Dana Stabenow - A Fine and Bitter Snow

“Knock it off, Shugak,” she said to herself sternly, and then was embarrassed when Mutt gave her a quizzical look. “I talk to you, don’t I?” she asked her.

Mutt gave her a long, assessing look, beneath which Kate tried not to squirm, and went to stand in front of the door. “Fine,” Kate said. “Go chase birds. Leave me all alone here, talking to my ghosts.”

Mutt did. No dependence could be placed on laying a guilt trip on a dog that was mostly wolf. Kate shut the door firmly behind her, not really trying to catch the tip of Mutt’s tail in the door, but not trying really hard not to, either.

She leaned on the door handle and surveyed the cabin. At least it didn’t look as if anyone else had shown up to appropriate whatever was lying around. She’d made sure that Bernie spread the word that the cabin was under her protection, but all the same, she thought she had a padlock and a hasp rattling around the garage at home that she might fit to the front door, and maybe a bolt for the back door, as well. There had been a time when the cabin could have stood empty for weeks, months, maybe even years without suffering any harm. She hoped that time was still here, but she no longer had as much faith in the notion that she had once had.

Kate started a fire in the woodstove and brewed a cup of tea on the gas hot plate, added honey, and, not without some qualms, sat down in Dina’s chair.

She had never looked at the cabin from this angle before. Dina’s chair sat to the left of the woodstove and faced the northeast corner of the cabin. It was a great location from which to view the tides of the books on the shelves. The stove sat in the middle of the room, its exposed stovepipe chimney going straight up to the ceiling, which acted as a great heat radiator and provided a central location around which the furniture and fixtures would be arranged. Still, it seemed odd to Kate that with two enormous picture windows that took up practically the whole south wall of the cabin, the chairs Dina and Ruthe sat in most often faced in the opposite direction. Kate would have taken advantage of the view.

Although there would be more privacy at the back of the cabin, if you had guests who used the deck outside to look at the view, too. Kate put up the footrest and cupped the mug in her hands.

She compared John Letourneau’s enormous, barely lived in lodge to this cabin. Here, there was just enough room for Dina and Ruthe. When friends came to stay, they were put up in one of the cabins on the hill. The paying guests took their meals in the mess hall above the cabins; the friends dined with Dina and Ruthe below. John, so far as Kate knew, had had no visitors, other than guys like Dandy who were always looking for something to borrow. Certainly he had none who were invited to stay for free.

The lodge had all the echoing charm of an airport waiting lounge. The cabin was dusty and cluttered and crowded to the point that you couldn’t take a step without knocking over a stack of magazines, but it was a lot friendlier than the lodge. If the building was a reflection of the man, Kate could well understand the qualities Dina had found lacking in John.

Kate had overheard a conversation when she was younger that made her aware that Dina and Ruthe were a couple, a pair, like husband and wife, only not. It was a thing she’d never heard of, a woman and a woman, and by that time, she knew her own predilection was strictly men, so it was hard for her to comprehend.

On the other hand, their relationship wasn’t hard for her to accept. They were still Dina and Ruthe, her grandmother’s friends, and hers. Ruthe was a great cook and Dina could outhike anything on two legs or four, and both of them could fly anything with wings. They were smart and they told funny stories, and when anyone in the Park needed help, they were there. She didn’t need to know anything about their sleeping arrangements to know that they were some of the best neighbors the Park had. Long winters made for intimate relationships over distances that would be unthinkable in a city suburb. Good neighbors were crucial.

Once Jack had come into Kate’s life, she had never looked at another man. Well. Before Dinah came on the scene, there had been that brief, intense interval with Bobby Clark, and then there was Ken Dahl, poor dead bastard. And if she were being completely honest, there had been one or two tense moments with Jim Chopin.

Maybe more than one or two. And maybe more than moments. And maybe one of them right here.

But that isn’t the point, she thought, rousing herself. The point was she couldn’t account for Dina’s sudden, brief marriage to John Letourneau. Chemistry? Propinquity? Dina deciding later in life to conform to the straight and narrow?

None of it seemed very likely. Nor was Kate ever apt to come up with a better answer, unless Ruthe woke up and knew it.

The little gray lockbox was sitting on one of the bookshelves. She got it and sat back down.

There was the marriage certificate, a few simple lines, Dina and John’s names, the date. Dina had been forty-five, John thirty-five.

Like John, Kate wondered why Dina had kept the certificate. A memento of one good month? A reminder of a lesson well learned?

She looked through the rest of the paperwork. A Social Security card. Two passports, both long out-of-date, although they had been well used in their time, from all over Europe to the Far East. A copy of the deed to the property of Camp Theodore. Two wills, in separate sealed envelopes, marked will on the outsides, “To Be Opened in the Event Of” in smaller writing below.

She opened Dina’s. It was a copy. It was also very short. Dina hadn’t owned a lot. Her interest in the camp went to Ruthe, unless Ruthe predeceased her, in which case it went into the Kanuyaq Land Trust, to be administered by the chief ranger of the Park and utilized as part of the national park as he or she saw fit. She directed that all of her possessions be sold, the proceeds also to go to the Kanuyaq Land Trust, with a few exceptions, noted in the attached list, items that she directed her executor to distribute.

Kate turned the page. The books went to Ruthe. There was some jewelry in a safety-deposit box in Anchorage, also bequeathed to Ruthe.

A note, added by hand and dated just this past November, said, “To Johnny Morgan, my photograph album, in the hope that he will continue to learn and grow.”

Kate had to blink away sudden tears. She was about to put the will back in the envelope, when a phrase caught her eye. “I declare that, except as otherwise provided for in this Will, I have intentionally and with full knowledge omitted to provide for any heirs of mine who may be living at the date of my death, and I direct that such persons, if any, shall take no part of my estate.”

Lawyers. Kate shook her head. Dina’s parents had died in an accident before World War II, and she had had no children of her own. If she and John had stayed married a little longer, it might have been a different story.

“Oh,” Kate said. She remembered now what she had thought of at the Roadhouse. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so silly.

At that moment, she realized that it might not have been such a good idea to have spoken so freely of John Letourneau while standing in the Roadhouse with god and everybody else listening in.

Perhaps she should have stayed in one of the cabins, within earshot of a big, strong state trooper who had within reach a great big gun.

The door opened. She knew who it was without turning around, but she turned around anyway.

Christie Turner stood in the doorway, rifle in hand.

Kate got to her feet, careful to make no sudden movement. “You’re John and Dina’s daughter,” she said.

Christie smiled. “So you figured it out, did you? I thought you might.” She stepped inside, leaving the door open behind her.