The Mirror (Northwest Passage Book 5)

by John A. Heldt

  "So what you're really saying is that, after you leave, I won't see you again."

  She nodded again.

  "That's exactly what I'm saying."

  Katie grabbed his hand and rubbed it against her cheek. It was something she did for herself. She figured that even if Mike pulled back his hand and walked out of the house, she would at least have something to savor. She was mildly surprised when he let her keep the hand.

  She was not surprised to see a tear roll down his cheek and even less surprised to see several more follow. She had broken his heart. There were no words or gestures that could fix that.

  "I'm sorry, Mike. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I couldn't. I just couldn't."

  Mike forced a smile, kissed Katie on the head, and got up from the sofa.

  "I should go," he said.

  Mike walked to Ginny's chair, retrieved his windbreaker, and started to leave. He got as far as the door before Katie stopped him. She grabbed his hands.

  "I'm sorry for ruining your night," Katie said. "I don't want it to be this way."

  Mike brushed away a tear and forced another sad smile.

  "Don't worry. That's not even the worst news I've had today."

  Katie cocked her head and zeroed in on his eyes.

  "What do you mean?"

  Mike sighed.

  "My mom heard from her doctor this morning."

  "What did he say?" Katie asked.

  "He said her cancer's back. It's back big. It's spread all through her body."

  Katie saw fear replace the calm in his eyes. Mike Hayes was no longer the tough survivor who had been there and done that. He looked lost, helpless, and alone.

  "What does that mean?" Katie asked with a frantic edge in her voice.

  "It means she has three months to live."

  Katie rushed forward and wrapped him in her arms.

  "Oh, Mike. I'm so sorry."

  Katie tried to still his trembling body but quickly gave up. The pain he had hidden all day was simply too much to contain. When she looked up, she saw a tormented face awash in tears.

  "I don't know what to do, Katie. I don't know what to do," Mike said.

  Katie wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. She couldn't think straight, stand straight, or even see straight. Her own trigger-happy eyes, which had resisted tears all evening, had finally turned to mush.

  So for several minutes she did nothing but hold him. She pulled him in and tried to absorb as much of his anguish as she possibly could. She could literally feel the pain of a young man who had known little else in nineteen years and who had certainly done nothing to deserve it.

  Katie shifted quickly from hugs to kisses. She gave Mike the kind of affection she had kept in reserve for far too long. She gave him the comfort he had needed for hours and would surely need for weeks to come. When she was done, she gave him a soft smile and a softer gaze.

  Then Katie Smith – sensible, careful Katie Smith – did something uncharacteristically impulsive and reckless, something that now seemed as natural and inevitable as a first kiss. She brushed away Mike's tears, grabbed his hand, and led him toward a bedroom he had never seen.

  She did so not only because if felt right but also because she was tired of playing by rules she hadn't set and abiding by conventions she hadn't created. She did so because, for once in her life, she wanted to follow her heart and not her head.

  When they got to the door of the bedroom, Katie stopped, turned to face Mike, and threw her arms over his shoulders. She sighed and kissed him lightly on the lips, a gesture that seemed to snap him out of a daze. He looked at her with clear eyes and shook his head.

  "I can't do this, Katie."

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't want to add guilt to my misery," Mike said.

  "You won't."

  Mike gazed at her and nodded.

  "Yeah, I will. If I go in there now, I'll feel rotten tomorrow. I love you, Katie. I love you more than anything, but I can't do this. You didn't ask me inside to bring me here. You asked me inside to break up. Don't do this now because my mom is dying. I don't need your pity."

  "I don't pity you!" Katie snapped. "I love you."

  Mike winced and again shook his head. He slowly pulled Katie's arms from his shoulders and let them fall to her side. He grabbed her hands, squeezed them tightly, and then kissed her on the forehead.

  "It's getting late. I should check on my mom. I have to go."

  Mike kissed her again – on the lips – and released her hands. He gave her one final look, turned around, and then started down the dark hallway toward the living room and the door.

