by Sue Henry
“First, I knew that he had always wanted to come to Alaska. He used to talk about it frequently and I remember knowing things about glaciers and polar bears and mountains, because John told me and showed me pictures. He had a collection of books and videos about Alaska. When I lost track of him in Seattle, I decided he might have gone north, so I gave it a try.
“Second, after all my searching I knew he wasn’t using his real name—didn’t want to be found. He had walked away from everything and everyone in his life when his wife died. I think he just couldn’t stay in the city and be confronted every day with the fact that she was gone. I can understand that. They really loved each other, were like two halves of the same person in a way. I don’t think that happens very often and he simply didn’t know how and didn’t want to live there without her.
“It took me a long while, years, to look for him state by state, city after city, clue by clue. But then I showed his picture to a trucker in New Mexico and learned that he was using an assumed name. I knew he had in other places he passed through and that sometimes they were, like John Walker, taken straight off whiskey bottles. Jack Daniel was one, Austin Nichols, another—that one when he was working construction in Texas. He must have found a way to forge the identification that he needed.
“I never caught up with him—just found clues to where he had been when I got there too late. But after I became convinced that he wasn’t dead and had just walked away, I knew I had to try, so I started hunting every time I could take off from my job. Two years ago I gave that up and started looking almost full-time, taking a part-time job, whatever I could find when I ran low on money. I only found where he had been temporarily—jobs he had worked for a short period of time. You see, he never stayed anywhere long enough for me to catch up with him. So I tracked him through trial and error from one place to another. My fin ding my way here is just the end of a very long road for me—eight years of off-and-on searching in a lot of places. You see, for a time I was in shock—so sure he was dead. By the time I started looking he was long gone and difficult to follow.”
. . . the end of a very long road . . . I caught the phrase and remembered once again what John had said the day I met him: Maybe I’ll decide to spend what’s left of my life at the end of the road. So he had. And now, she had come there as well—unfortunately too late.
“Do you have a picture of your brother?” I asked, convinced, but wanting to make sure we were really talking about the same person.
“Yes.” She had brought a shoulder bag to the table with her and now reached into it for a notebook with many fat pages that seemed filled with writing. From between those pages she took a photograph and handed it across to me.
It was not a snapshot, but a professional photograph. But it was John—the man I had fir st met out on the spit—looking straight into the camera. He was dressed much differently, however, in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and red tie with tiny blue stripes, neat and professional looking. His hair was shorter than it had been as I knew him, but his smile was the same, warm, self-confident, and friendly. He looked quite a bit younger than the man I had met, and certainly less worn. I remembered the lines in his forehead and around his mouth and eyes that were not evident in the picture. His shoulders had been broader and I remembered his scarred and callused hands.
I nodded and handed it back.
“This is a younger John than I met. Did you take the picture?” I asked Amy.
“No. I found it in their apartment after . . . well, later. Probably taken by some offic e photographer. But I think his wife, Marty, may have taken it. Not long after they were married in nineteen ninety-eight.”
“He was married?”
“Yes. And I thought for some time that they had both died at work when the World Trade Center towers fell. They both worked there, you see. That’s where they met.
“Marty died. They never found her body, like many others. But things I found out made me believe that John had not been killed too. Days later, a coworker of his who made it out told me that he was sure John was gone on some business errand that morning and wasn’t in his office in the second tower. But another survivor said that he had come back just before the first plane hit. It was confusing, but enough to make me believe he might be alive and to start me hunting.
“I went to their apartment. At first I couldn’t bear to go there, but less than a week after the attack on the towers I did and I found some things missing that should have been there if he was dead—small things I figured that he had probably taken with him: their wedding picture, for instance, some casual clothing he wouldn’t have worn to the office—jeans, a sweatshirt or two, a heavy jacket, underwear, socks. His shaving gear was missing.”
“Stay here a minute,” I said, getting up. “There’s something I want to show you.”
I crossed the room, took the photograph Andy had found in the book, and returned to her side of the table. Holding it out to her, I told her, “This was in a book he was reading and left for me. Is this his wife—Marty? I assume from the background it was taken in New York—Central Park, yes?”
She stared at it as if she was looking at a ghost and there were tears in her eyes when she looked up and nodded.
“Yes. And John took the picture. That’s easy to tell from her expression. He often took snapshots of her—had several in his office and at home.”
Then she burst into a flood of tears.
SEVENTEEN
THE TEARS LASTED ONLY THE AMOUNT OF TIME it took me to hand Amy the box of tissues I keep on the kitchen counter.
I had a feeling that she had cried herself pretty much dry of them years before and that they were at least partially inspired by the relief she was feeling in at least having answers at the end of the road she had followed for such a long time.
How many people would undertake such a far-reaching and dedicated search for someone they loved?
It made me sad that she couldn’t have arrived just a few days earlier.
“Have you talked with the police or the troopers? There is a trooper who was called to the scene at the Driftwood Inn.”
