A Wicked Snow

Chapter Thirty-seven

Marge Morrison got up a little after midnight and put on the borrowed robe she had placed across the foot of the bed in Louise Wallace’s comfortable guest-room. She didn’t even have to look at her watch or at the alarm clock, so certain she was of the time. She liked to joke that her bladder was the size of a Ping-Pong ball, but it was hardly a laughing matter. Getting up every night had been a routine for years, but it was still bothersome and a little irritating. From a glass on the nightstand she fished out her dentures and put them inside her mouth and walked down the hallway toward the bathroom. When she went past Louise’s bedroom she saw a sharp flood of light leak from under the doorway.

“Lou, are you okay?” Morrison asked after taking care of business and returning from the bathroom.

“Fine, dear. Just couldn’t sleep,” Wallace’s familiar voice called out. “Going to try again.”

The light snapped off, and she could hear what sounded like something sliding across the wooden floor, then a thud.

“Good night then,” Morrison said, thinking little of the sliding noise, “and pleasant dreams.” The friend from First Methodist tucked herself under a billowy eiderdown and fell back asleep.

The following morning, Hannah and Bauer stood in the office of the Northern Lights next to a rack of brochures promising good times on Kodiak Island. They were dressed in blue jeans and buttoned-up shirts, as though they were a pair of tourists contemplating a river-rafting trip or a bear-watching excursion.

“I almost said, just now, ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this,’” Bauer said, though he barely smiled. “Really. You shouldn’t have come up here.”

Hannah almost laughed. The idea of her not coming up to Alaska to find her mother never entered her mind. “I’m here because I have to be,” she said. “Of all people, you should understand that.”

“Look, I understand your interest. And I understand your obvious need for some closure.” He winced at the word choice because, even to Bauer, it sounded cheesy. “God, I hate that word—closure.”

Hannah stared hard at him, never taking her eyes from his. “So do I.”

“Right,” he said. “But the fact is you’ve had this thing hanging around you like a storm cloud, and whether Louise Wallace is your mother or not, you probably will still have some unresolved feelings. I mean, closure is only a concept, you know.”

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t need any,” she said.

“Not fair,” Bauer said, looking a little hurt. “You know better than that. I don’t compare my part in any of this to what you have suffered, but it has been a big part of my life, too.” He motioned through the window to the restaurant across the parking lot, and a moment later, they took a booth in the back and sat down. It was almost 8 a.m. Over strong, boiled-to-death coffee and a half-foot-high stack of pancakes speckled with mountain huckleberries, Bauer told Hannah she’d better eat up.

“You’re getting thin,” he said. “You have to eat something.”

Hannah picked at the pancakes. “I’m not a kid anymore,” she said, and they both laughed a little.

Early morning sunlight streamed into the windows; it was clear and unfettered, unlike the smog that veiled the mornings in Southern California. She knew no amount of makeup could conceal the exhaustion that had crept over her body and held her like a strangler. Even her brown eyes were dull. Bauer was worried about her and said so several times, but she told him to get on with what he knew about the woman who could be her mother. Bauer complied. He told her what they knew about Mrs. Wallace. How she ran a small fishing resort; how she had hurt her hands in a cannery accident; how she matched Claire Logan in general characteristics such as age and height; and how she was widowed a few years back.

“Widowed? Sounds like my mother,” Hannah dead-panned.

Bauer shrugged. “Colon cancer. Doubt she could do that to anyone.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know her.”

It was the only bit of levity during their conversation, ghoulish though it might have seemed to any outsider listening in.

Bauer drank the last of his coffee and signaled to the waitress for a refill.

“I don’t know if you’ll see this as good or bad news,” he said, but the caution in his voice indicated whatever he was about to tell her was, indeed, bad news.

“Talked to Warden Thomas yesterday afternoon. Wheaton’s in the infirmary again. It looks bad for him. Doubtful that he’s going to make it to his parole hearing after all.”

“Oh no,” she said, feeling puzzled by her empathy for Wheaton. “What is it?” In a weird way, she had wanted to find her mother for Wheaton as much as for herself. He’d been stupid and devoted to her, and that needed to stop. She felt a little shaky and put her hands on her lap to hide the slight tremor of her shattered nerves.

“He couldn’t breathe on his own,” Bauer went on. “His emphysema, you understand. He’s a big guy. His lungs can’t support what he’s become, size-wise. They brought him back, but he’s not going to get out of the clinic alive. At least the warden doesn’t think so.”

