The Mirror (Northwest Passage Book 5)

by John A. Heldt

  Ginny glanced at the skipper and smiled.

  "You're just saying that."

  "Have you hit any rocks or oceangoing vessels?"

  "No," Ginny said.

  "Then you're doing it right."

  Ginny smiled again and returned her eyes to the water. She didn't see any rocks or vessels or even troublesome swells but rather a virtually uncluttered inland sea. On the last Saturday of May, Puget Sound was as smooth and inviting as a skating rink in Central Park.

  "Where are we headed?"

  "Right now we're headed to Blake Island. You like salmon?"

  Ginny nodded.

  "Then you'll like Tillicum Village. The folks there cook their salmon over an open flame."

  As a lifelong resident of Seattle, Ginny needed no introduction to Blake Island. She had visited the attraction several times on church and scouting trips, but she had never seen it in 1964 and certainly not in the company of a would-be law student with his hands on her shoulders.

  "Did you do this a lot as a kid?" Ginny asked.

  "You mean go to Blake Island?"

  "Yeah."

  "No. I didn't. In fact, I've been there just twice. Tillicum Village opened only two years ago. Before that, there wasn't much to see except rocks and trees."

  "What about boating in general? Did you do that a lot?" Ginny asked.

  Steve paused before speaking.

  "Yes and no."

  Ginny smiled and glanced over her shoulder.

  "Now, that's the clear answer I was looking for."

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to be vague," Steve said.

  He sighed and tightened his hold on Ginny's shoulders.

  "Truth is, I came out here a lot when I was young. My dad wanted Connie and me to like and appreciate the water, so he took us out in his boats at least once a week in the summer."

  Steve pulled his hands away.

  "Then I took a break from water," he said.

  "You took a break from water?"

  "I did."

  "How does one take a break from water?" Ginny asked.

  "They do it by staying away from it."

  "OK. Now, I'm really lost."

  Steve smiled sadly.

  "When I was twelve, I fell out of a sailboat not far from here and nearly drowned. I was just horsing around in the back of the boat and fell out. I was in the water eight minutes."

  "This water is freezing."

  "It's not quite that cold, but it felt like it that day. I didn't go near the water again for three years. I didn't go in Lake Washington. I didn't even go in swimming pools."

  Ginny looked away for a moment as she tried to juxtapose the image of the confident man behind her with a boy who was afraid to swim even in a pool. Steve Carrington suddenly seemed more human and vulnerable. She liked that.

  "Why did you decide to go back? You obviously like the water now."

  Steve smiled wistfully.

  "I decided to go back because I got tired of seeing my friends have fun at the beach and the pool. I got tired of my kid sister razzing me about being afraid of the water."

  Ginny didn't have trouble imagining that. She could picture Veruca Salt needling others the day she had popped out of the womb.

  "Do you get along with your sister?"

  "I do now. We've never been close, but I think we understand each other better than we used to. Now that Connie's graduating from high school, she looks at the world differently."

  Ginny shifted her eyes to the water and tried to steer the nineteen-foot craft toward the green sliver of land in the distance. She had done a fair job of keeping the boat on the straight and narrow since they had pulled out of Seattle's Salmon Bay marina at ten after ten. Then again, piloting a motorboat was less challenging than driving a muscle car through a school zone.

  "Speaking of graduations, when is yours?" Ginny asked.

  "It's in two weeks – two weeks from today, as a matter of fact."

  "Are you excited?"

  "I'm relieved," Steve said.

  "I'll bet your parents are excited. Parents like graduation ceremonies."

  "My dad's looking forward to it. Mom's a little stressed."

  "Why is that?"

  Steve returned his hands to Ginny's shoulders.

  "She's worried she'll miss something. We actually have two commencements on June 13. Connie graduates from East Shore High in the morning. I graduate from the university that afternoon. Fortunately, the ceremonies are four hours apart."

  "I suppose you'll have a house full of relatives. Katie and I did at our graduation."