“No, but I should, I suppose. It really doesn’t matter now, does it? The woman at the Driftwood told me they had taken John’s body to Anchorage to try to find out who he was.”
I was a little surprised that she had not contacted law enforcement.
“Yes, you should,” I told her. “I know Trooper Nelson and can call him if you want. He can tell you much more than I can. It’s a little late now, but tomorrow morning will do, yes?”
She nodded.
“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” I asked.
“Oh, I couldn’t put you out—” she began.
I interrupted. “You won’t. I have an extra bedroom across the hall from mine upstairs and would be pleased to have you. We can make that call to Trooper Nelson in the morning and I can introduce you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, definitely. It would make things easier for you, I think, that I’ve already talked to him. He’s really very nice. You can tell him what you’ve told me and answer most of the questions he’s been finding dead ends to.”
She agreed and went to the car to bring in a small suitcase while I called Julia Bennet at the Driftwood to let her know that Amy would be staying with me and wouldn’t need a room.
I took her upstairs and showed her to the one across the hall from mine that has always belonged to son Joe, where he and Sharon slept when they came from Seattle and would again at Christmas. When he left I had washed the sheets and pillowcases and remade the bed, so I knew it was clean and ready for a new occupant. I also gave her clean towels and showed her the upstairs bathroom.
She thanked me profusely and, though it was late, came back down for a last cup of tea, at my suggestion.
“Sleepytime Tea,” she said with a smile, reading the box the herb tea had come in, while I poured hot water onto the tea bags in our mugs. “Appropriate.”
&
nbsp; “No caffeine, you’ll notice,” I told her as I handed her a mug of it. “Sugar?”
She took a sip. “No, thanks. This is fine as it is.”
We moved to the sofa near the now dying fire, where Stretch had already gone to lie down on his rug. I took my usual place at one end. Amy sat down at the other with a sigh of relaxation.
“You have such a sweet, cozy house,” she said. “You must love living here.”
I told her that my first husband, Joe senior, the fisherman, had built the house somewhat in the style of cottages in the fishing villages of New England, with similar two stories and a widow’s walk up top.
“You must have lived here a long time.”
“All my life, bred and born here. Not in this house, of course. Grew up, went to school here, college in Seattle, married twice—good men, both gone now. The first, Joe, left me this house, and, besides financial independence, the second, my Aussie husband, Daniel, left me Stretch, who was his dog when we met.”
At the sound of his name Stretch raised his head, gave me a look, knowing he was, as he often is, a topic of conversation, then laid it down again after a yawn.
He’s getting older now—will be nine on his next birthday in March. Dachshunds have a life expectancy of twelve to fourteen years typically, so though he’s healthy and I don’t expect him to kick the bucket anytime soon, I do conscientiously make sure that he sees the vet on a regular basis and gets enough exercise and proper food. I know I’m going to miss him dearly when he’s gone to join Daniel.
“I haven’t been here in the winter for several years,” I told Amy. “I have a motor home that I’ve taken to the Southwest in the fall, then driven back up the Alaska Highway in the spring. I’ve had the best of both worlds in terms of weather. But you mentioned New Mexico earlier. Where were you there?”
“Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But it was in Santa Fe that I showed that picture of John to people at a couple of trucking companies. One of the truckers recognized him, but said his name was Evan Williams, and the guy in the offic e who schedules and sends out the drivers agreed, but said he had left for Portland and Seattle three days earlier. He had already off-loaded the cargo he had carried to Portland and gone north, was probably making his second stop, in Seattle, pretty much as we spoke.”
“Interesting,” I commented. “Was one of the office guys in Santa Fe called Butch?”
“Yes,” she said. “The one in the office, a really nice man who told me John had driven the truck for their company to Portland and Seattle. How did you know?”
“He’s an old friend of mine,” I told her, thinking back to the last time I had talked to Butch Stringer on the phone, as we periodically keep in touch. It had been too long and I reminded myself that I should call him sometime soon.
I met Butch on the Alaskan Highway several years earlier, on my way north to Homer in the spring after spending the winter in the Southwest. He had suffered a horrible accident in purposely driving his Peterbilt cab and trailer rig off the road to avoid hitting a passenger car and a pickup towing a boat, and had been badly injured as a result. It had taken him out of distance driving and put him in the office of a trucking company.
I didn’t go into all of that with Amy.
“What did you do when you knew John, or Evan Williams as they knew him, was already gone?” I asked her instead.
“Well, knowing his destination, I caught the first plane I could to Seattle, but when I got there he had left the truck and vanished again. I checked out a few cheap hotels nearby, but no one remembered or recognized him from the picture.”
“He does look quite different in the picture,” I commented. “Younger, professional, not like a trucker at all.”
“I know, but it’s the only picture I’ve had. I knew that he must have found a way to forge the identification that he needed with a more current picture, but I had to use what I had. When he started doing long-haul trucking he started using Evan Williams and had the identification to prove it. It must have tweaked his sense of humor. I imagine him just walking into the nearest liquor store when he wanted a new alias and taking one from whatever whiskey bottle he found first, or that appealed to him.”