  "Don't you leave me, Michael Hayes!"

  Katie watched Mike stop, pause for a second, and turn around. When she had his attention, she walked up to him, reclaimed his hands, and stared at him with eyes that slowly changed from angry to fearful to pleading.

  "If you decide to walk out that door later tonight, I won't stop you. I won't even try," Katie said in a softer voice. "Just don't leave now."

  Katie took a moment to wipe her eyes, which in minutes had become functionally useless. The tears that had once ebbed and flowed now just flowed.

  "I'm not asking you to forget your mom. I'm not asking you to forget what I said. I'm just asking you to stay a little longer."

  Katie took a deep breath and returned her arms to his shoulders.

  "This is not about you," she said. "It's about making things right. It's about showing you at least once how much I love you."

  She kissed him again tenderly and meaningfully.

  "This is for me."

  CHAPTER 61: GINNY

  Thursday, August 6, 1964

  Ginny adjusted the umbrella over her head and then glanced at her sister, who sat at the other end of a picnic table in Virginia's sunny backyard. She wasn't sure what to make of Katie's blank expression – and that bothered her. Katie had worn the expression all week.

  "Are you ever going to tell me what happened last weekend?"

  "I already have. I did what you wanted me to do," Katie said. "I told Mike that we were leaving next month and that we should cool things down in the meantime."

  "I know you, Katie. You're holding something back."

  Katie pulled the business section from Thursday's edition of the Seattle Sun and started pouring through it. She did not take her eyes off the paper.

  "So what if I am? We're leaving soon. That's all that matters."

  Seeing that she wasn't going to get a more substantive reply, Ginny huffed a few times and returned to the comics, where Blondie and Lucy badgered Dagwood and Schroeder, respectively, with questions about baby showers, music, and love. She found that even insensitive males in the funny pages were more receptive to queries than the twin at her table.

  When she was done deriving laughs from one section of the paper, she tried to derive news from another and got more than she asked for in stories about Vietnam, civil rights workers, and a local businessman. Deciding to save the depressing but important articles for later, she marked each with an "X" and returned to her root beer.

  "How did your weekend go?" Katie asked.

  "Oh, now you want to talk to me."

  "No. I just want to know how your camping trip went."

  Ginny stared at the one person in the world who could push all her buttons at once and frowned. She hated it when Katie got this way. Katie had a moral obligation to share her thoughts, not to lock them up like valuables in a safe deposit box.

  "It's not really any of your business, but I had a nice time. Cindy and I talked about boys, Nana and I talked about Cindy, and Joe helped me catch a fish," Ginny said. "I wish you could have joined us."

  "I do too," Katie said. "How was your date with James?"

  "It was nice."

  "Just nice?"

  "Oh, all right, it was awesome. He was awesome," Ginny said. "We had more fun than I've had in months. I'm kicking myself for ignoring him all summer."

  Kat
ie lowered the business section and dropped it to the table.

  "It sounds like you like him."

  "I do. I like him a lot. It's killing me that I have to leave him behind."

  "Did you tell him we were leaving?" Katie asked.

  Ginny nodded.

  "It was hard."

  "Welcome to my world," Katie said matter-of-factly.

  Ginny started to say something but stopped when Virginia Jorgenson walked out of the house with two plates in her hands. She watched closely as Nana stepped carefully around Barbie dolls and accessories that Joanie had left on the patio.

  "Here you go. I hope you like rye bread. It's all I had," Virginia said.

  "I love it," Ginny said.

  Katie looked up.

  "Me too. Thanks."

  "You're welcome," Virginia said.

  Nana placed the plates bearing egg-salad sandwiches and pickle slices in front of her not-so-fussy diners. She sat down and picked up the front section of the Sun.

  "I see you've been going through the paper," Virginia said. "Did you find any errors today?"

  "No," Ginny said.

  "That's a relief. I hate it when our editors miss something. The woman next door loves to circle errors in the Sun and draw my attention to them," Virginia said. "What's so special about the articles you've marked?"

