So this was strictly a social call, except that Ruthe wanted to know everything that had happened since she’d been away, including why Kate was one door down.
She was paler when they finished. Kate told her about the potlatch, and the picture, the original of which she had had Jim bring to the hospital.
Ruthe wept at the sight of it. “I remember that day,” she said, mopping her eyes with the Kleenex Kate moved within reach. “Mudhole was starting air tours from Cordova to the mine. That was the inaugural flight. He loaded up everyone he could think of and gave us the VIP treatment—had champagne and caviar waiting for us when we got there. We all got a little tight.”
“Emaa had champagne?” Kate said, awed.
“We all did.” Ruthe’s smile faded. “That was the day it started, I think. Dina sat next to John. They hit it off. I think it was more chemistry than it was anything else, but it was strong and it was immediate, and a month later, they were married.”
Kate didn’t look at her, not wanting to exacerbate Ruthe’s pain. “That must have hurt.”
“What? Why?”
Kate looked up. “Well, I—” She cast about wildly for some way to say it without sticking the knife in. “Dina left you. You know, for John.”
“Oh,” Ruthe said, starting to smile, then began to laugh. “Oh. Right. I forgot.” She started to cough.
“Are you okay?” Jim said, standing up in alarm, box in one hand, french fry in the other. “Should we call somebody?”
She waved them off with a weak hand. “I’m all right. I can’t laugh yet, either.”
“What’s so funny?” Kate said, bewildered.
Ruthe mopped her eyes and smiled at Kate. “Dina didn’t leave me. Not in the way you mean.”
“What?” Kate said. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Dina and I were never a couple.”
Kate gaped at her. After a moment, she recovered and said, “But you—I thought—we all thought that—”
“We knew what you all thought,” Ruthe said, grinning. “We used to laugh about it. Hell, back then, everybody thought all WASPs were bull dykes. Stood to reason. Real women didn’t want to learn to fly.” She made a face. “You should have seen Mac Devlin’s expression the first time he met us. You would have thought we had horns and tails. When we were younger, it was kind of fun. Wasn’t a bad come-on, either. You’d be amazed at the number of men who are absolutely convinced that all one of those women needs is the love of a good man to turn her around.” She grinned again. “We let the likelier ones try to convince us.” She added, “Of course, there were always a few who were praying for a threesome. We never went for that. Well, hardly ever.”
“Okay,” Kate said, “too much information.”
“I’m kidding!” Ruthe said, and started to laugh again. “God, if you could see the expression on your face!”
Kate could feel her neck going red, and she could hear Jim starting to laugh, too. “Did Emaa know?”
“Of course she knew; she used to chase around with us. That girl could party us all right into the ground.”
“Stop,” Kate said desperately, “please, I’m begging you, stop right there.”
“She was a looker when she was old,” Jim said, “I bet she could knock your eyes out when she was younger.”
“Do. Not. Go. There,” Kate said.
Jim met Ruthe’s eyes for a pregnant moment. Sometimes it was just too easy.
“What about their daughter?” Kate said. It was the only way she could get out of the hole she was in, and then Jim gave her a dagger look and she remembered they weren’t supposed to try to jog Ruthe’s memory. But Ruthe gave a last chuckle, coughed into a Kleenex, and said, “What daughter?”
There was a brief silence. “Christie Turner,” Kate said.
Ruthe’s brow puckered. “Christie Turner? Oh, you mean Bernie’s new barmaid. What about her?”
“She’s John and Dina’s daughter, Ruthe.”
Ruthe stared at Kate. “I beg your pardon?”
“Christie Turner is John and Dina’s daughter.”
Another silence. “Are you sure?” Ruthe said at last.
“We’ve seen the birth certificate. She was born in Seattle, ten months to the day after the date on the marriage certificate. Father, John Letourneau. Mother, Dina Willner.”
“Oh,” Ruthe said. She closed her eyes against sudden remembered pain. “Oh,” she said again, a drawn-out expression of realization. “So that was it.”