I had to smile at that idea, knowing John had exhibited a sense of humor that would support that supposition, and also that I had done somewhat the same in collecting names from the bottles of that same kind of alcohol in my own liquor store.
Amy had finished her tea and set the mug down on the table at her end of the sofa.
She yawned, hiding it politely behind her hand.
I glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight.
“Past time for bed, I think,” I told her.
Stretch lifted his head, recognizing the word bed, stood up and—I have to say it—stretched.
I got up, collected the mugs, and took them to the kitchen sink. He followed and Amy followed him.
“Would you mind if I took a shower in the morning, Maxie?”
“Not at all. Help yourself whenever you wake up.”
“Thank you for asking me to stay,” she said.
“Anytime,” I told her. “We’ll call Trooper Nelson in the morning. Go ahead up, if you want. I’ll be right behind you.”
She said good night and went.
I checked to make sure the doors were securely locked and that I had turned off the outside light over the step, then followed her, carrying Stretch as usual.
In just a few minutes the house was dark and quiet.
Amy had left her door open a bit, but I shut mine, so Stretch would not go exploring and wake her in the night. He’s used to son Joe sleeping there and might assume he would be welcome company.
I was comfortable in my own bed and knowing the house was as secure as it could be, thanks to Lew and the new lock. Still, I had taken the shotgun upstairs with me, just in case, and it lay on the other side of the bed, ready for instant use, but an unusual bed companion.
I stared at the dark ceiling and thought about how determined Amy had been to spend years traveling across the country, searching for her brother, who had eluded her right up until his death. Had he even known she was looking for him? Perhaps not, I decided. How sad.
Interesting that she hadn’t asked me any questions about John, but probably she would tomorrow.
Her mention of Santa Fe reminded me again that I wanted to give Butch Stringer a call and I thought about that, closed my eyes, took a deep breath or two, and sleep overcame me almost instantly.
EIGHTEEN
AMY’S ACCOUNT OF LOVE AND LOSS for both herself and John must have gone deeper than I realized, for I dreamed of my Daniel, as I don’t do often and treasure as a gift of time.
He was walking across the yard toward where I was standing on the back deck, a younger Stretch trotting along at his side, small feet a dozen to one in his effort to keep up. Daniel was reaching a hand out toward me with a smile that brought him back so strongly that for once I knew it was a dream and that I would wake before he reached me.
And I did, in the too-early darkness of the morning hours, in a house too quiet to get up. So I lay there on my back for a few minutes with my eyes closed, picturing his smile and how much I had missed it since he passed.
Then, as if he had laid out an arm and offered encouragement and comfort, I rolled over toward what had been his side of the bed and went back to sleep with my hand on his pillow.
When I woke again it was still dark, as the year turned toward the winter solstice in our far north, but I could hear the shower running in the bathroom across the hall, remembered that Amy had asked to use it, and knew it was time to get up.
Stretch gave me an impatient look and went to the door, wanting to get out.
A glance at the clock told me it was shortly after eight, late for me, but we had stayed up late the evening before. So I swung my legs out of bed and, deciding I would shower later, got dressed in the slacks and shirt I had been wearing when I came up to bed.
“Come
on, Stretch,” I suggested, as I opened the door and picked him up. “Let’s go down and I’ll let you out, which is what I know you need.”
Because dachshunds are so long they have weak backs and are libel to spinal injury in going up or down stairs, so I carried him to the bottom, set him down, let him out the back door, and put some food in his bowl before letting him in again.
It had evidently snowed for much of the night, for everything, including Amy’s car, was covered with what looked like two to three inches. The sun had come out thinly and there were patches of blue sky overhead, so I thought the snow would soon melt again.
Homer is warmer than Anchorage and most of the rest of the state, except for the southeast panhandle, so we don’t often get snow in huge amounts or on a very regular basis. This is not to say that, when the temperature drops, driving on icy roads is any fun, and we can play bumper cars in slick parking lots as well as anybody anywhere else.
I went to the kitchen to get the coffee going and make us something for breakfast and found myself humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” as I put eggs to scramble in the pan with the sausage.
“You sound happy,” Amy said, coming to stand across the counter from me.
“Blame it on the snow,” I told her. “I’ll probably be singing ‘Jingle Bells’ soon.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“You can set the table,” I told her, waving a hand in the direction of the cupboard in which I keep the dishes. “The plates are over there and the silverware is in the drawer below.”
I filled a platter with scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast and took it to the table, along with steaming mugs of the fresh coffee and some of Becky’s homemade peach jam.
Before sitting down I went across the room and pulled back the curtains covering the sliding glass doors that led to the deck, letting in the light and the view of the bay and mountains beyond.
The table set, Amy came across to stand beside me and look out.