  "The X's mark the sites of buried treasure, Nana. Katie and I plan to dig for gold as soon as she becomes more sociable."

  Virginia laughed.

  "Is she always this bad?"

  "Yes," Katie said.

  Ginny took a bite out of her sandwich and returned it to her plate.

  "I marked the stories so I wouldn't forget to read them later," Ginny said. "I don't like to read depressing news in the morning."

  Virginia lifted the front page and gave it a closer inspection.

  "I'm the same way. I like to start my day with a laugh and not a frown. These articles are depressing," Virginia said. "You were both right when you said there would be an incident in Vietnam. It looks like the president isn't wasting a minute exploiting this Gulf of Tonkin attack."

  "Like I said, there's going to be a war," Ginny said. "Just keep Rick out of it."

  "That shouldn't be a problem. He's already started contacting colleges for information, even though he still has two more years at Westlake."

  "Good," Ginny said.

  Virginia returned her attention to the paper and ran a finger across another article. The story bore the headline: BODIES OF 'RIGHTS' WORKERS FOUND.

  "I suppose I don't need to ask why this story interests you."

  "No. You don't," Ginny said.

  "You saw this coming, didn't you?" Virginia asked. "You knew how this would end."

  Ginny nodded.

  "I did. I saw a documentary about this a few years ago. I considered writing an anonymous letter to the FBI telling them where to look for the bodies, but I never wrote it. I knew they would find those boys eventually, and I knew it didn't matter. The three were already dead."

  "How is your friend James taking the news?"

  "I don't know," Ginny said. "I haven't talked to him since the story broke. I'll probably find out tonight. We both work the four-to-nine shift."

  Virginia glanced at Katie, who still appeared lost in the business section and her thoughts, and then at the newspaper. She stared at the front page for a moment before shifting her eyes to the twin at her left.

  "I see you also marked the article about Mel Carter."

  Ginny nodded.

  "That's the one I want to keep," Ginny said. "I know that Mr. Carter was a good friend of my mom and dad's. I'm sure they will want to see his obituary."

  Virginia smiled sadly.

  "I'm sure they will. Mel Carter was quite a man. He employed your father nearly the entire time he was in 1941 and all but paid for your mother's college education with a scholarship," Virginia said. She looked away. "He was also, of course, my father-in-law-to-be at one point."

  "Did you keep in touch with him?" Katie asked.

  Ginny looked across the table at the girl in the white blouse and blue skirt. Leave it to an obituary to bring Miss Self Pity back into the conversation.

  "I did for a while," Virginia said. "I'd stop at the furniture store and say hello whenever I was in the neighborhood. I also sent the Carters Christmas cards for many years. There came a point, however, when I stopped doing even that."

  "Why?" Katie asked.

  Virginia sighed.

  "I stopped sending the Carters Christmas cards because the Carters stopped sending them to me. I suspected that even after fifteen years I was a painful reminder of what they had lost."

  "Are you planning to go to the funeral?" Ginny asked. "I see it's on Saturday."

  "I might, dear. I might."

  "What would hold you back?"

  "Ghosts," Virginia said. "Seeing the family again would no doubt awaken painful memories of my own. I know I should go, but I want to think about it before making a decision."

  "Oh," Ginny said.

  "There's another reason as well."

  "What's that?" Ginny asked.

  "I hate funerals. I hate everything about them. I know they can be meaningful and beautiful, but I still don't like them. They remind me of the fact we are all mortal and have a limited time on this earth."

  Ginny nodded. She couldn't argue with that.

  "I suppose you know how and when I'll die," Virginia said.

  Ginny felt her stomach drop. She didn't have the slightest idea of how to respond, though she knew that "lung cancer" and "1995" would not be part of her reply. She looked to Katie for guidance and saw from her sister's puzzled and frightened face that she too had been taken aback by Nana's comment.

  "I do," Ginny said.

  Virginia smiled and put a hand on Ginny's forearm.

