So sure of death (20 page)

And she did, and she wrote about it every day, not only stories of bribery and corruption in the legislature, but stories of how the state worked. She wrote profiles of the weights-and-measures man who checked to see that you got the five gallons of gas you'd paid for, the waitress at Simon and Seafort's who retired after nineteen years on the job, the Alaskan old fart who cut firewood from his lot in Talkeetna and delivered it, one cord at a time, to buyers in Anchorage. She wrote about the people who fixed the potholes and tarred the roofs and shoveled the snow and loaded luggage onto planes, about the gardeners at the Municipal Greenhouse and the clerks at City Hall, about the woman who answered the phone at Victims of Violent Crimes in Juneau and the man who ran the flight service station in Soldotna. She was on a first-name basis with just about everyone in the state, from the man who set the tracks on the cross-country ski trails at Kincaid Park to the ranger who tracked down poachers in the Gates of the Arctic. Some of them loved her. Some of them hated her. None of it stopped her.

And it didn't stop her now. “How's it going? You and Liam?

“It's not, Wy said, hoping that would be the end of it.

A vain hope. “Why not?

Wy sighed. All right, then, and maybe it would help if she said the words out loud. “Jo, if he'd left Jenny and Charlie . . . She stopped. It was incredible how, even now, three years later, she had to force their names out of her mouth. “Wife and child were generic terms, without personalities, wants, demands. “Jenny and Charlie were people, people with needs and privileges that superseded hers.

She looked at Jo. Jo looked back with an uncharacteristically solemn expression. “I've got a Puritan streak a mile wide, Jo. What I did was wrong. You don't screw around with someone else's husband, you just don't. And you don't take the attention that rightfully belongs to his child. Children need their fathers. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. “If he'd come to me, if we'd married, I would have spent the next fifty years trying to make it up to his son. I would have been oh so considerate and understanding, I would have relinquished my time with Liam so he could spend time with his son, I would have tried to be friends with his wife, no matter how much she hated me, and she was bound to hate me.

“And after a while, Jo said slowly, “you would have come to resent it.

“Probably.

“And to take it out on Liam.

“Probably, Wy repeated.

“And yourself.

“Especially myself. Wy stood up. “So you see, Jo, as much as it hurt, it was the right thing to do.

“Cutting things off, never seeing him or talking to him again.

“Yes.

“Except that now you are.

Wy wandered over to the window and looked out at the fascinating view of her truck and Jo's rental car parked in the driveway. “Yes.

There was a brief silence. Jo looked at the top of Wy's dresser. There was very little clutter: the embroidered box from Greece, a few ivory carvings, one a walrus rearing up with his tusks on display and his fat sides wonderfully wrinkled, another that looked like a little knife, no more than three inches in length, with a curved blade and a mask carved into the hilt. From the right eye of the mask a tiny face looked out, laughing. “You still love him.

“Only because NPR's Scott Simon's never given me a tumble, and that's only because I have not been afforded the opportunity to meet him, swamp him with my extensive personal charm and carry him off to my tent.

Jo had the reporter's indispensable and extremely irritating ability to stick to the point. “Jenny and Charlie are dead.

“I know. Convenient, isn't it?

“Oh Jesus, Jo said, disgusted. “Martyrdom does not become you, Wy.

Wy turned. “What?

“You heard me, Jo said, the ruthless gleam back in her newspaper eyes. “You've steeled yourself to make this great sacrifice, you've even managed to round up a child of your own without having to betray the great love of your lifespeaking of convenient

“Wait just a goddamn minute! Wy said hotly. “Where do you get off

“and now that the love of your lifewe may fairly call him that, I suppose, since you haven't let anyone else within sniffing distance since, other than that wimpy little wing cover salesman

“He wasn't a wimp!

“now that the love of your life is free, due, I might add, to no fault of your own, so that the two of you can join hands and waltz off into the sunset together, you're so in love with this noble renunciation act of yours that you're willing to do it all over again. Jo shook her head. “Shit happens, Wy. It happened here, and it had absolutely nothing to do with you. She paused, and gave Wy a considering look. “You didn't even wish them dead, did you?