“What was it?”
“About two months after their marriage broke up, Dina came up with this idea to do a marketing tour of the camp Outside. I figured she wanted to get away for a while, so I helped her set it up. Ecotourism was just starting to catch on, and I thought it was a good idea to put us out in front on it. I offered to go with her, but she wanted to go alone. She left after we shut down the camp for the winter. Right around the first of October, I think it was.” She was silent for a moment. “She wrote after three months, saying she was going to a WASP reunion in Texas. After that, she was going to visit her mother, then friends. And after that, one of her teachers. After a while, I stopped expecting her home. And then, there she was, walking in the door.”
“She never told you?”
“No.” Ruthe closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, Dina. She didn’t have to do it all alone. She should have known I would have stood by her. Helped. She could have brought the baby home. We could have raised her.”
Would it have made any difference? Kate wondered, remembering the pride and triumph in Christie’s crazy eyes just before she pulled the trigger. “She put the baby up for adoption,” Kate said.
“And that baby was Christie Turner?”
“Yes.”
“I want to see her.”
Kate looked at Jim. “That’s not possible, Ruthe.”
So then, of course, they had to fill in all the discreet blanks they had left out.
“Her childhood was like something out of Dickens,” Jim said somberly. “There’s a cop who owes me at SPD; he managed to pull her juvie file.” He shook his head. “There’s always someone who slips through the cracks, and twenty-five years ago that someone was Christie Turner. The couple who adopted her also took in foster children. There were never fewer than a dozen kids in the house. Apparently, the father took his pick of the girls. Christie was a beautiful child—the cop sent a picture—and she was her father’s special girl from the time she was four.”
Kate instantly felt the sick rage she always felt when confronted with child abuse. She wanted to rescue the child, even if that child was Christie Turner. She wanted to geld the abuser. She wanted to make it stop, all of it, just stop.
Jim saw the look on her face, and he turned to Ruthe. “Can you handle this? Most of it’s pretty hard to take. We don’t have to talk about it now.”
“Yes, we do,” Ruthe said. “When it’s cold, you have to dive in; you can’t stand around shilly-shallying on the shore. And this kind of story never gets any better in the telling anyway.”
“All right. When the guy finally got caught, the whole story came out, and you’re right, it wasn’t pretty. One of the other children testified at the trial. Apparently, they rented the kids out for just about anything you could imagine—prostitution and drug running, just for starters, running scams when they got older. They shoplifted most of their food and clothing. The only time they went to school was when the school sent the cops to the house to find out why they weren’t in class.”
He set the box of chicken, the bones gnawed clean, on the floor. Mutt sidled over, sniffed, and nosed the box to a corner of the room, out of Kate’s sight. “I called the girl who testified when they finally got caught, and the case wound up actually being prosecuted. She’s twenty-one now, in college, looks like she’s going to be all right. She said Christie was always talking about her birth parents and how she’d been stolen away from them, and how they were coming back for her.” He shook his
head. “Classic orphan fantasy.”
Ruthe winced. “She wasn’t an orphan.”
“She ran away for the last time at sixteen. Her juvie record ends there.”
“How did she find out who her parents were, and where they lived?”
“I traced Dina’s obstetrician to Seattle,” Jim said. “He’s dead, but his son took over his practice, and the nurse who attended the birth is still alive. She said they hired a young blond woman about six years ago as a receptionist. She stayed for about ten days, and when she left, some files were missing. Dina’s file was among them.” He paused. “I’m guessing she stole the other files to cover the theft of the one file that mattered. Christie learned early how to cover her tracks.”
“How did she find the doctor?”
“Adopted children can apply to find out who their birth parents are nowadays.”
“I know, but I thought there were safeguards, that there had to be consent on both sides before any information could be revealed.”
“This girl learned how to work the system at a very early age,” Jim said. “I doubt that a bureaucracy as byzantine as Social Services stood a chance.”
