facing away, looking out the window of his office. “That, and keeping Mom out of jail, yes. I crossed my fingers and stalled the case until she got so sick I didn’t think Charlie would be able to try her.”
“Wasn’t there some chance she’d get well?”
“Not much, but if she did, then I would have pleaded guilty to manslaughter and gone to jail.”
“But what about Nita?”
“She’d have stayed with Mom till I got out of jail.”
“Which could have been a very long time.”
She shrugged. “Not that long. Charlie hated this case as much as Theresa did and he was dangling the manslaughter plea right from the start. Theresa thought with credit for time served already, and time off for good behavior, I would have been released to a halfway house in a couple of years. Maybe less.”
She turned from the window and studied him, wiping her eyes on the back of her wrist. “Anyway, Charlie and Jim never figured it out about Nita so I was starting to hope it would stay buried with Jason and Aggie and Ida. But now you know and you’re so … you’re such a …” She raised her eyebrows in the white expression of inquiry. “Will it? Stay buried? Nita shouldn’t have to live with that.”
He looked down at the letter until his eyes cleared. Then he coughed, picked up the pen, scrawled his name across the bottom of the page, and handed it to her. “Neither should you.”
“Thank you, Nathan.” She released a breath he hadn’t been aware she was holding, blinked rapidly a few times, folded the letter, and put it back in her parka. “Um, about dinner. Nita’s still not sleeping well. I’ve got her in counseling with the tribal healer, old Nelda Qivits, but she has a ways to go yet.”
He nodded, wondering as usual where the conversation was headed and reminding himself as usual that it was pointless to wonder about such things where Grace Palmer was concerned.
She dropped into the chair again. “So the hospital prescribed a sedative, I give it to her after dinner, and she’s out like a light till morning.”
“Well, I’m sure she needs her rest.”
“An earthquake couldn’t wake her. Dynamite couldn’t.”
Suddenly he was remembering again, this time their conversation in the hallway at the Triangle bunkhouse and what they had told each other on the hillside over Captain’s Bay. “What are you, ah, do you mean what, ah …”
She nodded and put her hands under her thighs like a nervous schoolgirl. “’Some other time,’ that’s what we said Dutch Harbor, and I wondered if, now that some time has passed,
if you’d like to help me complete my recovery.” At his shocked look, she added in a hurried tumble of words, “I told you I don’t know how normal people do these things.”
“In your father’s house?” he croaked through a tight, dry throat.
She looked him squarely in the eye, the most direct gaze he had ever faced. “In his bed, ideally.”
“Why me? Of all people?”
“I told you. You came all that way.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Actually, it is.” She shrugged. “When I saw you in that lunchroom in Dutch … well, I never believed in that sort of thing before, but there it was. One look and I knew.”
He cleared his throat and nodded. “And I guess I knew it when your father showed me your picture at Chukchi High. It was stupid, you were either dead or a street drunk, as far as anyone knew, but I, ah, I …”
She blinked back tears. “Uh-huh?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about these things. I’ve never been able to.”
She nodded and spoke in what struck him as a mother’s voice. “With me you can.”
He sighed. “I’ve never been able to trust any woman. Or my feelings about any woman. My, ah, my mother, she, ah, adopted me out. She gave me away and - ”
“And another woman took you in.”
He nodded. “That’s true, I guess.”
“And now I’d like to.”
He broke their gaze and looked out the window for a moment, then back at her. “I’ll be there for dinner, but, about the other, I don’t know, I …”
The secret, inward smile spread across her face. “Perhaps if you see me with your own eyes,” she said. Then she winked at him.
He stared. “You terrify me. You’re too large to comprehend.”
She smiled again, rose, and turned for the door with a flash from the corner of her eye. She was whistling the little air she had built on his phone number in Dutch Harbor.
Evelyn O’Brien stared after her as she crossed the outer office and went out the main door into the hall. “What was that song she was whistling? I know it from somewhere.”
“It’s not a song, it’s a piece, and it’s called Nathan’s Song.” He ducked back into his office and closed the door as she hurled a “Thanks, asshole,” at his back and returned to her keyboard.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stan Jones was born in Anchorage, where he now lives. He received a B.S. from California Institute of Technology and a Master of Arts in Economic Journalism from the University of Alaska. He helped launch a weekly newspaper in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kotzebue, after having served as news director at the town’s public radio station for two years. He has worked as a reporter and editor at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Anchorage Daily News. He is the recipient of, among other journalism awards, the Alaska Press Club Public Service Award, the George Polk Award, and, twice, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Investigative Journalism. He has specialized in environmental issues and, as a former Bush pilot, has flown his own plane all over Northwest Alaska. He now works for an advocacy group set up to prevent oil spills like the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989.
Stan enjoys hearing from readers. Email him at
[email protected] or visit his website at www.sjbooks.com.