St. Elias

by Meris Lee

  »»•««

  Sergeant’s Wolfe was waiting for Elias when she returned to Katy’s cabin. He was on the porch, talking to a bearded man in a flannel shirt and scruffy jeans. She eyed the stranger and felt an unexplainable fear rising within her.

  “Miss Dodsen,” said the trooper, tipping his hat.

  “How can I help you, sir?’ she asked, cautiously.

  “Where’s Nadine?” the stranger asked, adding profanity at the end of the question, his breath a mixture of tobacco and liquor.

  “Who?”

  “Miss Dodsen,” said Wolfe. “Gina, whose real name is Nadine and who pretended to be a college student from Washington, stole from Mr. Ted Jackson here and assaulted him before she ran away from Texas. Can you tell me where she is?”

  “I have no idea.” She clutched her grocery bag tightly, her hands shaking.

  “You lying—” Jackson raised his fist, and she instinctively stepped back.

  “Let me handle this,” Wolfe said, holding Jackson away. He turned to her. “When all of you strangers showed up early in the summer and ended up in Katy’s cabin, I had to check your backgrounds in order to protect Katy from troublemakers. Shuping’s from China, so I had no way to verify her identity, but I couldn’t find anything on you or Gina, either. Now you both have a southern accent, and so I gave your pictures to my buddies down south. They found a missing person in Texas that matched your profile, and that was when I came up here to talk to you the first time. But when they mailed the final results to me, I realized the names were switched accidentally, and the match to the missing person was Gina. I wanted to talk to her first, but one of my buddies already contacted her husband, Mr. Jackson here, and he showed up at my office this morning. Miss Dodsen, Gina committed a crime. For Katy’s safety, I’d appreciate your help in removing her from the town.”

  Elias, her heart racing, could hardly catch her breath. It was pure luck Wolfe did not first come across her file. Could Gina have stolen from this repulsive Mr. Jackson and assaulted him? If she had, she must have a good reason for it. “Well, sir…” Elias said, her voice trembling. “Gina’s gone. I haven’t seen her in nearly two weeks.”

  Wolfe stared down at her sharply, his face cross and his lips tensed. “All right. We will check her work site next.”

  Jackson smacked his fist against the cabin door, and the whole place shook, so it rattled Elias with fear. “I’ll get her. And when I catch that cunning witch I’m gonna pay her back the hurt, with interest.” He stormed away from the cabin porch.

  “I can’t believe you’d bring a man like that into Katy’s house,” said Elias, staring back at Wolfe despite her fear.

  “No one can run from their past, Miss Dodsen,” Wolfe said as he got back on his ATV.

  Elias shivered as Wolfe drove off with Jackson. As soon as they were out of sight, she took off in the direction of Andy’s store, the can of shaving cream and lipstick clinking and clunking along in her grocery bag as she ran. She had to tell Katy right away, and Andy was the one who could call her on the satellite phone. They had to come up with a plan for when Gina returned. Otherwise, Jackson and Wolfe were going to wreak havoc.

  Elias blasted through the front of Andy’s store without acknowledging the girl behind the counter and went straight to Andy’s office. She rammed on the office door. “Andy, are you in there?” She shouted.

  The door was opened, but to her surprise, it was Sam on the other side. “Elias,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  “I…Sam…” she said, astounded and breathless. “Gina…”

  “Yes?” Gina appeared from behind Sam.

  Surprised, Elias stared at her friend. What was she doing there? Nothing made sense.

  “Why don’t you come in?” Sam took Elias’s hand and led her to a chair in Andy’s office. “How about some water, Andy?”

  Andy brought her a glass of water. She took a sip, and, feeling rather confused but comforted by the presence of her friends, said, more calmly now, “Wolfe brought a man called Ted Jackson from Texas to Katy’s cabin just now. They were looking for you, Gina.”

  Gina covered her mouth, a look of shock and fear in her eyes. She turned and threw herself in Sam’s arms. “What am I going to do? He’s going to kill me!”

