Dana Stabenow - Nothing Gold Can Stay

“Look,” Wy said, her tone so patient that Prince gritted her teeth. “Dead woman at Kagati Lake. Dead man at Rainbow. Dead man at Nenevok Creek. Connect the dots.” She snapped her fingers impatiently and Liam tossed her a pen. She drew a line between the three settlements. “Old Man Creek is the only dry ground on the Scandinavian Slough besides Portage Creek, and the creek is on the wrong side of the slough. The rest of the area is just one big swamp. Everyone in the Bay and on the river knows this, and by now she has to know that everyone in the Bay and on the river knows that some nutcase is killing people. The river is the best road out of here, she hits it, steals a boat, floats downstream and is home free. It’s logical for her to head in that direction.”

“You keep saying ‘her’ and ‘she,’ like one person killed all three people and that person is Rebecca Hanover,” Prince said. “She wasn’t anywhere near Kagati Lake. She couldn’t have killed Opal Nunapitchuk. And she didn’t have any reason to, no motive, nothing. Not to mention which, you just got done painting the most heartrending picture of Little Miss City Girl, who doesn’t know squat about surviving a trek through the Bush. How is she supposed to know where she’s going? What does she think she’s going to find when she gets there?”

Wy’s temper flared. “Look. There is a trail of bodies on a line heading southeast. The last body reported found-and please note we have no idea if it’s the last body to be found-is lying twelve miles from Old Man Creek. You’re right, I don’t know that Rebecca Hanover killed her husband, let alone Opal or Peter. Hell, for all we know, maybe she’s got a lover, maybe they’re in it together, maybe he killed Opal and Pete to make it look like there is a crazed killer on the loose. I don’t know and I don’t care. I am not taking any chances with Tim’s safety.” She tossed Liam’s pen back. He snatched it out of the air before it skewered his eye. “I don’t care what the two of you do or don’t do. I’m getting in the air and I’m going to Portage Creek. I’ll find a way to Old Man Creek when I get there.”

“You can’t do that.”

“The hell I can’t,” she said curtly, opening the door. The wind snatched it from her hand and slammed it against the wall. “I’m a private pilot flying alone. There’s no law against that. Yet.”

The wind snatched the door from her hand a second time and slammed it shut behind her. When Liam wrenched it open again to follow, a raven, riding out the wind on the bough of a spruce tree, croaked overhead. For once, Liam didn’t even look up.

Little Muklung River, September 6

She didn’t, couldn’t know how far she had come.

All sense of direction had been lost in the fog and the snow.

She knew she was leaving footprints to follow. The weather had betrayed her, a storm with snow in September, how could that be? Until then, she’d had a chance.

Now all she wanted was warmth and food. Coffee. Hot coffee, creamy with half-and-half and sweet with a heaping spoonful of sugar, two spoonfuls, three. She could almost smell it, and her mouth watered.

There was a river. She was following it downstream, although she knew he would be following it, too, knew that her footprints in the new-fallen snow left a track a child could follow.

The biggest battle now was to put one foot in front of the other. The left foot had lost all feeling, but that wasn’t surprising, as she’d lost her left shoe in a half-frozen bog a mile back. Or maybe it was yesterday.

She stepped slowly, with all the deliberation of a drunk.

There was the sound of water running swiftly between banks, as if the creek had widened suddenly. She looked, but it wasn’t so. She had long ago stopped believing her eyes. Now she could not believe her ears.

But what about her nose? She was sure she could smell the coffee now. She closed her eyes and inhaled. Coffee and woodsmoke. And fish.

There was a sense of brightness before her, or rather a thinning of the gloom. She squinted.

She was in a clearing.

There was a cabin in the clearing.

There was a light in the cabin window, and movement behind that light.

She stopped dead and stared, disbelieving. Was it another hallucination? She’d had so many, of Mark holding out his hand and smiling, of Nina laughing, of Linda’s table strewn with beads, of her mother’s fried chicken, of Maalaea Bay on Maui, where she had spent so many vacations, and where it was so very, very warm.

She took a hesitant step.

The cabin did not vanish into the snow and the fog. There might even be voices.

There was a door.

She stumbled into a run.

Old Man Creek, September 6

“Hey!”

“What? You unnatural brat,” Moses added, somewhat unfairly, since he’d been awake for an hour.

“It snowed!” Tim opened the door wider. “Look!”

The snow lay two inches on the ground, and the pure, pristine white lightened the low, leaden look of the sky.

Moses came to stand behind him. “And more coming, I bet.” The snow swirled up in a sudden gust of wind and he shivered. “Come on, get out or get in.”

“I gotta pee,” Tim said, and dashed around the corner.

Amelia yawned and stretched. Moses looked at her approvingly, or as close to approvingly as he ever looked at anyone. The bruises had nearly faded from her face, there was color in her cheeks, and even rumpled with sleep her hair had regained a healthy shine. She looked good. “You look good,” he said.

She was startled, and a little wary. “Thank you, uncle.”

“Get your pants on, let’s stand a little post while my woman makes us some coffee.”

Bill sent him a haughty look, and he grinned.

They assumed the position, and Tim walked in. “Oh man. It’s too small in here to do tai chi.”

“I’ve done form in airplane bathrooms,” Moses said. “Where there ain’t even enough room to crap, I might add. There’s all the room in the world. Get your butt over here.”

Grumbling, Tim complied, and Bill noticed that both kids were moving more easily. The price of a good teacher is above rubies, she thought. She made coffee then, but only because she wanted some herself. My woman , indeed.

She looked out the small window over the counter. Gray skies, swirling snow, and only yesterday it had been Indian summer. The thermometer mounted to the outside wall of the cabin read thirty-nine degrees. The snow would be gone by noon. She peered skyward. The storm looked as if it were taking five before turning around into a real nor’wester.

She lit the Coleman stove and put the pot on to boil before checking the woodstove. The wood box was nearly empty after she stoked the fire. “Hey guys, sorry to interrupt, but we’re about out of wood.”

“Then go get some,” Moses growled.

She turned and gave him a smile. “Your woman gets the coffee made. Her man gets the wood in.”

That surprised him into a laugh and he stood up. “I can’t be freezing my ass off out there alone. Come on, boy.”

He and Tim donned jackets and went outside. Amelia continued to stand post, forearms perpendicular to her torso, forming a gentle curve, legs bent with her knees directly over her toes. Bill admired her for a moment before going back to the counter and getting out the ingredients for her famous oatmeal. The secret was lots of butter and brown sugar, but steel-cut rolled oats were also very important, as was the evaporated milk. Heart attack in a bowl, she thought fondly, and dumped raisins into the pot.

“Bill?”

“What, honey?”

“How did you come to Newenham?”

Bill turned with the bag of oats in her hands to meet Amelia’s inquiring gaze. “What brought that up?”