“She contacted John first,” Kate said after a moment. “She told me.”
Jim nodded. “Would have been a hell of a scene.”
Kate tried not to think about just what kind of scene it had been.
“John would have hated that,” Ruthe said.
“And that’s how he knew who she was,” Kate said, “and why he knew who had killed Dina.”
“And he made a false confession and killed himself to deflect suspicion?” Jim said, still skeptical. “Why bother? I never would have been able to prove anything.”
“Guilt,” Kate said. “Seventeen different kinds of guilt.” Especially after Christie had seduced him, with the full knowledge of who he was. She still couldn’t think of it without feeling sick.
“Dina was dead,” Ruthe said.
They looked at her.
“He really loved her,” Ruthe told them. “John really loved Dina. She left him, he didn’t leave her.”
“Why did she leave him?”
“She never said.”
Kate thought again of the tiny, crowded cabin and the enormous, empty lodge. She knew why Dina had left John.
“He was too proud to fight the divorce, and he was angry at her for making him look ridiculous, but there was never anyone else for John but Dina. And then she was dead.” Ruthe shifted, and Kate brought the blanket up around her shoulders. “And here was the only thing left to him of her, a daughter he hadn’t even known existed, a daughter who told him she hated him, a daughter who might have just confessed to matricide. Maybe he thought he could save her. Maybe he couldn’t do anything but try.”
There was little of the martyr about John Letourneau, Kate thought. But she understood a little about guilt.
Families. Mothers, fathers, children. There was no explaining them, and there was no understanding the wonderful and terrible things they did to and for one another. She thought of her mother, passed out in the snow, dead of hypothermia before her daughter was four. And Stephan, Kate’s father, following so soon afterward. If Stephan had loved Zoya so much that he could not bear to live life without her, even if he had to leave his daughter behind, why couldn’t John love Dina enough to die for the sake of their only child? Maybe it didn’t matter that John hadn’t known of her existence until that fall, when she had shown up on his doorstep and pushed her self into his life.
Kate thought of Johnny, who had pushed himself into her life.
“Poor John,” Ruthe said sadly, breaking into Kate’s thoughts. “And poor Christie. Poor lonely little girl.”
Kate thought of Dina, dead, and Ruthe, nearly so. Not to mention herself. Her hand fell to Mutt’s head and tightened in the thick gray ruff. Christie could have killed Mutt, too. She would have if Mutt hadn’t been smarter and faster and stronger. She gave the ruff a shake and Mutt sat up and leaned against her chair. “What about that other girl, the one who testified at the trial of Christie’s adoptive parents?”
“What about her?”
“She went through the same things Christie went through, and she didn’t have to kill anyone to get to where she is now. I mean, damn it. At some point, I don’t care what kind of life you’ve had, how awful your parents were to you or how mean your teachers or how nasty your classmates, at some point you have to step up and take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Okay, I admit, Christie Turner had it rough, few rougher. That doesn’t mean she gets a free ride. Not from me anyway.”
There was a brief silence.
Ruthe looked at Jim. “Does she have a lawyer?”
“I don’t think so,” Jim said.
“Get her one,” Ruthe said. “I’ll pay.”
“Ruthe—”
“A good one, Kate.”
“Ruthe—”
“Right away, Kate,” Ruthe said sternly. “Before the storm troopers”—Jim made an inarticulate sound of protest at this—“beat a confession out of her.”
“All right, Ruthe,” Kate said, bowing her head. “I will.” She looked at Jim. “What about Riley Higgins?”
“He’s out of jail. He’s got a job sweeping out the Kinnikinick Bar, but I don’t know how long he’ll last.”
Kate wondered who had gotten Riley Higgins his job.
“He can come back to the camp if he wants to,” Ruthe said.
“I’ll tell him,” Jim said.
Ruthe wanted to return to the cabin as soon as possible.
“Maybe you should think about finding somewhere closer to town,” Jim suggested.