  “I won’t let him,” said Sam, his hand on Gina’s hair. “You can stay with me as long as necessary.”

  “Thank you, Sam,” said Gina, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’ve been so good to me the last couple of weeks.”

  Elias swallowed hard. She watched as Gina sobbed in Sam’s hold and he tried to comfort her by stroking her hair. When did they become so close? They were indeed together in Atlanta! Elias knew now wasn’t the time, but the heat of jealousy was burning inside her. She clenched her jaw. Her hands, resting on her lap with the bag of cosmetics still wrapped around her wrist, shook with unreasonable anger. “So, is Nadine your real name?”

  Gina raised her head from Sam’s chest and looked at Elias, who continued to say, “Did you steal from your husband, Ted Jackson?”

  Gina shook her head, and then she looked at Sam, pleadingly. “I did what I had to do.”

  “Did you beat him up, too?” asked Elias.

  “Elias,” said Gina. “It’s complicated.”

  “So, it’s all true?” said Elias. “Did you know, Sam?”

  “There’s no time to explain,” said Sam. “Gina, let’s go back to my place, and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  “I’ll find Katy,” said Andy, heading out of his office. “We’ll meet up soon, Sam.”

  “Elias,” said Sam as he held Gina’s arm and helped her walk out of Andy’s office. “Take care of yourself.”

  Sure, I would, why wouldn’t I, since no one was looking out after me, thought Elias. She left Andy’s store and walked back alone to Katy’s cabin. She went inside and caught sight of herself in the mirror hanging next to the door. She studied the features of her own face, and she ran her fingers through her thick, black hair. She ought to be glad, she told herself. She wanted Gina to be with Sam, so what was there to be upset about? Gina’s life had been hard, and she deserved a turnaround. Sam seemed to be the willing savior. He looked strong and dependable. Gina would be happy with him.

  Although her heart still ached, she chastised herself now for being mean-spirited toward Gina in front of Sam. Her feelings toward him had worsened her impulsive nature, the irrational, immature self she was so eager to cast off. She looked into the grocery bag still hanging from her arm, shook her head, and tossed the whole thing in the trash.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Elias was alone for the next couple of days. Sam had not returned to work at the visitor center. Andy had closed up shop. Katy had not come home at all. She could only assume they were all busily engaged in a plan to liberate Gina. None of them bothered to send her a message. Shuping and Chen Guo had also left as planned. The day had started to shorten, and the world looked so lonesome to her now. August was just around the corner, and soon, she knew, it would be her turn to leave.

  She finally took a hike up the Root Glacier Trail one afternoon. It had been raining off and on, and the air was wet with moisture. Groups of ice climbers walked past her with their crampons and axes hanging from their shoulders, boasting to one another the adventures they embarked on in the past. Elias wondered whether anyone of them went to prison. Surely, there ought to be other former felons around beside her. She had heard the incarceration rate in the United States was the highest in the world, holding somewhere between twenty and twenty-five percent of all the world’s prisoners. In Texas, something like one out of a hundred adults was behind bars. Chances were good some of these tourists were locked up at some point in their lives.

  But it wasn’t a conversation people would discuss so proudly as their birthplaces or schools they attended. Incarceration was shame, painful, humiliating shame, which, like ancestry and education, followed one e
verywhere, for life. Employers and neighbors would always be suspicious, and who would mention prison on their first dates? And so, Elias concluded, even if she were to complete her parole and become legally free, the shackles of this shame would forever bind her, holding her back.

  The last part of the trail was over bare, rocky terrain with an open view of the blue Kennicott Glacier, its large waves frozen like in a freeze frame photo. At the end of the trail, Elias was able to put one foot on the glacier and the other on land, and this amused her. She walked a little on the glacier before heading back on the trail. To her surprise, she saw a black bear looking down at her from an outcropping overgrown with soapberry bushes a few yards in front of her. She was seized with fear. She held her breath and stood still. Finally, the bear turned and disappeared into the bushes. She exhaled a sigh of relief, but she was giggling inside. She could not believe she was that close to a bear! If only there were someone to share it with… All of a sudden, an overwhelming sense of loneliness took hold of her, and the giggles died as she began her hike back to town.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Take the box of leftover red velvet cake with you,” Mr. Mason said to Elias while closing up the kitchen one evening.