  "We'll have a crowded house that night but not the whole weekend. Most of the relatives want to stay in motels and do some sightseeing. Only my grandparents will stay with us."

  "What's going on that night?"

  Steve smiled.

  "Oh, just the other thing that's causing my mom stress."

  Ginny looked at him with bewildered eyes.

  "She's throwing a party for a hundred," Steve said.

  "You've invited a hundred people to your graduation party?"

  "No. We've invited two hundred, but we expect only half to actually show up. At least my mom hopes only that many show up. She's afraid we'll run out of food. She's been trying to find a caterer who is flexible."

  "I can see why she's stressed."

  "She's also trying to line up some music and a bartender. I offered to help with both, but she said she wanted to do it herself. She was born to plan events like this."

  "It sounds like it will be fun," Ginny said.

  Steve pulled her close.

  "It will be more fun if you're there."

  "You want me there?"

  "Of course I do," Steve said.

  Ginny pondered the invitation. Maybe she had underestimated his interest in her. Maybe she was more than just fluff on the side, someone to keep him entertained until he ran off to law school and a life that didn't include nineteen-year-old hitchhikers.

  "I'd love to come. I'll just have to run it past Katie."

  "How come? Do you have something else going on?"

  Ginny shook her head.

  "I haven't planned anything. I just told Katie that I'd spend the day with her. Neither one of us has to work that day."

  "So bring her along. My parents would love to meet her. I'm sure a lot of people would love to meet her."

  "Would you care if she brought a date? She's kind of attached to this guy at the store."

  "Bring him too. If we run out of food, we run out of food. There are worse things that could happen on a Saturday night."

  Ginny looked back at Steve and smiled broadly.

  "I want you to take the wheel."

  "Why?" Steve asked. "Are you getting tired of steering the Titanic?"

  "No."

  Steve looked at her with curious eyes.

  "Then what is it?"

  "It's nothing, really," Ginny said playfully. "I just want to make sure we don't crash on the rocks when I turn around and kiss you."

  CHAPTER 36: KATIE

  Seattle, Washington – Wednesday, June 3, 1964

  The staff lounge was not the biggest room in Greer's Grocery or the most comfortable or even the most brightly lit, but it did have three advantages: it was accessible, quiet, and usually private. Katie pondered these virtues as she gazed across a small table and started what she hoped would be a meaningful conversation.

  "Your mom told me a little about Mitch at dinner last night. She said not a day goes by that she doesn't think about him. How come you don't talk about him?"

  Mike stared back with eyes she had seen before but still couldn't read.

  "There's nothing to talk about. I barely even remember him."

  Katie reached across the table and put her hand on his.

  "He was your brother. Surely you think about him."

  Mike sighed and stared at a bulletin board. The dozen or so notices pinned to the cork advertised everything from changes in workers' compensat
ion laws to staff birthday parties to a 1954 Olds 88 Holiday coupe that Greg Reynolds wanted to unload for six hundred bucks.

  "Of course I think about him," Mike said with an edge in his voice.

  "You don't need to snap, Mike. I'm just curious. He was a part of your family," Katie said. She tightened her grip on his hand. "I want to know more about your family."

  Mike smiled sadly.

  "I'm sorry."

  "It's all right," Katie said.

  "What all did my mom tell you?"

  Katie relaxed and silently cheered when she heard the words. After more than three weeks of trying, she was finally able to get her introverted friend to open up.

  "She said you and Mitch were very similar on the outside and just as different on the inside. I can relate to that. Ginny and I are the same way. Most people think we're copies of each other when, in fact, we're completely different people."

  "I've never had trouble sorting you out," Mike said.

  Katie laughed.

  "You're growing on me, Michael Hayes."

  He smiled warmly.

  "I'll take that as a compliment."

  "You should," Katie said. "I meant it as one."

  Katie sipped from a can of ginger ale. When she saw that Mike had no intention of starting a new topic, she quickly resumed the old.

