by Henry, Sue
How lucky I’ve been, she thought, remembering Jensen’s gentle ways and appealing sense of humor. They had come to a seemingly inevitable parting; but she had missed him, terribly at first, more poignantly now. Though she had pushed it firmly from her mind, the last few weeks had been emotionally empty, and she had kept herself very busy training the dogs and going on long runs on the back of her sled that took all her energy and brought her home tired in the evening. Still, while it lasted, the relationship had been a good one—never abusive in any way, not adversarial or competitive, but honest and worthwhile. Their personal dedications had simply been dissimilar, and the road they traveled together had reached a definite junction. Both would have been diminished had either of them elected to follow the other’s path. But the parting had been mutually sad.
She couldn’t help being glad that Anne had finally found the courage to leave her abusive husband and hoped she would soon find a place where Greg Holman wouldn’t find her—where she would be safe and could start over with some degree of confidence. She would do what she could to help her and stop demanding answers that Anne was unwilling to provide, ones that understandably embarrassed her. If she wanted to talk, fine, but Jessie decided she would stop probing. It was Anne’s business, after all, not hers.
Opening her eyes, she took another long look around at the gleaming sun on the snow and spruce, and smiled. Whatever the reason, she was glad to have made this trip. The sunrise on Mount McKinley alone had made it worth coming all the way to the Little Peters Hills, to say nothing of the present warmth on her face and the clear air, lightly scented with wood smoke from the fire they had built.
The fire. Anne would probably have finished digging out the thawed dirt and be ready to build another. Time to get back with the wood she had collected. Gathering it up, she headed up the hill.
But when she reached the spot between the two trees, Anne was nowhere to be seen. There was part of a hole where the fire had been, but it looked as if she had stopped digging almost as soon as Jessie had left. She was gone and so was the shovel. Jessie dropped the wood she had brought and stood looking around. Probably taking a bathroom break, she thought, and waited a few minutes, expecting Anne to reappear, adjusting her clothes. When she didn’t, Jessie walked a little way up the hill, looking, then called her name, but received no response.
“Anne?” she shouted. “Anne, where are you?”
There was no answer.
Then she noticed the tracks in the snow that led away from the spot where they had made the fire, and she followed them through the trees to a small clearing that continued for about ten yards along the slope. Across the middle of it were the unmistakable impressions Anne had made floundering in snow that had come well above her knees. The wallowing trail disappeared between two more narrow spruce. Again, Jessie followed.
As she neared the trees, she began to hear something—a rhythmic sound, like a repeated cough. Stopping to listen, she realized she was hearing sobs. Carefully, she moved past the trees until she could see Anne’s back and shaking shoulders. She was on her knees at the base of a large, snow-capped boulder. Days of sun on its dark, sheltering surface had melted a small patch of ground bare of snow next to it, softening the earth a little. As Jessie came up behind her, she could see that Anne had scraped away at this bare spot until she made another shallow hole. She was leaning over, looking into it, rocking back and forth and crying so bitterly she did not hear Jessie’s approach.
“Anne. What is it? What’s wrong?”
The woman swung around defensively, eyes swollen and streaming tears, wiping at her nose with a parka sleeve, but staying on her knees.
“N-no,” she wailed, desperately waving Jessie away.
Ignoring her motion and cry, Jessie stepped up to stand beside her and look into the hole that had been laboriously scratched out of the half-frozen earth.
Her first thought was that the bones were those of an animal—a dog, perhaps, that Anne had loved and buried when it died. Then, she noticed the metal box in which they lay, the stained fabric Anne had carefully folded back, and recognized their shape and size.
Horrified, she realized that she was looking at the bones of a child so small it could only have died at birth or before.
Or been killed.
Oh, no.
No?
10
JESSIE STOOD STARING DOWN AT THE TINY BONES, ANNE Holman sobbing beside her. This discovery was such a shock she couldn’t seem to gather her thoughts or know what to feel. Laying a sympathetic hand gently on her friend’s shoulder, she simply stayed where she was and waited for the tears of grief and regret to end and some explanation to begin. When the sobbing finally slowed, she pulled a handful of tissues from her parka pocket and handed them to Anne.
