A Wicked Snow

Epilogue

The crew of the Katya, a rusty, oil-leaking Russian trawler, was preparing to drop gill nets five miles off the Alaskan coast when a deckhand spotted a twenty-four-foot fiberglass Bayliner bobbing on the surface of an unusually tranquil Pacific. It was the first week in September. From fifty yards out, it appeared the out-board motor was off and the small boat was adrift. It rose and fell like a yo-yo. Katya’s captain, a short man with a sunburned pate, cut his engine and ordered two of his crew to tie up to the Bayliner and check it out. The fishermen assumed the small white boat had been a dinghy for a larger pleasure craft.

In the sputtering noise of a stopping engine, one of the men, a kid no more than seventeen, climbed into the boat and made a quick assessment that no one was aboard. In the corner, by the outboard, the boat’s canvas covering was slumped. A couple of inches of water floated paper cups and a pair of life preservers. The flotsam and jetsam were tragic testimony that whoever had been on that boat was probably dead. And given that the boat was in decent shape, it hadn’t been long since someone had been aboard. The next storm would smash the fiberglass to bits.

He shouted to the others that no one was there. But as he turned around to return to the Katya, something made him go over to the canvas covering. He bent over and kicked the corner of the heavy, seawater-soaked fabric. A foot emerged, then a leg. He lifted it completely open.

“Help!” he called out. “Someone’s here!”

Under the sodden white canvas, he had discovered the nearly frozen figure of an elderly woman. She was crumpled into a ball and soaked to the skin. Her finger-tips were skim-milk blue. The kid bent down, his knee soaking up the seawater and felt for a pulse. Slight, but steady.

On September 27, the Redhook Telegram, the daily paper for the “Outer Inland Empire” of British Columbia, ran a story about the Russian vessel’s remarkable discovery and rescue. Facts were scarce because the ship had been in disputed waters. The less said the better.

MIRACLE AT SEA: Trawler Rescues Elderly Woman

A 71-year-old grandmother was plucked from certain death when the crew of the Katya rescued her ten miles from Point Newton. Suffering from hypothermia, the woman, who asked that her name be withheld pending notification of her daughter, was treated on the trawler and admitted to Redhook Clinic for observation.

She was released Monday, before search and rescue investigations could be completed. Her whereabouts are unknown.

Special Agent Bauer drank his coffee as he read the small news article in his Portland office. Another field agent, who considered himself the ultimate newsreader, had clipped and faxed it to him. After reading it, Bauer crumpled it into a small ball and shot-putted it into the trash can by the door. It was possible that the woman described in it wasn’t her. It was hundreds of miles from Kodiak, and survival would have been highly unlikely. Claire Logan, Louise Wallace, whoever she was, was gone, and gone was good enough. Let her go, he told himself. Let her go.

When she returned from Alaska, Hannah went straight to the basement lab in the Santa Louisa courthouse. From the bottom of her purse, she retrieved the broken piece of a china cup that she had picked up from the gazebo floor when she had argued with the cold-eyed woman she had once believed was her biological mother. Had once believed. The cup, creamy white and with a single green shamrock intact, had been wrapped in the discarded plastic covering from one of the motel drinking glasses. Hannah knew the technique left plenty to be desired, but this wasn’t a court case. It was personal. She wiped the inside of her own cheek with a cotton-tipped swab. She put the cup shard and the cotton swab in separate envelopes and took them to a lab across town that specialized in paternity tests.

“Hi, Hannah,” said the counter girl, Carla, from behind a glass cage that ensured integrity for all samples, “Lab at County backed up again?”

Hannah shook her head and smiled. “No,” she said, “this is personal.”

The girl looked interested, but had been well trained. No questions were ever asked of any clients.

“Okay. Call with results?”

“Sooner the better.”

“I’ll rush this for you.

The next day the phone rang in the lab. It was Carla.

“Hi, Hannah. Prelim and confirmation just came in. I don’t know if this is good news or not,” she said. “Both samples good. These two people definitely are related.”

Hannah caught her breath. “Mother, daughter?” She could hear the sound of shuffling papers as Carla flipped back pages and read.

“Nope. If you’re looking for a familial tie, markers say aunt/niece or cousins.”

Hannah didn’t need to hear any more. “Destroy the samples, please, and thanks.”

“No prob. Will do.”

Hannah stared out the narrow window of her office door. It was quiet in the lab. She felt empty, and a little alone. Wheaton was right. She was nothing like her mother. Nothing at all. And probably because of that, she decided not to say anything to Ethan or Bauer or anyone. If she wasn’t her mother’s daughter, then she wasn’t going to be a sister to Erik and Danny anymore. There was, she thought, something wrong about leaving those boys alone—a second time.

The night after she got the lab results, Hannah and Ethan Griffin made love. She held Ethan as tightly as she could and asked him to hold her with all of his strength. She had looked into the eyes of the woman she thought had given her life and she had seen nothing. No recognition whatsoever. No connection ran from one woman to the other. Nothing. But she was home, in the arms of the man she loved, while their daughter slept in the room next to theirs. Her life was her own. While Ethan held her, Hannah let go, too. Even if the rest of the world couldn’t, it no longer mattered. She let go of that night so long ago.