But things took a different turn.
“You photographed Katja once, I believe,” Ruth said in that familiar German accent. “That gorgeous picture where she looks so happy. That’s what I told Waltraud. Katja looks happy. And completely . . . healthy. So fresh and healthy. Full of dreams. You know the picture I mean, don’t you?”
Lori was so taken by surprise that she nodded mechanically.
“You should know that Katja gave it to her parents as a present. And said that’s the woman she wanted to be. The one in the photograph. That’s who she wanted to be. She said she knew now that it was possible because she had some evidence. That very picture, you understand?”
“I think—”
“Do you know what Katja told her mother? ‘Lori sees the beauty in me. Not sickness and weakness—the beauty.’ Aren’t those wonderful words?”
Lori felt uncomfortable. Luckily, the baroness didn’t wait for a response.
“You gave Katja hope, and you know, hope was the best thing anyone could give her. And you gave Waltraud and Erhardt hope as well. And Waltraud wishes to thank you for that.”
Lori looked at her visitor blankly.
“But Katja . . . she, I mean, this hope, in the end she didn’t . . .”
“. . . make it a reality, is that what you mean? True, but Katja ultimately chose the path she did, and we’ll never know why. There’s something we all had to learn: to let go. We had to let Katja go. A few days before she died, she tried to get more money from her parents. We all knew what that meant. She wanted it for drugs. But Waltraud and Erhardt had to turn her down. Somebody eventually did slip her some. She begged from just about everybody. You, too? Did she ask you for money too?”
Lori shook her head. The baroness folded her arms across her chest and leaned back.
“We tried our hardest. But we could not save Katja. She was the only one who could save herself. But she decided differently.”
The conversation was too much for Lori. She wished the woman would disappear, just dissipate.
But Ruth kept on talking.
“Waltraud and Erhardt still have your photograph. That’s how they wanted to remember Katja. It’s a great consolation for them both, that picture. And I’m happy to be able to finally tell you that.”
Lori tried to respond but couldn’t utter a sound.
Ruth looked at her with empathy.
“I know it was terribly hard for people in Lindenhold back then. Franz and Rosemarie did so much for Katja. But sometimes you’re just powerless. That’s the way it is. Powerless. But I’ve kept you long enough. I have one more question. Shall I give Waltraud and Erhardt a message from you?”
Lori stared at the baroness as if she were asking for a handout.
She racked her brains feverishly to try to extricate herself from the situation. Her thoughts turned to Katja’s mother, to the loss and suffering and pain she’d gone through. Emotions her own experience had taught her all too well.
She cleared her throat.
“Please tell her . . . tell her it’s nice to know that . . . we sometimes do more good than we are ever aware of.”
The baroness’s face lit up at once.
“Yes, that’s true, so very true. And that’s why I needed to pass this on, and it was of great concern for Waltraud and Erhardt too.”
She stood up.
“It’s very nice indeed that we met this way. Opportunities like this don’t come along very often. It is too bad my husband could not be here; he was tied up with his affairs.”
She put on her loden jacket, and Lori escorted her to the door. Before going down the stairs, the baroness turned around.
“You know, Katja simply got into bad company. One should not associate with certain people. You have to steer clear of them, or they’ll be the death of you.”
Ruth von Kammerstein lifted her chin so high that her lips formed a line. Then her features relaxed, and she expressed some words of farewell that Lori, under different circumstances, would have found moving.
Lori made her way back to the living room and collapsed into the armchair, stunned. She was unable to think straight. She didn’t know how much time had passed when the telephone snapped her out of her brooding.
“Hello, my dearest. So what kind of a day are you having?”
Lisa Finning’s words triggered an emotional tsunami. Lori burst into tears, and her pitiful attempts to respond to her mother’s alarmed questions were drowned in loud sobs.
“Lori! What’s the matter? What happened?”
“It wasn’t . . . it maybe wasn’t . . . my fault at all,” she finally choked out.
“What isn’t your fault?”
“Katja . . . the Katja thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Katja, she was in Lindenhold.”
A pause. Then her mother’s voice.
“The girl who overdosed?”
Lori sobbed again, but Lisa Finning, with well-practiced patience, wheedled out answers to her questions.
Lori told her everything: the scene in the kitchen, Lori’s anger at Katja, the knife in Katja’s hand, her panic and fear because of Andrew, Katja’s flight.
She threw in the baroness’s visit and the message from Katja’s mother.
“And you’ve thought all this time that you were to blame for Katja’s death?”
It was less of a question than a summarizing conclusion to Lori’s story.
“Oh, my dear child, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought . . . thought the fewer people who knew, the better. You always say that.”
“Yes, but Lori, that doesn’t apply in every situation, just to my work.” Her mother sighed. “You simply made assumptions . . . in the state you were in at the time. You couldn’t see clearly. It might have been—and it’s pure supposition, don’t misunderstand me—it might have been that Katja actually got the knife out to help you. And it wouldn’t surprise me if she . . . if she suddenly realized what a dreary life that was. A woman preparing beans in the kitchen for fifteen people while they’re outside taking in the sunshine.”