“Here. Leave it. Let’s go build another fire and make some tea.”
Anne nodded but, without a word, carefully folded the fabric back over the small skeleton, replaced the lid on the metal box, and picked it up. Now that she had found it, she obviously wasn’t going to rebury or leave it. Clutching it close with one hand, using the other for balance while wallowing back across the deep snow, she stumbled half blind through the trees to the place they had built the first fire, and sat down on the log to watch as Jessie lit the wood she had collected. Neither woman said anything until the water boiled under Jessie’s camp kettle and they each had a mug of tea in hand.
Anne had laid the metal box beside her on the log in order to take the steaming mug. Jessie sat down with it between them, laid her fingertips on what she could only consider a small coffin, and, remembering her earlier decision not to force facts from Anne, spoke softly.
“Do you want to tell me about this?”
Anne sipped her tea, took a shaky breath, and exhaled a deep sigh in a mist that was visible on the air for a moment. “I guess I’d better. Right?”
“I’d like to know.”
“There’s a lot you don’t understand.”
“Um-m-m.”
“It’s mine. At least it was mine.”
Jessie waited.
“You see, after the fire that killed Cal’s kids, I found out I was pregnant. I panicked—didn’t know what to do. There was that whole investigation going on—Tatum so damned obsessed with proving I was responsible. Cal and I weren’t even speaking anymore. He was telling Tatum all sorts of things that weren’t true. I was terrified that if I told anyone I was pregnant, Tatum would find out, tell everyone it was Cal’s, and use it to prove I’d had a reason to start the fire.”
It could have provided a motive, Jessie thought, but didn’t say so—a motive for Anne or Mulligan or his wife. Sandra? Sharon? Shana. She frowned a little, wondering.
“But I’d met Greg,” Anne continued. “He liked me—really liked me—said he loved me. When he asked me to get married, I said yes. It solved everything. Do you see?”
“Yes, I guess it would have, wouldn’t it? But you didn’t love him?”
“No, you’re right—I didn’t, but I didn’t have much of a choice, did I? But I got to care about him—later. That’s part of why I didn’t leave him before.”
What had happened to make Anne leave him now? Jessie questioned. There must have been something—a reason.
“Did you tell him?”
“About the baby? God, no. I meant to, but then I just couldn’t. I was afraid he wouldn’t marry me.”
“So you let him think it was his?”
“Yeah. I know that was bad, but I was really scared, Jessie. What would you have done? It wasn’t my fault.”
I wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place, Jessie thought.
“Why didn’t you…?” she began, slowly.
“Get an abortion? I thought about it, but I’m Catholic—sort of—used to be anyway. Besides, I wanted it—really wanted it.”
“Why?”
Anne’s expression of disbelief told Jessie that her friend couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting a child.<
br />
“You know. Doesn’t everyone love children? It would have been someone of my own—someone who would love me. I always wanted that. It would have made everything okay.”
Jessie wondered what everything was to Anne, mentally winced at the word own and the assumption of such requited love. “Did Greg want it?”
“Well—no. That got to be another problem. He didn’t want kids at all. Said that with the world the way it is—violent—and no child got the choice to be born—he didn’t want to make that choice for it. When he found out I was pregnant—that’s when he started hitting me.”
“So, you were pregnant when I knew you.”
“Yeah, but you left before it showed much. It was winter. I was always in fat clothes anyway—sweaters, parka, that kind of stuff. It was easy to hide.”
“So what happened? And what are you going to do with that?” Jessie pointed at the metal box that held the tiny bones.
“I’m going to take it to the police, so I can prove Greg killed it. They must have some way of proving how it was killed. Then they’ll put him in jail and I can go where I want and stop worrying about him finding me—hurting me. And they’ll know for sure I didn’t start that fire at Mulligans. Then I’m going to bury it someplace better than up here—with a stone and everything.”