  "I won't press for details, dear," she said. "One of the joys of life is not knowing what the next day will bring. If I die tomorrow, I will at least have had the pleasure of knowing my great-granddaughters. That's a treat I wouldn't trade for anything in the world."

  CHAPTER 62: KATIE

  Saturday, August 8, 1964

  "I forgot the candles," Mike said as he looked at the cake on the table.

  "That's all right, honey. I don't need candles."

  "Yes, you do, Mom. Everyone needs candles on their birthday cake."

  "Well, I don't. If it's that important, we'll do candles tomorrow when Patsy's here."

  Katie looked at Mike with amusement.

  "Honor your mother, Mike. It's a commandment."

  "Yeah, well, the Bible also says don't forget the birthday candles – or at least it should," Mike said. He kissed his mom on the head and grabbed his windbreaker. "I'm going to James' house. The Greens have everything. I'll be right back."

  "Take your time," Mary said. "There's no need to hurry."

  Katie waved to Mike as he rushed out of the dining room and out of the house. When she heard the front door shut, she glanced at Mary.

  "Has he been that way all day?"

  "He's been that way all year. I think he's known all along that this would be my last birthday. Putting candles on my cake is his way of making things right," Mary said. "Michael is kind of funny that way. He's always revered tradition and protocol."

  Katie smiled sadly.

  So have I.

  "How is he doing?" Katie asked.

  "He's doing all right," Mary said. "I think he'll handle things better than I did. When I lost my parents, I was a junior in high school. I had no time to prepare and no opportunity to say goodbye. For almost a year, I could do little more than muddle through each day. Mike is more fortunate. He has a sibling who will look after him. He has a job. He has you."

  Katie sighed and turned away. It was clear that Mike had not told Mary about her plans. He had undoubtedly wanted to comfort his mother by keeping alive the fiction that he had a future with the girl from Thousand Oaks.

  She c
onsidered telling Mary the truth but decided against it. She knew that the forty-four-year-old woman in front of her, a woman the same age as Virginia Jorgenson and Grace Smith, might not even survive the summer. Why add to her misery?

  Katie smiled softly and put her hand on Mary's.

  "I guess he does," she said.

  Katie looked at Mary admiringly and then curiously when she saw a grin form on her face. For a woman knocking on death's door, Mary Hayes looked awfully happy.

  "How come you're grinning?"

  "I'm grinning because I see a change in you."

  "You see a change?" Katie asked.

  "I do. Something about you is clearly different."

  Katie fidgeted in her chair.

  "It's probably my hair. I curled it yesterday."

  Mary chuckled.

  "It could be, but I suspect it's something else."

  "Really?"

  Mary nodded.

  "You don't need to tell me. I think I know," Mary said. She smiled sadly. "It's been a long time since I've seen that kind of glow on a young woman's face. It's been even longer since I've seen it in a mirror."

  Katie didn't know whether to contest the thinly veiled allegation or give Mary a hug. She was as moved by her perceptiveness as she was by her candor. In a few words, Mary had described a life full of love, pain, beauty, and lost innocence.

  When Katie glanced across the table, she saw not a sickly widow but rather a robust bride full of optimism and hope. She wondered what it was like for Mary on her wedding night.

  Was her experience anything like the blissful hours she had spent with Mike on Saturday night? She didn't know and certainly wasn't going to ask, but she suspected it was. Even the most difficult of relationships usually had a pleasant starting point.

  "I don't know what to say," Katie said.

  Mary smiled warmly.

  "You don't have to say a thing."

  "I'm blushing, aren't I?"

  "You're blushing."

  Both women laughed.

  "I guess I don't have a poker face," Katie said.

  "You're right. You don't," Mary said. She looked at Katie adoringly. "You do, however, have a beautiful face – one I hope my son can enjoy the rest of his life."

  Katie winced as the light moment suddenly turned heavy. She knew now that Mary would not relent until she was sure she had secured her son's happiness. She would use whatever weapon she had, including guilt, to win her last battle in life.