“You want to drink your coffee or wear it?”
His face cleared.
“What did you think you knew?” she said as they ate homemade bread, her first batch since she’d gotten out of the hospital, spread with butter and strawberry preserves.
He sighed and put his bread down, half-eaten. “She asked a lot of questions about Ruthe and Dina.”
“So did everybody. They weren’t exactly low-profile.”
“Don’t try to make me feel better about this, Kate,” he said, looking sober. “Christie asked a lot of questions, and when Dina died, I should have told you or Jim. She wanted to know about the restrictions on developing privately owned property within Park boundaries, for god’s sake. Why would she care, unless she owned some? She didn’t, not then. I should have noticed. I should have figured she was only using me to help her get what she wanted. Damn it, Kate, I just feel so damn stupid.”
“You were in love,” she said.
“No, I was in heat,” he said. “You can lead even the smartest man most anywhere by his cock.”
She tried not to wince.
“Sorry,” he said. “Hey, did you hear about Jim Chopin moving his post to Niniltna?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sure will make life easier for me,” he said. “Long as I’ve got my job anyway.”
“They haven’t fired you yet, I take it?”
“No. They even revoked my suspension. I think Pete might have had something to do with that.”
“Why?”
“He stopped by the Step, told me not to worry.” Dan’s grin was a pale shadow of its former self, but it was out where you could see it. “Told me I owed him.”
“He would.”
“Well, I do. And I won’t mind paying off when the time comes.” He finished his bread and coffee. “You going to be okay?”
“I’m going to be okay,” she said.
She watched him leave from the doorway. Snow was falling, coating the semicircle of buildings in the little clearing with a fresh layer, filling in the old blemishes, covering up the new. A new snowfall was a great place from which to start over.
The next day, she walked up to the steps of the Int-Hout homestead and knocked on the door.
She had rehearsed what she was going to say all the previous night, that morning, and all the way to Ethan’s. Not the truth, of course, never the truth, not if she could help it, not even when she figured out what it was herself.
Ethan, she was going to say, I’m just not ready, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be. What we’ve been working on is the residue of a high school crush. If we’d ever managed to make it to bed together in college, we wouldn’t be sniffing around each other now. I’m moving on. You need to, too.
Short, to the point, and the absolute truth, and only she needed to know it wasn’t all the truth. She knocked again. Footsteps came toward the door. She squared her shoulders and prepared to lower the boom.
The door opened. A large woman with freckled skin and wild red hair stood in the opening.
“Hello, Margaret,” Kate said.
“Hi, Kate. I want my husband back.”
Over Margaret’s shoulder, she saw Ethan with his lap full of twins. He looked over their heads at Kate, his face full of shamefaced apology.
“He’s all yours,” Kate said, and with those words, a huge weight fell from her shoulders.
“Good. You can have this back, too.” Margaret reached behind her and pulled Johnny forward. Johnny was dressed in a parka and down pants and was carrying a duffel bag. Gal’s indignant face poked out of the front of his parka and she yowled at Kate and hissed at Mutt. Margaret must have started assembling the package when she first heard Kate’s snow machine coming.
“I’ll take him,” Kate said.
Margaret closed the door in their faces.
“Why are you smiling?” Johnny said.
“Was I?” Kate said, and started to laugh. She stood on the porch, shoulders shaking, trying not to laugh too hard, hand pressed to her side, which she was still afraid was going to fall off if she moved the wrong way. “Sorry,” she said, the last chuckle draining away. She put her hands on Johnny’s shoulders and looked down into his face. Not so far down, and not for long. “I owe you an apology, Johnny.”
“What? What for?”
“I should have let you stay at the homestead from the beginning, instead of farming you out to Ethan. I’m your home now.”
“Oh.” He was confused but willing. “Okay. I guess.” He was further confused when she pulled him in for a bear hug, and the hell with the damage to her side. He trailed her bemusedly to the snow machine. “So… does this mean that you’re not going to… uh… you and Ethan aren’t…”
“No. We’re not.”
“Good.”
“Yeah?” She pulled his hat down over his eyes.
“Yeah.” He shoved it back up. “I like Ethan and all, but he’s kind of, well, static, you know? Sort of running in the same gear all the time. That could get old.”
“It could,” Kate admitted.
He loaded the duffel on the trailer. Gal meowed imperiously from his parka and he petted her absently. “Dad liked Chopper Jim.”
Kate paused in the act of starting the snow machine. “What?” Where had that come from?
“Yeah. He said”-Johnny scratched beneath his cap- “he said he was the best trooper he knew and a good man, even if he was a colossal pain in the ass.”
Kate relaxed. “Yeah, that sounds like he liked him a whole hell of a lot.”
Johnny grinned. “He said the same thing about you.”
It surprised a laugh out of her. “Mount up, mouthie.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“We’re going to build an extension to my cabin,” Kate said, grinning at him. “A room for you. How are you with tools?”
He looked at her, uncertain. “What about my mom? She knows where you live. She could find me.”
“She could,” Kate agreed.
“She could make me go with her.”
“Could she?”
She watched him think it over, and she was still watching when his face split in a sudden grin. “No. No, I don’t think she could.”
The grin made him so like his father that her breath caught in her throat. “I don’t, either.” She started the snow machine. “Get on.”
It was crowded on the seat between Kate, Johnny, Gal, and Mutt, but they were all going home together.
Dana Stabenow