Jessie was momentarily speechless. She stared at Anne and thought hard about this idea. How was she rationalizing all that from a few small bones in a metal box? Was she delusional?
“He killed it?”
“Of course. I wanted it.”
“So you’re going to tell them all of it? Even with Tatum still suspicious? He won’t believe you.”
“Well—I don’t like that part of it, but—if I go to the police instead—”
“It’ll be the troopers, Anne. This didn’t happen in town. It happened out here, right?”
“Yeah, well—whatever. At least it won’t be Tatum. It’ll get him off of me.”
“It won’t when he finds this out—and that somebody burned your cabin ten years ago.”
“Greg burned the cabin. How can that hurt me?”
“Can you prove that?”
Anne thought about it.
“How could I have done it? He’s the one who kept burning stuff. You can tell them that.”
“I told you, I don’t remember that.”
“But you could tell them that.”
“I won’t lie, Anne.”
They stared at each other, each astonished that they couldn’t agree on something so basic.
“It wouldn’t really be a lie,” Anne said, finally. “It happened. You just don’t remember.”
Jessie shook her head and stood up. “It would be a lie, because I don’t remember any such thing.”
Anne frowned and refused to look up at her.
“Come on.” Jessie changed the subject. “Let’s put out the fire and finish digging up your money.”
“Don’t bother,” Anne spit the words at her, angry and impatient. “There isn’t anything there. This is what I really wanted.” She picked up the metal box again and hugged it.
Jessie was suddenly furious, sympathy disappearing like fog in sunlight. Another lie. How many had she been told? Was there truth buried anywhere in any of this?
“Why can’t you just be honest with me?” she demanded. “You keep telling one lie after another, then expect me to help with whatever you want—whatever you think you need—to trust you—even lie for you. How can I?”
Grabbing up the shovel, she stomped off through the snow, around what remained of the ruin of the Holman cabin, toward her sled and team, ready to harness them together and quickly get away from this place and the whole unsettling situation. Once again, all she wanted was Anne Holman out of her life—to be home in her own, much-loved cabin, in peace and security, with nothing to interrupt what was important to her—the spring training of her young dogs.
“I just want to get out of here,” Anne called after her, echoing her thoughts.
“You’ve got that right,” Jessie replied, without turning. “As fast as I can manage it.”
Falling to her knees in the snow to pet Tank and croon indulgent phrases concerning his trustworthiness, she didn’t see the look of sullen resentment on Anne’s face as she watched her go or hear the curses mouthed behind her back.
An hour later, Anne in the sled once again, dogs pulling happily, they were back on the trail, heading toward the Forks Roadhouse, Petersville Road, and the Kroto Creek pull-out, where Jessie’s truck waited.
Anne had sulked but had helped to collect their belongings from the cabin. She had put the metal box with its infant bones in her day pack and held it on her lap in the sled. Jessie had noticed that she had no trouble making room in the pack for the box and wondered what Anne had discarded, for it had been full on the trip into Little Peters Hills. Unwilling to initiate another argument with her stubbornly resentful passenger, however, she asked no questions. What could it matter, anyway?
She made no stops on the trip down, but maintained a steady pace and they arrived back at the pickup at a little after noon. Though it was a brilliant sunny day—mild, with no wind—that made for extremely pleasant running, invisible angry thunderclouds had continued to hang over the sled and its riders, so Jessie had simply pretended she was alone and enjoyed the efficient working of her dogs in their spectacular surroundings. The summit of Mount McKinley had continued clear, with only a small cap of cloud that hung above it like a halo. The shining crystal white of its glaciers, ridges, and slopes fell like a robe with deep-blue shadows between the folds, bringing a smile to mind as she envisioned an enormous angel, minus the wings.
Arriving at Kroto Creek, Jessie found two young men loading their heavy snowmachines onto a trailer behind their truck. They greeted her with recognition, friendly smiles, and interest in her team, asking permission to pet the dogs and asking a few questions about distance racing. Anne had silently and immediately climbed into the pickup, leaving Jessie to unharness and load her dogs. It exasperated her that she had to ask the snowmachiners to help her lift the long sled to the top of the dog box and secure it for travel, though they were happy to assist.
