Ruthe winced. “She wasn’t an orphan.”
“She ran away for the last time at sixteen. Her juvie record ends there.”
“How did she find out who her parents were, and where they lived?”
“I traced Dina’s obstetrician to Seattle,” Jim said. “He’s dead, but his son took over his practice, and the nurse who attended the birth is still alive. She said they hired a young blond woman about six years ago as a receptionist. She stayed for about ten days, and when she left, some files were missing. Dina’s file was among them.” He paused. “I’m guessing she stole the other files to cover the theft of the one file that mattered. Christie learned early how to cover her tracks.”
“How did she find the doctor?”
“Adopted children can apply to find out who their birth parents are nowadays.”
“I know, but I thought there were safeguards, that there had to be consent on both sides before any information could be revealed.”
“This girl learned how to work the system at a very early age,” Jim said. “I doubt that a bureaucracy as byzantine as Social Services stood a chance.”
“She contacted John first,” Kate said after a moment. “She told me.”
Jim nodded. “Would have been a hell of a scene.”
Kate tried not to think about just what kind of scene it had been.
“John would have hated that,” Ruthe said.
“And that’s how he knew who she was,” Kate said, “and why he knew who had killed Dina.”
“And he made a false confession and killed himself to deflect suspicion?” Jim said, still skeptical. “Why bother? I never would have been able to prove anything.”
“Guilt,” Kate said. “Seventeen different kinds of guilt.” Especially after Christie had seduced him, with the full knowledge of who he was. She still couldn’t think of it without feeling sick.
“Dina was dead,” Ruthe said.
They looked at her.
“He really loved her,” Ruthe told them. “John really loved Dina. She left him, he didn’t leave her.”
“Why did she leave him?”
“She never said.”
Kate thought again of the tiny, crowded cabin and the enormous, empty lodge. She knew why Dina had left John.
“He was too proud to fight the divorce, and he was angry at her for making him look ridiculous, but there was never anyone else for John but Dina. And then she was dead.” Ruthe shifted, and Kate brought the blanket up around her shoulders. “And here was the only thing left to him of her, a daughter he hadn’t even known existed, a daughter who told him she hated him, a daughter who might have just confessed to matricide. Maybe he thought he could save her. Maybe he couldn’t do anything but try.”
There was little of the martyr about John Letourneau, Kate thought. But she understood a little about guilt.
Families. Mothers, fathers, children. There was no explaining them, and there was no understanding the wonderful and terrible things they did to and for one another. She thought of her mother, passed out in the snow, dead of hypothermia before her daughter was four. And Stephan, Kate’s father, following so soon afterward. If Stephan had loved Zoya so much that he could not bear to live life without her, even if he had to leave his daughter behind, why couldn’t John love Dina enough to die for the sake of their only child? Maybe it didn’t matter that John hadn’t known of her existence until that fall, when she had shown up on his doorstep and pushed herself into his life.
Kate thought of Johnny, who had pushed himself into her life.
“Poor John,” Ruthe said sadly, breaking into Kate’s thoughts. “And poor Christie. Poor lonely little girl.”
Kate thought of Dina, dead, and Ruthe, nearly so. Not to mention herself. Her hand fell to Mutt’s head and tightened in the thick gray ruff. Christie could have killed Mutt, too. She would have if Mutt hadn’t been smarter and faster and stronger. She gave the ruff a shake and Mutt sat up and leaned against her chair. “What about that other girl, the one who testified at the trial of Christie’s adoptive parents?”
“What about her?”
“She went through the same things Christie went through, and she didn’t have to kill anyone to get to where she is now. I mean, damn it. At some point, I don’t care what kind of life you’ve had, how awful your parents were to you or how mean your teachers or how nasty your classmates, at some point you have to step up and take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Okay, I admit, Christie Turner had it rough, few rougher. That doesn’t mean she gets a free ride. Not from me anyway.”
There was a brief silence.
Ruthe looked at Jim. “Does she have a lawyer?”
“I don’t think so,” Jim said.
“Get her one,” Ruthe said. “I’ll pay.”
“Ruthe-”
“A good one, Kate.”
“Ruthe-”
“Right away, Kate,” Ruthe said sternly. “Before the storm troopers”-Jim made an inarticulate sound of protest at this-“beat a confession out of her.”
“All right, Ruthe,” Kate said, bowing her head. “I will.” She looked at Jim. “What about Riley Higgins?”
“He’s out of jail. He’s got a job sweeping out the Kinnikinick Bar, but I don’t know how long he’ll last.”
Kate wondered who had gotten Riley Higgins his job.
“He can come back to the camp if he wants to,” Ruthe said.
“I’ll tell him,” Jim said.
Ruthe wanted to return to the cabin as soon as possible.
“Maybe you should think about finding somewhere closer to town,” Jim suggested.
“Like where?” Ruthe smiled. “Camp Teddy is my home. I want to get back to it as soon as possible.”
As Jim was wheeling Kate out the door, Mutt padding along behind them, Ruthe said, “Kate? Do me a favor? Find out who’s John’s heir, and if they’d like to sell the lodge.”
“Are you serious?”
“Never more so,” Ruthe said, with a fair assumption of her usual good cheer. She actually winked. “Someone’s going to get hold of that prime piece of riverfront property. It might as well be the Kanuyaq Land Trust.”
13
Jim brought the Cessna from Tok and flew Kate home to Niniltna two days later. Bobby, Dinah, and Katya and Auntie Vi were there to greet her on the airstrip. Auntie Vi wanted her to come stay while she recuperated, but Kate refused. She was like Ruthe. She wanted to go home.
So Bobby tucked her into his truck and ferried her twenty-five miles down the road, and Dinah and Jim, who had followed in Billy’s Explorer, walked her down the path to the homestead, Mutt trotting anxious circles around them as they went. “Johnny’s at Ethan’s; he’s got Gal with him. He’s going to leave you alone for a couple of days,” Dinah said as if by rote. “Ethan says he’ll be over this evening.”
“No,” Kate said. “Dinah, could you stop in and ask him not to? I just want to see if I can get up the ladder and sleep in my own bed. Tell him I’ll be over tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Dinah exchanged a glance with Bobby. They both looked at Jim, who remained impassive.
They settled her in, fussing over the woodstove, over-filling the kettle, and bringing her comforter down from the loft. “I’m okay, guys,” she said when she could stand it no longer. “Go.”
“Okay,” Dinah repeated. “I’ll be back out tomorrow.” She saw the look on Kate’s face and said, “If I don’t come and report back to Auntie Vi, she’ll be here, and she’ll bring all the other aunties with her.”
It was only too true. “All right. See you tomorrow, then.”
Jim waited until Dinah was out the door. “By the way, Kate.”