While Bauer waited for more information from S.A. Ingersol in Portland, Hannah spent most of the earliest part of the day finding out how much Louise Wallace was loved by members of the Kodiak community. If anyone had deserved a park statue for selflessness, it appeared it was Louise Wallace. She’d been on this and that committee. She donated to the homeless. She even worked once a week at a food bank. But if it was an act, atonement for sins too dark to be measured, all of her good works were suspect. Hannah knew she had to face Louise Wallace herself, and there was no time like the present.

Without telling Bauer of her plans, Hannah got directions to the Wallace address from the motel clerk, a man of about forty who shook his head at the mention of the old woman’s name. With utter certainty, he said that Wallace was “getting a raw deal” and was being ha- rassed by the Feds for “something she didn’t do.” Like half the island, it seemed, the motel clerk went to church with Wallace.

“I love that lady,” he said. “We all do.”

Hannah didn’t want Bauer to know where she was going, though she knew once she was gone he’d probably figure it out. She rented the last car available from Island Rentals and it was a beaut, a pink sedan that once had been the conveyance of a top Mary Kay cosmetics sales representative. So much for traveling unnoticed, she thought, giving in to a brief smile. With all that was going on in Kodiak and at home in Santa Louisa, a smile felt welcome. Brief, but welcome.

The drive to Louise Wallace’s home was one of the most beautiful Hannah had ever experienced; trees of the deepest, nearly black, green, marched along the side of the roadway. Ferns spilled down the hillside to the crackling white waters of rushing rivers. Every now and then a break in the wall of green revealed blue, icy waters and an occasional cabin or ragtag mobile home. It was a gorgeous day, and if her business hadn’t been so grim, Hannah Griffin would have stopped to savor the moment. Alaska, she thought, is rugged, rough, but stunning at every turn. She looked to the west and saw ridge tops covered in snow, and it chilled her. Her mind started down the path toward the lady with the coveralls and down vest, and she fought it. As if in answer to a prayer, her cell phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She reached for it and looked at the display. It was Ethan. For a split second, she debated whether or not to answer. He was always worried. He’d tell her the same thing Bauer had—that she ought to go home. On the third ring, she gave in.

“Hi, honey,” she answered. When Ethan didn’t respond, she repeated herself, thinking the connection was bad. Kodiak had only three cell towers.

“Hannah, I have something very important to tell you.” Ethan was using what she always thought of as his cop voice. His words were steady and calm.

The sound of his voice frightened Hannah. “Oh my God,” she said. “Is it Amber? What happened? Did that woman come back?”

“God, no. She’s fine,” he said. “Amber’s fine. This isn’t about Amber. It is about you.”

“You just about caused me to crash. Don’t do that.”

“Are you driving?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Better pull over. This is important.” Ethan was glad his wife couldn’t see his face just then. Tears brimmed at his eyelids. In a moment, he knew, they would fall quietly down his cheeks. But she wouldn’t see them.

Hannah found a clear spot on the shoulder, slowed down, and pulled in front of a wide dirt driveway flanked by an outcropping of mailboxes. She worried it was her uncle. Someone must have died, the way Ethan sounded.

“All right,” she said. “I’ve parked. What is it? You’re scaring me.”

Ethan drew a deep breath. He had agonized over how he would tell her. He knew this was the kind of information one should give in person, but that wasn’t happening, given where his wife was and what she was about to do.

“Veronica Paine called, honey,” he began. “She told me something very upsetting.” Ethan was running out of momentum, and he knew it. He didn’t know how to couch what he had to say. He blurted it out:

“Claire wasn’t your mother, Leanna was.”

At first the words didn’t compute. How could they? “What?” Hannah sat in her pink rental car, her mouth agape, her heart a jackhammer. A car passed by. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

Ethan told her what Veronica Paine had said, his tone bouncing from concern for his wife to anger toward those who’d held the secret about her. “Leanna had you when she was fourteen. Your mother and your father,” he hesitated on those two words, unsure of amending them or going with what they’d always been to Hannah, “adopted you.”

Hannah’s jackhammer heart beat faster. “I don’t think so,” she said. She flashed on Aunt Leanna, her pretty eyes, full of love. The smell of citrus came to her. The gentleness of her hands as she brushed away tears from a nightmare. She was so gentle. So unlike her mother.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “It was a private adoption. The adoption papers were found in one of the bank deposit boxes. They were sealed by order of the court. Since Leanna was your only relative, and was coming to get you, those who knew figured she’d tell you one day.”

“How could they—she—do this?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Think about your aunt. She was just a kid when she got pregnant. It couldn’t have been easy for her. Think of the times. Her older sister offered to take you…”

Another car whizzed by, snapping Hannah back to where she was and what she was about to do.

“Are you okay? Do you want me to come up there?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Hannah said. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

She turned off the phone and stared at the road in front of her, and she cried.