As soon as Jessie had driven east on Petersville Road, reached Trapper Creek, and swung her truck back onto the Parks Highway, heading south toward Wasilla, Anne, who had said nothing, curled up facing the passenger window and went to sleep, or pretended to, clutching the day pack with its sad contents. It was a long, unhappy return trip, with no conversation.
Jessie was not displeased to be able to ignore her companion and consider the unsettling events of the last two days that had seemed to happen one after another, without warning or cessation, leaving her off balance and struggling for answers—and peace. Fires, demands, secrets, deceit—now this problem of a more deadly nature, contained in a metal box. It all felt confusingly out of control—as if somehow it had nothing, yet everything, to do with her. Had she had choices? Had she made bad ones? Could she have anticipated and avoided them? She felt exhausted and discouraged, as if she had seen only the middle part of some action-adventure movie, with no way of knowing how it had started or would end.
She flipped on the radio, searching for some upbeat music to take her mind off the problems at hand, and caught the last few bars of a country-western song she almost recognized. Still feeling disheartened, she was listening with only half her attention, when the bright introductory music-box notes of an old Stevie Nicks’ song filled the cab, catching her off guard and vulnerable. It was a tune of such an infectious rhythm that she had hardly been able to sit still when it played. Together, she and Alex Jensen had danced to it—and smiled at the words, for some of them held fairly accurate personal meanings. Phrases like “have my own life” and “stronger than you know” had made Alex grin and point a defining finger in her direction. Others, like “lovers forever,” had never passed without a hug and a moment of sweetness. Coming now, out of nowhere, it brought sudden tears that
blurred the road, as she suddenly missed him with an intensity that closed her throat and turned in her stomach like a shard of glass.
“Dammit.” Angrily, she twisted the radio knob and the music disappeared into static. Switching it off, Jessie swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Whatever happened to normal people?
Anne shifted position slightly, but did not respond.
No more, Jessie told herself, with an impulsive surge of energy.
So, what can you do?
I can stop letting things just happen. I can take control of what’s going on that concerns me.
Like?
Like making sure that someone who knows what to do finds out about the remains of her baby.
Tatum?
No. I don’t like Tatum or trust him. Becker would be better. I can also make sure that Anne leaves my house. I won’t be responsible for her, or her problems, any longer.
That’s reasonable, probably best, but…It’s really not your responsibility. Let her do what she says she wants to. But if she doesn’t…
No buts. She promised to go. Tomorrow she will.
Why not tonight?
I’m too tired. I don’t want to get involved in any more lies—or any long explanations to Becker tonight. It can wait till tomorrow. That’s soon enough.
It wouldn’t be, but Jessie had no more way of knowing that than she could have predicted what they had found at the cabin site in the Little Peters Hills.
When they arrived at her cabin on Knik Road, Jessie spent two hours with Billy and her dogs, feeding and watering, appreciating them, checking the health and welfare of each. Then she went into the puppy pen and lost herself in their half-grown enthusiasms and clownish behavior for half an hour, which brought back some of her good humor.
Anne had made dinner for them both and packed up all her things in preparation for leaving the next day. They ate with hardly a word, and it was clear she was still bitter with unreasonable resentment.
After dinner, she disappeared for a long shower, leaving Jessie to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen. By the time she came out almost an hour later, Jessie, wanting a shower herself, was gritting her teeth with irritation. This did not lessen when she found that Anne had made a wreck of the small bathroom. Damp towels had been left on the floor; the soap lay dissolving in the bottom of the shower; and the sink was covered with toothpaste, short pieces of hair, a used razor blade, and a streak or two of blood, where Anne had evidently shaved her legs and cut herself. Altogether unacceptable and distasteful, it exasperated Jessie further to have to clean the room before she could comfortably clean herself.