“What? Wy said, horrified. “No! Never!

“God, you were right about that Puritan streak, Jo said, disgusted. “Sometimes I think you're not even human. Saint Wyanet, your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure.

“Fuck you, Dunaway!

“Backatcha and times two, Chouinard! Jo stepped up to go nose to nose. In your face was her specialty, and where she scored most of her best stories. “Jenny and Charlie were killed by a drunk driver. Liam is single, and has somehow managed to find you again. Her brows snapped together. “Are you afraid that it wasn't real after all? she said with sudden suspicion. “Are you afraid that what you could have with Liam won't measure up to what you did have?

“Oh for crissake, Wy exploded, “don't say what we had like I was Streisand and he was Redford. What we had amounted to twenty-three flights into the Bush, four days in Anchorage and a thousand dollars in phone bills. It wasn't like we ran away to Paris together or something.

Jo's smile was sly. “What? Wy said, on the defensive. She knew that smile.

“Twenty-three flights, huh? Jo said smugly. “Pretty specific number. Interesting that you remember it so exactly.

Wy blushed again. The hell with this. She went to the bureau and picked up her hairbrush, yanking it ruthlessly through her shower-tangled curls. “So, she said in an artificially bright voice. “What are you doing in town, anyway?

Jo weighed Wy's determination to change the subject, found it inflexible, decided she'd said enough and dropped the subject of Liam. For the moment. “Following up on a story.

“Oh yeah? What one?

“I can't say right now.

Jo's voice was sober, and Wy put down the brush. “Why not?

Jo saw Wy's expression and made an obvious effort to lighten up. “Because it has to do with government shenanigans at high levels, she said teasingly. “My specialty.

“What, theNewsis looking for another Pulitzer? Wy said, falling in with the new mood. One reason they'd been friends for as long as they had was because they respected each other's boundaries. Another was that they could get mad at each other, secure in the knowledge that neither was going anywhere, no matter how heatedor personalthe debate became.

Jo shook her head. “I'm on my own on this one. A source contacted me with the story. I'm here to talk to him in person.

Wy's brow creased. “It isn't about the killings, is it?

“Killings? Jo's eyes narrowed. “What killings?

Wy hesitated, but there wasn't any point in not telling her. Like Liam, she was well aware of the efficiency of the Bush telegraph. “Seven people were killed in a boat fire in Kulukak. It might not have been an accident. Not to mention which, I found a

“Seven people? Jo vaulted off the bed. “Jesus! Are you serious?

“No, Jo, I made it up. Plus I myself just happened to

“And not an accident? You mean murdered?

“Liam thinks so, and by the way, I

“Is Liam the investigating officer? Where's your phone? Kitchen, right? Jo shot out of the room and down the hall, where Wy heard her badgering Tim for the phone. Sighing, she sat on her chaste, full-size bed and put on her socks. One body wasn't much by comparison to seven, she supposed. Still, stumbling across murder victims wasn't something she did on a regular basis. Once every three months was about her average.

She remembered Bob DeCreft, the occupant of the last body she'd stumbled across, and chastised herself, although Bob, the crusty old coot, would have been the first to laugh. She wondered how Laura Nanalook, Bob's daughter, was doing on her own in Anchorage. Well, she hoped. If anyone deserved a break, it was Laura.

Liam. His face rose unbidden before her eyes and she thought of Jo's words. Was it true? Was she so afraid that an actual relationship with Liam would pale in comparison to their affair? She winced away from the idea. She'd never thought of herself as a coward. She flew in Alaska for a living, didn't she? She'd taken on the raising of a twelve-year-old boy with a lot of nasty relatives, hadn't she? She'd returned to Newenham, hadn't she, risking contact with her birth family?

