A Fine and Bitter Snow

12

When Kate woke, it was to pain, the whole left side of her body infused with it. She muttered an inarticulate protest. She hated pain. Pain hurt. She tried to say so.

“It’s all right,” a voice said; “we’ll give you something. Drink this.”

She drank, felt the prick of a needle, slid back down into darkness.

She dreamed in bits and pieces. An anxious whining, a sandpapery tongue. Jim swearing. Hands hurting her, something tight around her chest. Hands on her shoulders. Hands on her feet. The jolting agony of a drive in the back of someone’s truck. A strong arm holding her steady, a solid shoulder against her cheek. The drone of an airplane engine, with her flat on her back on the floor, her legs beneath the pilot’s seat, her eyes staring up at the bare ribs of the fuselage.

Waking the second time, she found a woman staring down at her. “Hello, Kate,” she said. “I’m Adrienne Giroux. I’m your doctor.”

“Where-”

“At the hospital in Ahtna.”

Kate tried to raise her head. “What happened to me?”

“You were shot,” Giroux said without inflection. Her hand was steady on Kate’s wrist. She had brown hair pulled back in a twist, a softly rounded figure beneath a starchy white coat.

Kate closed her eyes. “I remember now,” she said after a moment. She opened her eyes. “What happened to the woman who shot me?”

“She’s here, too, just down the hall. Under guard, so don’t worry.” Giroux hesitated. “She’s in a lot worse shape than you are. We might wind up having to take off” her arm.“

“Good,” Kate said, and slid downward to darkness again.

When she woke up the third time, she was alone in the room. There was the muted clink of glassware and cutlery in the hall, and a moment later the door swung open. “Miss Shugak?” A round red face peered in. “Oh good, you’re awake.”

She was served lunch-a soggy ham sandwich, a tasteless macaroni salad, and a banana. She forced it all down because she knew the sooner she regained her strength, the sooner she could go home and cook for herself.

None of the meals that followed over the next day and a half were any better. She didn’t have anything to read and there was nothing to watch on the television suspended from the ceiling over the foot of her bed. She was so bored, she could have screamed, and she was a little hurt that she hadn’t had any visitors. Ruthe had had visitors non-stop.

Before dinner the next day, the door opened. Kate looked toward it and all she saw was a gray streak cannoning toward her. “Mutt!” she said, and was ashamed that her voice trembled. “Where did you come from?”

“I thought you could use some company,” said a voice from the door. “I brought you some books, too.” Jim Chopin set a sack on the table next to the bed.

Mutt had leapt to the bed and was nosing Kate all over, an anxious whine coming from her throat. “I’m all right, girl,” Kate said, half laughing, half crying. She winced when a leg bumped into her side, but it was the best pain she’d ever felt and she wouldn’t have traded it for no pain and no Mutt.

“She has to behave,” Jim said. “I had to get a special dispensation from the doctor to get her in here.”

“She’ll behave,” Kate said, knotting her hands in Mutt’s ruff and shaking her. “Won’t you, girl?” She looked up at Jim.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Ethan told me to tell you that Johnny’s fine. Johnny told me to tell you that Gal’s fine. Giroux said I couldn’t stay long, so I’ll-” He jerked a head at the door and retreated a step.

“You brought Mutt to me?” To her horror, her voice began to quaver.

He shrugged. “Yeah. Well. I better go. I’ve got-”

By a sheer effort of will, she mastered her voice. “Jim.”

He fell silent.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome. I mean, it’s nothing. I just, I-Jesus, Kate, I thought you were dead.”

His face was pale and strained. “Mutt came for me; she practically took the door of the cabin off. She bullied me into my clothes and into Billy’s Explorer and down the road. It was all her.” He paused, thinking of the last time he and Mutt had ridden to Kate’s rescue, not near long enough ago, when Kate had been dumped like so much garbage in a landfill outside Ahtna. He didn’t know how many more times his heart was going to stand up to that.

