Dana Stabenow - A Fine and Bitter Snow

“She’s down the hall.”

“They told me.”

“Under guard, in case she gets up, which they tell me she won’t anytime soon. Mutt-” Mutt’s ears went up at this mention of her name by her idol, who stepped near enough to reach her ears and give her a good scratch. “She’s alive, but I think Mutt was kind of in a hurry. Plus maybe a little pissed off.” Mutt’s tail thumped gently on the bed. “Christie’s probably going to lose that arm.” He shrugged. “But then she won’t need it where she’s going.”

His hand slipped from Mutt’s ears to cup Kate’s cheek. “I thought you were dead.”

He was leaning forward when they heard the squeak of wheels in the corridor, the jingle of dishes, followed by a knock on the door. “Oh, yummy,” Kate said. “Dinner.”

He didn’t know whether to curse or laugh. Instead, he looked down at her and smiled. “You want me to bring you a burger?”

She looked at him with her heart in her eyes.

“Poor John,” Ruthe said.

Her skin was almost translucent, but she was conscious, and there was a faint flush of color along her exquisite cheekbones. Every doctor and nurse in the place was head over heels in love with her, naturally, and Kate’s visit had been constantly interrupted by this one or that wanting to take Ruthe’s temperature or blood pressure, or plump up her pillows, or tempt her taste buds with some god-awful dish from the hospital cafeteria. A surgeon who wasn’t even attending her case scored heavily when he brought in a box of fried chicken and french fries. The smell of deep-fried chicken almost obscured the Phisohex-like smell endemic to all hospitals, making Kate’s mouth water. Ruthe’s graceful thanks brought a flush to the surgeon’s cheek and a gleam to his eye, and he floated out the door with a smile on his face.

Not bad, Kate thought, and wondered if she would be able to pull that off at seventy plus.

“Here,” Ruthe said, passing her the box. “I can’t, not yet.”

Kate, wrapped like a mummy and tucked into a wheelchair, didn’t even try to talk her out of it. It took real nobility to offer to share with Jim. He accepted with alacrity, and she tried not to call him names inside her own head. Mutt gave her a pitiful look. “Chicken bones are bad for you,” she told the wolf, and tucked into a drumstick.

“Poor John,” Ruthe said again. “He really loved Dina.” She turned her eyes from the window to where the two of them sat side by side, eating. “How’s the chicken?”

“Sure you won’t try a piece?” Kate said.

“Certain sure,” Ruthe said. “Besides, I’m afraid to get in the middle of you two. Might tear my hand off.”

Jim, drumstick raised, laughed. Kate, mouth full of thigh, didn’t.

Ruthe had woken from her coma two days after Kate had been brought in. Much to the trooper’s frustration, she still couldn’t remember anything from the day of her attack, even though the doctors had said that was to be expected. “Short-term memory is what goes first after a violent attack,” they’d said, and Jim snapped, snarled, and growled, but in the end, because he’d had experience with a head injury and a subsequent short-term memory loss himself the summer before, he subsided into a frustrated silence. “Don’t harass her,” they had warned him. “She doesn’t need to do anything right now but get well. Don’t mess with that.”

So this was strictly a social call, except that Ruthe wanted to know everything that had happened since she’d been away, including why Kate was one door down.

She was paler when they finished. Kate told her about the potlatch, and the picture, the original of which she had had Jim bring to the hospital.

Ruthe wept at the sight of it. “I remember that day,” she said, mopping her eyes with the Kleenex Kate moved within reach. “Mudhole was starting air tours from Cordova to the mine. That was the inaugural flight. He loaded up everyone he could think of and gave us the VIP treatment-had champagne and caviar waiting for us when we got there. We all got a little tight.”

“Emaa had champagne?” Kate said, awed.

“We all did.” Ruthe’s smile faded. “That was the day it started, I think. Dina sat next to John. They hit it off. I think it was more chemistry than it was anything else, but it was strong and it was immediate, and a month later, they were married.”

Kate didn’t look at her, not wanting to exacerbate Ruthe’s pain. “That must have hurt.”

“What? Why?”

Kate looked up. “Well, I-” She cast about wildly for some way to say it without sticking the knife in. “Dina left you. You know, for John.”

“Oh,” Ruthe said, starting to smile, then began to laugh. “Oh. Right. I forgot.” She started to cough.

“Are you okay?” Jim said, standing up in alarm, box in one hand, french fry in the other. “Should we call somebody?”

She waved them off with a weak hand. “I’m all right. I can’t laugh yet, either.”

“What’s so funny?” Kate said, bewildered.

Ruthe mopped her eyes and smiled at Kate. “Dina didn’t leave me. Not in the way you mean.”

“What?” Kate said. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“Dina and I were never a couple.”

Kate gaped at her. After a moment, she recovered and said, “But you-I thought-we all thought that-”

“We knew what you all thought,” Ruthe said, grinning. “We used to laugh about it. Hell, back then, everybody thought all WASPs were bull dykes. Stood to reason. Real women didn’t want to learn to fly.” She made a face. “You should have seen Mac Devlin’s expression the first time he met us. You would have thought we had horns and tails. When we were younger, it was kind of fun. Wasn’t a bad come-on, either. You’d be amazed at the number of men who are absolutely convinced that all one of those women needs is the love of a good man to turn her around.” She grinned again. “We let the likelier ones try to convince us.” She added, “Of course, there were always a few who were praying for a threesome. We never went for that. Well, hardly ever.”

“Okay,” Kate said, “too much information.”

“I’m kidding!” Ruthe said, and started to laugh again. “God, if you could see the expression on your face!”

Kate could feel her neck going red, and she could hear Jim starting to laugh, too. “Did Emaa know?”

“Of course she knew; she used to chase around with us. That girl could party us all right into the ground.”

“Stop,” Kate said desperately, “please, I’m begging you, stop right there.”

“She was a looker when she was old,” Jim said, “I bet she could knock your eyes out when she was younger.”

“Do. Not. Go. There,” Kate said.

Jim met Ruthe’s eyes for a pregnant moment. Sometimes it was just too easy.

“What about their daughter?” Kate said. It was the only way she could get out of the hole she was in, and then Jim gave her a dagger look and she remembered they weren’t supposed to try to jog Ruthe’s memory. But Ruthe gave a last chuckle, coughed into a Kleenex, and said, “What daughter?”

There was a brief silence. “Christie Turner,” Kate said.

Ruthe’s brow puckered. “Christie Turner? Oh, you mean Bernie’s new barmaid. What about her?”

“She’s John and Dina’s daughter, Ruthe.”

Ruthe stared at Kate. “I beg your pardon?”

“Christie Turner is John and Dina’s daughter.”

Another silence. “Are you sure?” Ruthe said at last.

“We’ve seen the birth certificate. She was born in Seattle, ten months to the day after the date on the marriage certificate. Father, John Letourneau. Mother, Dina Willner.”

“Oh,” Ruthe said. She closed her eyes against sudden remembered pain. “Oh,” she said again, a drawn-out expression of realization. “So that was it.”