  “I can’t eat all the cake by myself,” she said. “No one’s home but me.”

  “Take it,” said Mr. Mason, rubbing his pot belly. “It’s so good I can’t stop eating it, so get it out of my kitchen pronto.”

  Elias wasn’t in the mood to argue, and so she picked up the box on her way out. She went into the hotel lobby to pick up a copy of the USA Today and stopped to chat with the hotel clerk on duty. She left a slice of the cake with him and gave another slice to a guest lounging on the couch. It was chilly that night, and the fireplace looked exceedingly welcome. She decided to sit by it and read her newspaper while enjoying a slice of the cake with a cup of complimentary hotel coffee.

  Half an hour later, the hotel clerk reminded her it was getting dark soon, and she reluctantly left her warm seat by the fireplace. She walked out of the hotel lobby with the box of leftover cake.

  “Elias,” said a familiar voice.

  She stopped in her track and saw Sam standing in front of her. She was so surprised that all her muscles froze up and the only thing she could feel was her heart galloping in her chest. “Sam? What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I thought your shift was over thirty minutes ago. I saw Mr. Mason leave through the back door.”

  “I was reading the newspaper and eating cake by the fire in the lobby.” She tried to suppress a grin so as not to seem obvious that she was overjoyed to see him.

  “Did you save me any cake?” asked Sam, smiling.

  “Well, I… Let me see.” She nearly dropped the box while opening it, her fingers clumsy from excitement. There was exactly one slice of cake left. “Here you go.”

  He took over the box and promptly took a big bite of the cake. He chewed slowly and seemed to be savoring it before he swallowed it. “This is delectable. Possibly the best red velvet cake I’ve ever had.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” Elias smiled.

  “I’m sorry I brushed you off the first time you wanted me to have it.”

  “And I’m sorry for assuming you were a snob.”

  “Come on,” he said, finishing the rest of the cake and then tossing the box in a trash can nearby. “I’ll take you home.”

  Sam helped Elias get into his car and started down the path toward McCarthy. It was dusk, and the moon could be seen hanging on the horizon. “It’s not safe walking in the dark,” he said. “Come August, you shouldn’t walk home by yourself. If Katy’s too busy to give you a ride, I can take you home, if you don’t mind.”

  Elias blinked, uncertain of what she was hearing. “Where’s Gina? Aren’t you supposed to be taking care of her?”

  “She’s gone. She should be arriving in Shanghai soon.”

  “What?” Elias exclaimed. “Will you please tell me what all happened? I know I’m not considered a friend by any of you, but I find you all very rude to keep treating me like an irrelevant outsider.”

  “Irrelevant? You’re the reason why I got involved to begin with. I think of you as a friend, and I agreed to help Gina because she’s your friend.”

  “Why am I kept in the dark?”

  “It was necessary. I do apologize. Will you allow me to explain?”

  “Please.”

  “The day after you went out with that man from Glennallen—”

  “You mean Josh.”

  “The day after that, Gina and Shuping came to see me. That day when I took Gina home, and you told us Sergeant Wolfe was looking for a runaway from Texas, she had a suspicion that her husband, Ted Jackson, was looking for her. She had run away because he was physically abusive and put her in the hospital several times. One day, when he was drunk and trying to hit her, she knocked him cold with a chair, and took his money so she could get away from Texas.”

  “I knew that man was a scumbag the moment I saw him. Poor Gina,” said Elias.

  “She was afraid her husband would find her no matter where she hid in the United States, and so she wanted to leave the country. She asked Shuping for help. She wanted to know if Shuping would help her go to China, and Shuping said yes.”

  “Wait, was that why Shuping and Chen Guo had to leave in such a hurry, to help Gina?”