The first time she'd seen Liam he'd been just another uniform. Then, seated next to each other in her plane, on their way to a stabbing northwest of Glenallen, she'd noticed his hands gripping the sides of his seat. His knuckles were white and his face was the same color. Here was this big, tall, strong, good-looking man, an officer of the court, an enforcer of the law. Why did she suddenly feel the need to help him fight his fear? They'd talked about books that day. She'd been reading Barbara Tuchman'sA Distant Mirrorfor the second time, and they'd compared notes on the calamitous fourteenth century, arguing Tuchman's comparison of that century to this.

By the time they landed in Mentasta Lake they were old friends. How could anything be that simple? Nothing else ever in her life had been up to then.

She followed Jo into the kitchen, and found her talking rapidly into the phone as Tim set the table. He folded paper napkins and placed them beneath the flatware, a frown of concentration on his face. He performed the simple task the way he did every household chore, as if getting it wrong meant expulsion from Eden. Compared to what Tim had come from, a place where he'd been beaten regularly and the last time nearly to death, her home probably did seem like heaven on earth.

He stepped back from the table and surveyed it, reaching out to move a glass an inch to the left. He turned and saw Wy watching, and a faint color crept up into his cheeks.

She hugged him, ignoring the momentary stiffening in his body. He had yet to become accustomed to casual physical affection. For that matter, she was just now learning it herself, but she was determined that Tim, by the time he was eighteen and ready to go to college, would know how to give and receive a hug, and mean it.

Jo hung up the phone. “Where does Liam live?

“The last time I checked, he was still sleeping in his office, Wy lied with determined unconcern.

“He's bunking on a boat down at the harbor, Tim volunteered.

Jo pounced. “Which one?

Tim was startled at the ferocity of Jo's interest. “Uh, er, theDawn P,I think.

Wy stared. “How do you know that?

She cursed herself for not moderating her tone of voice, because he was immediately defensive. “I remember because it's named after this girl I go to school with. As they spoke, he flushed a deep, vivid red.

Wy gaped, and Jo grinned. “Is she pretty? Jo said.

Tim hunched a shoulder, and shot Wy a sidelong glance. “She's okay, I guess, he mumbled. The lid on the pot on the stove gave a clatter and with the air of one rescued from the deck of theTitanicjust before the stern went under he leapt gladly around the counter and pulled it off the burner.

The sausage was a little charred, but Wy liked her sausage crisp. They ate in silence for a few moments. “Who was that on the phone, if it wasn't Liam? Wy said.

Jo took a bite of sausage and washed it down with a long swallow of Killian's. Jo must have brought some with her, because Wy didn't drink beer. She stole a covert look at Tim. A strand of sauerkraut had latched on to the front of his Nike Town T-shirt; other than that, he looked reassuringly substance-free. Girls to booze in one night, she thought gloomily. Somebody was going to have to talk to Tim about birth control, THE TALK every parent dreaded, and she had a pretty good idea who that someone should be. She remembered THE TALK she'd had with her adoptive parents, two schoolteachers only slightly more uptight than Queen Victoria. Certainly she could do better than that, but she surveyed Tim with disfavor on general principles anyway. Whose bright idea had it been to adopt this kid, again?

“Pete, Jo said, setting the bottle down with a satisfied smack and burping without apology. “My managing editor. He wants me to check out your story. I need to talk to Liam. He didn't answer at the post. To Tim she said, “You know which slip theDawn Pis tied up at?

He shook his head. “There's a map at the head of both ramps. It'll show you.

“You want to walk down with me?

He brightened. “Sure. He looked at Wy. “Can I, Mom?

“Why not?

“Great, Jo said, reaching for the Killian's again. She paused with it halfway to her mouth. “You could come with us.

Wy shook her head. “Not just now. I was going to go down the bluff to the river, see if I could catch us a few late reds or a couple of early silvers. I want to get some in the can before they all get up the river.

Jo waited until Tim's head was turned before mouthing the word, Coward.

Tim groaned. “Salmon sandwiches for school again.

“Just for that, you little ingrate, I'm telling Moses I want ten gallons of blueberries, not five, when he brings you back from fish camp, and guess who gets to pick them?

Tim groaned again.

“Life's tough all over, kid, Jo said. “Now hurry up and finish, I want to catch up to that trooper.