“What are you trying to say? That I . . . that this . . . my life was so demoralizing that Katja killed—”
“No, for God’s sake! I just meant you do not have the foggiest notion what was going on in Katja’s head during those few seconds, and that there is no causal connection between you losing your temper for a minute in the kitchen and what followed. The chain of events had begun much earlier, and you couldn’t have done a thing to break it.”
Lori heard a lawyer’s voice now and not her mother’s. Moments like these used to intimidate her, but now the factual tone of voice was reassuring.
“And something else, Lori. This should really stay between us. Her parents needn’t know what went on. We don’t know the truth and never will, and it would be no consolation for her parents. It would only open up old wounds—and for what purpose? We still wouldn’t be able to clear anything up.”
“So still keep it a secret?”
“It’s an act of love toward the parents, who obviously have found some kind of peace. They could decide they themselves were to blame for not giving Katja money. But that wouldn’t have helped their daughter either—just the opposite. And now dry your tears, my dear girl.”
“Mom, have you sometimes cried . . . after Dad and Clifford’s accident?”
“Yes, of course, but never in front of you. In bed, occasionally. There are . . . certain things over which we have no influence, Lori. And things we can’t prevent. To come to this realization you often need . . . I’d call it a certain humility toward life.”
“Thank you, Mom, for everything. And for the beautiful care package. I was thrilled.”
“You see? It’s the little things that count. I must be off, meeting to get to, but I wanted to give you a quick call—you’re very important to me.”
“You’re important to me, too, Mom, really important.”
Lori rarely expressed her feelings to her mother. Lisa Finning didn’t seem to need her to. But this time, Lori could hear the speechless surprise at the other end.
A brief pause, and then a slightly shaky voice said, “I’m lucky to have a daughter like you.” After her confession, Lisa Finning hung up quickly.
Lori wandered through the house like a sleepwalker, from the living room to the kitchen, down to the basement, upstairs again to her office. Then she settled into a seat by the large window. Fog lay on the hills behind the cove. The street was shiny and wet, and a light breeze blew the smoke from the chimneys to the northwest. She hadn’t mentioned Reanna’s disappearance or the bind Noah was in to her mother, and certainly hadn’t said a word about her own misgivings.
Maybe it was better; her mother would have warned her to keep her nose out of things, but it was already too late.
Lori got out her diary and filled several pages.
She finally conceded she was hungry; she’d eaten nothing since breakfast.
It was getting on toward evening when she was in the laundry room and heard a car drive up fast. Then somebody at the side door.
She hurried to the stairs and found Noah standing there. She was startled by the exhausted look on his face. He simply stared at her, saying not a word. She went over and took his calloused, freezing cold hand.
“Come in,” she said.
She filled the kettle, but Noah waved her off.
“I’ve got to get back right away. We’re going out again to keep up the search.”
She turned around.
“Noah, what exactly happened? I’ve got to know.”
He rubbed his forehead as if to collect his thoughts.
“She came to the landing stage while I was cleaning up. Asked if I could take her over to Frenchman’s Hill. Wanted to see the cemetery for a story.”
“And what time was that?”
“Seven or half past. She said John Glaskey would bring her back. John sometimes checks on his sheep on the island. So I dropped her off there and came back. Then I heard the next day that Will Spence was looking for her. And for me, too, because somebody saw me in the boat with her. Told him to go ask John Glaskey, that he picked her up. But John said she never asked him. He’d never talked to her.”
She watched Noah as calmly as she could.
“Would John have lied?”
Noah shook his head.
“John’s an honest man. Known him a long time. No, I really don’t think so.”
“Why did Reanna ask you? I mean, of all the fishermen?”
He looked at her in bewilderment.
“I . . . I was the only one down there. Nobody else.”
“And why did you agree so fast? Why did you go along with it?”
Noah frowned. He avoided her gaze, looked out the window.
Lori suspected it was his way of keeping his emotions in check.
“It’s not what you think. That . . . no . . . it’s not that.” He stopped, groping for the right words. “But there is something . . . I had a suspicion. You should know that Reanna . . . she’s a dead ringer for Glowena.”
“Glowena Parsons.”
“Yes.” He still stared out the window.
She didn’t recognize her own voice when she asked, “And that’s why you want to be with Reanna?”
“I thought . . . I wanted to find out if she was my daughter.”
His words exploded in the quiet room.
“Your daughter? You and Glowena had a daughter?”
Noah’s face puckered up, as if a branding iron had been planted on his skin.
“When Glowena left, there . . . it was rumored she was pregnant.”
“By you?”
“Yes.”
“And? Did she ever come back to see you about it?”
No . . . and I never heard anything about her for the longest time. It’s possible that . . . her parents would have done everything in their power to see that we’d never get in touch. Six years ago she came back for her great-aunt’s funeral, and we talked just for a bit.”
Lori stared at him. Then she laid her hand on his arm.