  Sam nodded. “Shuping said, with her family’s money and power, no one would be able to touch Gina in Shanghai. But Gina needed a passport fast. So, they came to me. They figured a law school dropout would know a thing or two about that.”

  “And you did.”

  “I didn’t, but my lawyer buddies in Atlanta were able to help out.”

  “So that was why you took Gina there with you.”

  “Yes,” said Sam. “And we didn’t tell anybody because she thought Sergeant Wolfe was onto her already. Andy only found out the plan when she and I got back from Atlanta, and then he told Katy.”

  “Then what happened to all of you? You all just disappeared.”

  “Gina hid in my cabin until we could figure out a plan,” said Sam. “Shuping and Chen Guo were going to drive to Anchorage, but we decided they’d better fly because Sergeant Wolfe and Jackson might be on McCarthy Road. When Katy met up with us, we all crammed into Andy’s plane and took off for Anchorage. It took us another day to get standby seats on a flight for all three of them to fly back to China.”

  Elias shook her head. She was happy Gina escaped, but why wasn’t she included in the whole farewell process? She could’ve crammed into Andy’s plane, too. She wanted to protest, but she didn’t want to whine. So instead, she said, “I can’t believe Wolfe brought a man like Jackson to Katy’s cabin when all the time he claims to be looking after her.”

  “It was an unfortunate lapse of judgment on Sergeant Wolfe’s part,” said Sam, pulling in front of Katy’s cabin and turning off the ignition. “I’m sure he regrets it.”

  “You sound so forgiving. Wolfe called you names,” said Elias as she stepped out of the car.

  “As have many others.” Sam walked around the front of his car to Elias. “I do not condone the behavior, but I do not condemn the person doing it.”

  Elias looked up at him in awe. “You’re incredible.”

  “Thank you.” Sam smiled, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “So, you’ve finally approved of me.”

  “I thought we’d established that the day you saved Wolfe’s life.”

  “That was not how I remembered. And then there was the incident with that man from Glennallen. You went with him to the saloon instead of attending a program organized by yours truly. I was disappointed to think you preferred beers over animals, and you preferred him over me—”

  “I don’t prefer him over you. I like, I mean I…” She couldn’t bring herself to complete the sentence, to tell Sam that she liked him.

  “All is well, Elias,” he said with a g
rin. “I had a talk with Mr. Mason just now, and he cleared some things up for me.”

  “What did he say?” She felt faint, the butterflies in her stomach fluttering at full speed as she recalled how Mr. Mason asked a week ago if she wasn’t in love with Sam.

  Sam gazed at her with an elusive smile, and she trembled, her knees weak, her legs on the verge of giving out. Did he know how she felt about him now? Was he going to say he felt the same way about her? Or was he going to tell her, kindly, that he wasn’t interested in her at all?

  “Well, he said—”

  “Forget it,” she interrupted. She didn’t have the nerve to find out. “It’s late. I should go in. Thank you for the ride. You don’t have to drive me home every night. I can walk back from Kennecott blindfolded.”

  “You know, the way you tilt your head back and roll your eyes when you’re mad or, in this case, nervous, is adorable.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  Sam shrugged. “If you insist on saying good night, I will see you tomorrow after work.”

  “You don’t have to chauffeur me.”

  “I believe Katy is waiting inside the cabin for you. We all just came back from Anchorage. Go in and catch up. Good night.”

  Elias watched Sam take off in his car. The feeling she had for him could be one-sided and might end nowhere, but she was thrilled they would at least have fifteen minutes alone together six nights out of the week. She could get to know much more about him, but would she, could she, reciprocate? He was a federal employee, a civil servant, one with a presumably high moral standard and duty to abide by the law. Would he turn her in if he found out she was not where she was supposed to be? Maybe she could tell him the real story, that she went to prison for her best friend, but would he believe her? And would that stop him from reporting her? She shook her head. She had vowed never to betray Ce’Rainitee, and even though her old friend did not keep in touch, Elias wanted to remain loyal. Only children told on each other, and she was no kid anymore.