“Her grandmother still lives in Ualik. She loaned me the negative. I just got it back from Anchorage today.”
He gripped the frame tightly in both hands, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. He said something she couldn’t make out. “What?”
He raised his head and her heart turned over at the sight of his ravaged face. “Oh Tim, I’m so sorry, I-”
He barreled into her headfirst, the picture thudding into her spine when he threw his arms around her. “She looks like Amelia,” he whispered.
She held him without words, grateful she could do that much, angry that she could not do more. Hot tears soaked into her shirt.
After a while he quieted. “Thanks, Mom,” he whispered.
“Hey,” she whispered back. “It’s what I do.”
She looked up and saw Liam standing in the hallway, watching, with something that wasn’t quite a smile on his face. “You always figure out the right thing to do,” he said later, “and then you do it.”
She was taken aback. “You make me sound like Mother Teresa.”
He laughed and hugged her. “Not hardly. Just Wy.”
No one has ever known me that well, she remembered saying to Jo. Well, Jo had replied, what does that tell you?
You always figure out the right thing to do, and then you do it.
Prince had served her the court order the day after they got back from Old Man Creek. She’d run to Bill to get a restraining order in response, but it was only temporary. Natalie would appeal to her pet judge and they’d be right back where they started.
She thought of Moses. She wondered what her life would have been like with him in it sooner. She wondered what her life would have been like if she’d ever seen her birth mother sober. If her adoptive parents hadn’t found her and kept her for themselves.
She thought long and hard of all of those things, she came to a decision and she laid her plans.
The knock came at nine a.m. the next Monday morning. Liam was at the post, Tim was at school. When Wy opened the door, a woman with clear eyes and clean clothes stood on the other side.
Wy took a deep breath. “Hello, Natalie,” she said steadily. “Please come in.”
* * *
At nine-fifteen the phone in the trooper post rang. Liam picked up the phone and John Dillinger Barton bellowed, “Congratulations, Sergeant Campbell!”
He sat very still. He was alone in the office, Prince off cruising the road to Icky in hopes of apprehending transgressors. “What did you say?”
“What, suddenly you got wax in your ears?”
This for Barton was almost playful. “Did you call me sergeant?” Liam said.
“I sure as hell did! Grabbing up a serial killer, especially one nobody knew was operating until a couple of weeks ago, and putting away thirteen of fifteen murder cases oughta be worth a piddly little promotion. Even those assholes down in Juneau gotta admit that! When can you get here?”
“What? Where?”
“Here, where the hell do you think? Jesus, Liam, wake up! You been promoted, I can bring you back to Anchorage, you’re back on the fast track, boy! Get on a plane!”
Dana Stabenow
***
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Nothing Gold Can Stay Page 27