“Like where?” Ruthe smiled. “Camp Teddy is my home. I want to get back to it as soon as possible.”
As Jim was wheeling Kate out the door, Mutt padding along behind them, Ruthe said, “Kate? Do me a favor? Find out who’s John’s heir, and if they’d like to sell the lodge.”
“Are you serious?”
“Never more so,” Ruthe said, with a fair assumption of her usual good cheer. She actually winked. “Someone’s going to get hold of that prime piece of riverfront property. It might as well be the Kanuyaq Land Trust.”
13
Jim brought the Cessna from Tok and flew Kate home to Niniltna two days later. Bobby, Dinah, and Katya and Auntie Vi were there to greet her on the airstrip. Auntie Vi wanted her to come stay while she recuperated, but Kate refused. She was like Ruthe. She wanted to go home.
So Bobby tucked her into his truck and ferried her twenty-five miles down the road, and Dinah and Jim, who had followed in Billy’s Explorer, walked her down the path to the homestead, Mutt trotting anxious circles around them as they went. “Johnny’s at Ethan’s; he’s got Gal with him. He’s going to leave you alone for a couple of days,” Dinah said as if by rote. “Ethan says he’ll be over this evening.”
“No,” Kate said. “Dinah, could you stop in and ask him not to? I just want to see if I can get up the ladder and sleep in my own bed. Tell him I’ll be over tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Dinah exchanged a glance with Bobby. They both looked at Jim, who remained impassive.
They settled her in, fussing over the woodstove, overfilling the kettle, and bringing her comforter down from the loft. “I’m okay, guys,” she said when she could stand it no longer. “Go.”
“Okay,” Dinah repeated. “I’ll be back out tomorrow.” She saw the look on Kate’s face and said, “If I don’t come and report back to Auntie Vi, she’ll be here, and she’ll bring all the other aunties with her.”
It was only too true. “All right. See you tomorrow, then.”
Jim waited until Dinah was out the door. “By the way, Kate.”
“What now?” she said grouchily.
He grinned at her, the wide white grin that made her want to reach for her rifle. “I wanted you to be the first to know,” he said, settling the ball cap over his ears. His uniform jacket was neat and clean, the light
er blue uniform slacks with the gold stripe down the sides creased to a knife edge, his boots freshly polished. He looked every inch the trooper today, immaculate, authoritative, totally in charge.
“Know what?” Kate said, dragging her eyes to his face with difficulty.
The grin widened. She measured the distance between the couch and the gun rack over the door. “I’m moving my post,” he said.
“Moving your post? You mean you’re being transferred?” She tried to tell herself that she was feeling relief, not dismay.
“No, moving my post from Tok.”
“Moving it?” With sudden foreboding, she said, “Where?”
“To Niniltna.”
She gaped at him.
His dimples deepened. How had she never noticed those dimples before? “Yeah. I’ll be around all the time now.” He stepped to the door and tipped his hat.
“Be seeing you, Kate.” The grin flashed. “A lot of you.”
14
Two days later, Dan came to the homestead. “I’m sorry, Kate,” he said.
“Get your ass in here and close the door,” Kate said. “You’re letting the cold in.”
“I didn’t know if I’d be welcome or not.”
“You want to drink your coffee or wear it?”
His face cleared.
“What did you think you knew?” she said as they ate homemade bread, her first batch since she’d gotten out of the hospital, spread with butter and strawberry preserves.
He sighed and put his bread down, half-eaten. “She asked a lot of questions about Ruthe and Dina.”
“So did everybody. They weren’t exactly low-profile.”
“Don’t try to make me feel better about this, Kate,” he said, looking sober. “Christie asked a lot of questions, and when Dina died, I should have told you or Jim. She wanted to know about the restrictions on developing privately owned property within Park boundaries, for god’s sake. Why would she care, unless she owned some? She didn’t, not then. I should have noticed. I should have figured she was only using me to help her get what she wanted. Damn it, Kate, I just feel so damn stupid.”
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