“Noah, I think that if she had a child by you, the Parsons would have come to see you. They’d have made you pay child support. They wouldn’t have let you get away with it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He muttered some incomprehensible words while gazing at the floor. He seemed overwhelmed by the events washing over him.
She increased the pressure on his arm.
“Noah, Reanna is not your daughter. She’s not Glowena’s either. I know that for a fact.”
“What . . . why do you think . . .”
She took her hand away and stepped back a little.
“Somebody made some inquiries about her. It . . . I thought it very peculiar that she knew all kinds of personal things about me, and that she showed up here and challenged me about them. I wondered why she was so weirdly interested in me and my family.”
She folded her arms.
“A friend of mine knows everybody who’s anybody in the media, and she found out that Reanna Sholler was a gossip reporter for a Vancouver tabloid. But she got caught using other people’s work—plagiarizing. She was kicked off the paper, but her father had connections with the publisher of the Cape Lone Courier in Halifax and got her the job here.”
Noah looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Her biological father,” Lori emphasized, “and her biological mother is an interior decorator with wealthy clients on the North Shore in Vancouver. Reanna was born in Montreal. Her real name’s Annabelle.”
“She’s not from Ontario?”
“No, and not from Timmins and not from Trifton. Reanna most certainly didn’t want anybody here to find out who she was and why she’d lost her job in Vancouver.”
Noah shook his head in disbelief.
“But she’s a dead ringer for Glowena.”
“But not you,” Lori remarked drily. “You should see my mom—no resemblance whatsoever. At least not outwardly.”
She withheld the fact that her friend Danielle had also tracked Glowena Parsons to Alberta and sent Lori a photograph of her. Noah’s ex might have been pretty as a picture once, but the woman in that photo looked haggard. Lori felt sorry for her. Maybe Glowena had given up somehow, after her younger sister’s death.
Lori had something else on the tip of her tongue.
“Noah, was Reanna wearing a life jacket when she was with you?”
He pondered for a moment.
“Yes.”
“What color?”
“Yellow. All ours are yellow. Why?”
“Noah, it would be smart if you went to the police and told them that right now. Don’t wait for them to come to you.”
His face shut down immediately, and Lori saw she was up against a brick wall.
“I haven’t done anything. Why should I talk to them? If they want something from me, they can come and get it.”
“The police need your help. Every detail’s important.”
Noah clammed up.
He can be so damn stubborn, she thought. That must have got him into trouble the last time.
“Gotta go. The guys are waiting,” he said abruptly, making for the stairs. Then he turned around.
“She didn’t give it back to me, the life jacket. I didn’t even notice.”
When the door shut, Lori was too exhausted to feel anything.
She ran a bath and let the tension flow away in the hot water.
Soap bubbles ran through her fingers.
But the baroness’s voice echoed in her mind as she toweled off and wrapped herself in her bright blue bathrobe later.
One should not associate with certain people.
Why did Reanna have to pick Noah for whatever she wanted to do? As if there weren’t other fishermen she could have asked.
Lori was about to turn off the lamp on her nightstand when an image rose in her mind. An image of Re
anna. She was with someone, but it wasn’t Noah. Where had she seen that image before?
Tomorrow. She’d figure it out tomorrow, Lori resolved, and fell asleep immediately.
CHAPTER 34
Selina Gould stood in her doorway, knitting in one hand, the money Lori gave her in the other. The old woman was incapable of dealing with checks, so she wanted the rent in cash.
“Now they’re looking for a neon-pink jacket,” she said, weighing which to put down first, the wool socks she’d started on or the money. She decided on the money.
Lori followed her into the parlor and sat down.
“A neon-pink jacket? Who’d you hear that from?”
“Mavis. The police want us to be on the lookout for anything pink. The poor girl. They won’t find her. They didn’t find Una.”
“I thought Una ran away.”
“Why should she? Cletus always treated her well. She had a house, and Cletus bought her a car: a Corvette. The sporty model. She had it good.” Selina sounded resentful.
“What happened to the car?”
“I sold it to one of Fred Charn’s sons in Saleau Cove.”
“You sold Cletus’s snowmobile too, didn’t you?”
“Yes, to Noah. He had more use for it. I couldn’t steer the thing—far too heavy for me.”
“Selina, I’ve been wanting to ask you something. I found something in the laundry room. It looks like the arrowhead they found in that ancient Indian grave. During the excavations, you know?”
Selina put the bills on her little parlor table loaded with porcelain figurines.
“What did they find?”
Lori explained it in more detail.
“I put that arrowhead on my kitchen table. In Cletus’s house. It wasn’t there afterward. Is it possible you took it? I mean, because you thought it belonged to Cletus?”
Lori wouldn’t have been surprised if Selina had taken offense, but the old woman still seemed not to comprehend what she was trying to say.
“An arrowhead from the excavations? No, Cletus certainly didn’t have anything like that. He never worked there. They didn’t want him. They gave everybody a job except Cletus. And do you know why? Because he wasn’t in the program.”
Stormy Cove Page 30