  "Your mother also told me something else."

  "What's that?"

  "She said that when Mitch died you changed as a person. She said you were like a cub that had lost his mother. You became kind of a loner."

  "Yeah," Mike said. "She got that right. Did she also tell you I was just as bad as Mitch?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I was just as sick."

  "She didn't mention that," Katie said.

  "I'm not surprised. That's the part she doesn't like to talk about. She almost lost both of us."

  Katie cocked her head slightly.

  "Please tell me. I'd like to know what happened."

  "OK. I'll tell you, even though there's not a lot to tell," Mike said. "About the time Mitch started to go downhill, I started to get better. He stayed in the hospital. I came home. By the time he died, I was cancer-free. The doctors called it 'spontaneous regression.'"

  Katie brought a hand to her mouth.

  "Needless to say, they treated me like a medical freak. They tested me for all sorts of things and took a bunch of tissue samples. They did that for more than a year in exchange for paying all of our medical bills, but they never found anything useful."

  "Oh, Mike. I don't know what to say."

  "You don't need to say anything. You don't need to do anything, except maybe treat me like any other guy."

  Katie grinned.

  "Are you sure that's really what you want?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure …"

  Mike laughed.

  "OK. You got me."

  Mike smiled, shook his head, and then gazed at Katie with soft brown eyes that had their own disarming qualities. He reached across the table and put a hand on her cheek.

  "Don't ever change," he said.

  "I don't plan to."

  "I mean it. Don't ever change. You're the best medicine I've ever had."

  Katie smiled sweetly and wallowed in the moment. She couldn't remember a better twenty-minute work break. She started to speak when Ginny, James, Randy, and Greg busted into the staff lounge and turned the accessible, quiet, and usually private place into something that was still accessible, not so quiet, and not even remotely private.

  "I do hope we're not interrupting anything," Ginny said in a Scarlett O'Hara voice.

  Ginny grinned at her twin.

  "You didn't interrupt a thing," Katie said. "We were just leaving."

  "That's good. The cantaloupes are getting kind of mushy. Dave wants you to bring out some fresh ones. I told him that you two were good at fresh and mushy stuff."

  Katie shot her twin a glance that could melt lead. Mike and the others laughed.

  "We're on it," Katie said. "Let's go, Mike."

  Katie got out of her chair and started toward the door but didn't get far. She took two steps before running into Ginny's outstretched arm.

  "This isn't a toll road, Gin. I have to get back to work."

  Ginny smiled mischievously.

  "I'll let you pass, as soon as I learn whether you told Mike about Saturday night."

  "What's Saturday night?" Mike asked.

  "So you didn't say anything?"

  "I didn't get to it yet," Katie said.

  "That's all right," Ginny said. "I'll tell him now."

  Ginny turned to face Mike.

  "We're having an apartment-warming party Saturday, after everyone gets off work. It will be just a quiet little affair for us poor, unwashed courtesy clerks – and Karen and Janet. Will you come?"

  Mike looked at Katie, laughed, and shook his head in amusement. He was clearly warming to the theory that Ginny and Katie had been separated at birth.

  "You're shaking your head, Mike," Ginny said. "People don't shake their head to say yes. Perhaps I should lock my sister in her room until you provide the correct response."

  Mike blushed and squirmed like a person who didn't like to be put on the spot. He glanced at Katie, who beamed, and then at his male peers, who grinned and stared from the safety of the doorway. When he returned to Ginny, he did so with a smile and a nod.

  "Yeah, I'll come. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

  CHAPTER 37: GINNY

  Friday, June 5, 1964

  Ginny pulled the tab off a can of root beer, examined it for a moment, and slid it on a finger. She held it up to the kitchen light and then turned to face her sister, who seemed engrossed in a newspaper article about malaria in central Africa.

  "What do you think, Katie?"

  "What do I think of what?"

  "What do you think of pull tabs as rings?" Ginny asked.

