Inherit the Bones

Chapter Fifty

The last time I saw Annika Bellington was on the stairs outside the old courthouse, across the street from City Hall. An early frost had come overnight and the stairs were slippery, so I walked down them slowly, one hand gripping the rail. I had dropped off the last of my files on the Bellington case and was about to head into an early maternity leave.

Things were, for the most part, wrapped up.

Chief Chavez released our findings in a press conference the day after the events at the Bellington house. On the steps of City Hall, before a crowd of hungry reporters and curious townspeople, Chavez announced the arrest of Annika Bellington for the murders of Nicky Bellington and Hannah Bellington Watkins, and the attempted murder of Sam Birdshead. Chavez took no questions. He instead ended his announcement with the news that the Woodsman had been identified, and that further information would be forthcoming.

Mayor Terry Bellington threatened to sue the department for libel, slander, and a whole host of other things, but when he saw the evidence, he shut up pretty quick. I have a feeling this will be the mayor’s last term in office. If he does run again, he’ll do so alone: Ellen Bellington bought a one-way ticket to Norway, and the last I heard, she was living in Oslo, trying to make a move back into show business.

When I saw Annika, she was ten feet away, surrounded by a group of older men in expensive suits. Mayor Bellington lawyered her up an hour after her arrest, and today, Annika was to be formally charged with the murders.

I must have known that, but somehow, I’d forgotten.

Or maybe I hadn’t.

Maybe I needed to see her again, one last time.

“Annika. You look well.”

Her hair was styled up off her face in a bun, and she wore a navy pantsuit, and looked rested and innocent of anything and everything.

“Thank you. You look ready to pop,” Annika said. She smiled at me.

One of the lawyers, a small, fussy-looking man, tried to hustle her up the stairs. In return, she whispered something to him that made his face go white and his hand drop from her elbow.

“I have to thank you, you know,” she continued.

“For what?”

I shouldn’t have asked.

I should have lowered my head and made my way down those slippery steps and kept right on moving into the next chapter of my life, a chapter that hopefully didn’t include death, so much death.

“For not killing me when you had the chance. I’ll never be found guilty. These dicks make more in a day than you make in a month. And clearly,” she said, “clearly I’m insane. If anything I’ll spend a few months at Clear Water Lodge, attending group sessions and bumming cigarettes off the night nurses.”

I looked at her and decided she might be right.

Annika waited for a response that I didn’t have.

Instead, I did what I should have done a moment before. I put my head down and made my way slowly toward the street.

Three days later, at midnight, I stood at the bedroom window and watched as the first big storm of the season blew in. Behind me, Brody threw clothes, toothbrushes, and a paperback into an old gym bag. As another contraction hit, I leaned forward and rested my head against the cold glass. A single snowflake, larger than the others, caught my eye. I watched it slowly float down. The flake lost its specialness the instant it hit the ground, though, becoming just a tiny speck joining with a billion other tiny specks to blanket the world in this strange phenomenon we know as snow.

In the end, life is a series of snowflakes, isn’t it? Each moment is unique and completely separate from the next, with the power to change everything and nothing all at the same time. If you’re lucky, over time those billions of moments add up to a life.

Or they don’t. Some people spend their entire lives seeing the snow without ever seeing the magic in the existence of one snowflake.

“What are you thinking about?” Brody asked as he zipped up the gym bag and motioned for me to follow him. It would be a slow drive down the mountain in this weather, but I stood still another minute.

“Honey?”

I pushed off the window and turned and looked at him. “I was pondering the mortality of the humble snowflake. In flight but for a moment…”

Brody rubbed his chin. I saw the geologist gaze creep into his eyes. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Remember the water cycle? You probably learned about it in middle school. All water molecules…”

He launched into the scientific explanation of why, in fact, snowflakes are immortal and I felt sorry for the Peanut. She was going to grow up with a father who replaced poetry with logic and a mother who spent her days in very dark places.

The roads were slick and visibility poor. Brody drove carefully, with the radio off and the high beams on. The road ahead came in glimpses as the windshield wipers worked overtime, and I wished I had windshield wipers of my own, to flip on when my road, my path, was not so clear.

I watched Brody in profile. He had a five o’clock shadow, bedhead hair, and a look of pure concentration. I watched him, and wondered what this child was going to bring to our lives. There were three of us now, and I hoped he felt as I did, that our choices were no longer our own. With Brody, I had known joy and pain, happiness and sorrow, laughter and love.

I trusted him with my life.

I still didn’t know if I could trust him with my heart.

It was almost worse that it wasn’t, in the end, Celeste Takashima in Alaska. Celeste was a known commodity, someone I could direct my anger and hate toward. If I wanted to make a voodoo doll, I could do a pretty good likeness. But now, now there was someone new out there, some faceless, nameless woman, ready to shed her bubblegum pink parka to warm his tent and polish his rocks. Brody tells me she is Canadian, married, and unattractive.

He tells me I’m paranoid and being crazy. I remind him I have reason to be.

Grace Julia Sutherland was born at 4:44 a.m., healthy, perfect, and absolutely beautiful. Ten fingers, ten toes, and eyes the color of blueberries.

Brody chose Grace, because he believes it embodies all that we hope for her, and ourselves.

I chose Julia, in honor of the woman who raised me.