“I thought you were dead,” he repeated. “There was so much blood-all over you, all over the floor.” He stopped again, then swallowed with difficulty. All over the floor where they had lain together just days before. “At first, I couldn’t find a pulse.” Mostly because he’d been so scared, but he wasn’t going to say that. Not yet anyway. “I wrapped you up as best I could.” He shook his head and gave a brief unhumorous laugh. “I couldn’t find hardly anything to use for bandages-I’d used up pretty much everything they had on Ruthe. In the end, I tore my shirt into strips and used that.”

Mutt lay down next to Kate. She watched him over the big gray head.

He took a deep breath. “Longest drive of my life, longest flight. It was blowing snow and fog by then, I took off and landed both below minimums. I’m probably going to hear about that from the FAA.”

He didn’t sound overly concerned about it. She watched him twist the ball cap with the trooper emblem on the front between his hands. “I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice so low that she could barely hear it. “I thought I’d lost you.”

It was very quiet in the room for a few moments. Kate opened her mouth and found that she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “What about Christie?”

“She’s down the hall.”

“They told me.”

“Under guard, in case she gets up, which they tell me she won’t anytime soon. Mutt-” Mutt’s ears went up at this mention of her name by her idol, who stepped near enough to reach her ears and give her a good scratch. “She’s alive, but I think Mutt was kind of in a hurry. Plus maybe a little pissed off.” Mutt’s tail thumped gently on the bed. “Christie’s probably going to lose that arm.” He shrugged. “But then she won’t need it where she’s going.”

His hand slipped from Mutt’s ears to cup Kate’s cheek. “I thought you were dead.”

He was leaning forward when they heard the squeak of wheels in the corridor, the jingle of dishes, followed by a knock on the door. “Oh, yummy,” Kate said. “Dinner.”

He didn’t know whether to curse or laugh. Instead, he looked down at her and smiled. “You want me to bring you a burger?”

She looked at him with her heart in her eyes.

“Poor John,” Ruthe said.

Her skin was almost translucent, but she was conscious, and there was a faint flush of color along her exquisite cheekbones. Every doctor and nurse in the place was head over heels in love with her, naturally, and Kate’s visit had been constantly interrupted by this one or that wanting to take Ruthe’s temperature or blood pressure, or plump up her pillows, or tempt her taste buds with some god-awful dish from the hospital cafeteria. A surgeon who wasn’t even attending her case scored heavily when he brought in a box of fried chicken and french fries. The smell of deep-fried chicken almost obscured the Phisohex-like smell endemic to all hospitals, making Kate’s mouth water. Ruthe’s graceful thanks brought a flush to the surgeon’s cheek and a gleam to his eye, and he floated out the door with a smile on his face.

Not bad, Kate thought, and wondered if she would be able to pull that off at seventy plus.

“Here,” Ruthe said, passing her the box. “I can’t, not yet.”

Kate, wrapped like a mummy and tucked into a wheelchair, didn’t even try to talk her out of it. It took real nobility to offer to share with Jim. He accepted with alacrity, and she tried not to call him names inside her own head. Mutt gave her a pitiful look. “Chicken bones are bad for you,” she told the wolf, and tucked into a drumstick.

“Poor John,” Ruthe said again. “He really loved Dina.” She turned her eyes from the window to where the two of them sat side by side, eating. “How’s the chicken?”

“Sure you won’t try a piece?” Kate said.

“Certain sure,” Ruthe said. “Besides, I’m afraid to get in the middle of you two. Might tear my hand off.”

Jim, drumstick raised, laughed. Kate, mouth full of thigh, didn’t.

Ruthe had woken from her coma two days after Kate had been brought in. Much to the trooper’s frustration, she still couldn’t remember anything from the day of her attack, even though the doctors had said that was to be expected. “Short-term memory is what goes first after a violent attack,” they’d said, and Jim snapped, snarled, and growled, but in the end, because he’d had experience with a head injury and a subsequent short-term memory loss himself the summer before, he subsided into a frustrated silence. “Don’t harass her,” they had warned him. “She doesn’t need to do anything right now but get well. Don’t mess with that.”

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. Eco-tourism 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 herself 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.”