  "I think your idle mind is the devil's workshop."

  Ginny smiled.

  "You have no imagination," Ginny said. "I think they have serious potential. They look nice, don't cost a lot, and could double as weapons. Remember that on your next date."

  Katie lifted her eyes from the paper, which she had spread across the table. She had opened every part of the paper except the sports section and the wedding announcements.

  "Are you going out with Saint Steven tonight?" Katie asked.

  Ginny shook her head.

  "He's preparing for his finals this weekend. I'll be lucky if I see him before graduation."

  "That's too bad," Katie said matter-of-factly. She returned to the paper.

  Ginny pulled the ring off her finger and placed it on the table.

  "When is Mike coming for you?"

  "He should be here in a few minutes."

  "What movie are you going to?"

  "I think From Russia with Love. I didn't ask."

  "You two aren't getting serious, are you?"

  Katie lifted her eyes again.

  "We're just friends, Gin. I told you that yesterday," Katie said somewhat defensively. "I like Mike. I like him a lot, but I'm not going to break my promise. We're just going to be friends."

  "OK. OK. I'm only checking. Don't get your panties in a wad."

  The doorbell rang.

  "I'll get it," Katie said.

  "No," Ginny said. She smiled mischievously. "I'll get it. I have a responsibility as your sister to screen your dates."

  Ginny laughed when she saw Katie shake her head and return to the paper. She got up from the kitchen table and walked through the apartment to the front door, where she fully expected to meet Mike Hayes and give him a bad time before he whisked Katie away to Russia. When she opened the door, however, she found someone smaller, shorter, and decidedly more feminine.

  "Hi, Cindy."

  "Hi," Cindy Jorgenson said. "My mom sent me over to give you these."

  "What are they?"

  "Cookies."

  Cindy held out heav
en in a box.

  "Do you want us to buy them? If you do, we will."

  "No. Just take them. My mom already bought them."

  Ginny took the box and gazed at her neighbor and future grandmother. Wearing a crisp white blouse, a pristine green skirt, and a sash full of badges, Cindy looked like a Girl Scout fit for the cover of a teen magazine or even the canvas of a Norman Rockwell painting.

  "Thanks," Ginny said.

  Ginny tilted the box, saw the words "chocolate" and "mint" on the label, and smiled. She loved this girl already.

  "Are you busy right now?"

  "No," Cindy said. "I just got done eating dinner."

  "Do you want to come in and visit for a while? Katie's here too."

  "OK."

  "Come on in then. Katie's in the kitchen."

  Ginny held the door open and stepped aside as the fourteen-year-old entered the apartment and made her way through a residence she knew well. When Ginny, trailing a few steps behind, reached the kitchen, she glanced at Katie and saw that she had figured out that the doorbell ringer was not a handsome grocery boy with a bouquet of flowers.

  Katie stood near the table with her hand on a chair she had pushed in. She had already reassembled Friday's Seattle Sun and put it in an out-of-the-way place on the counter.

  "Hi, Cindy," Katie said.

  "Hi."

  "Cindy brought us dessert," Ginny said.

  "I heard," Katie said. "I see she brought our favorite too."

  Katie glanced at the girl.

  "We just bought a case of root beer. Would you like one?"

  Cindy nodded.

  "OK. Let me get it," Katie said. "Take a seat."

  Ginny pulled out a chair at the dining table and seated the guest. When Katie returned with an opened can of pop, Ginny sat in her own chair and took another look at the girl next door.

  "I like your uniform," she said. "I used to wear one of those."

  "Me too," Katie said. "Have you been out selling cookies today?"

  "No," Cindy said. "We stopped selling a month ago. We're delivering now."

  "Do we owe you any money for these?"

  Cindy shook her head.

  "Virginia already paid for them," Ginny said.

  "That was nice of her," Katie said. She returned to her chair and sat down. "It was nice of you to bring them over. Thank you."

  "You're welcome," Cindy said. She turned a pleasant shade of pink.