Northern Lights by Nora Roberts
Didn't look efficient, Meg thought, but looks were deceiving. When it came to business, Charlene could calculate her profit and loss to the penny, any time of the day or night.
"I hear you're a hero." Charlene watched her daughter as she sipped. "You and the sexy chief. You stay over in Anchorage to celebrate?"
"We lost the light."
"Sure. Just a word of advice. A man like Nate's got baggage and plenty of it. You're used to traveling fast and light. It's not a good match."
"I'll keep that in mind. I need to talk to you."
"I've got calls and paperwork. You know this is my busy time of day."
"It's about my father."
Charlene lowered her water glass. Her face went very still, very pale, then the color erupted in her cheeks. Candy pink to match the room.
"Did you hear from him? Did you see him in Anchorage? That son of a bitch. He'd better not think for one minute he can come back here and pick things up. He's not getting anything out of me, and if you've got any sense, you'll say the same."
She shoved away from the desk and stood, her color rising from pink to hot and red. "Nobody,
nobody walks away from me then walks back. Not ever. Pat Galloway can go fuck himself."
"He's dead."
"Probably had some sob story to tell. He was always good with . . . What do you mean he's dead?" Looking more annoyed than shocked, she flipped back her curly hair. "That's ridiculous. Who told you such a stupid lie?"
"He's been dead. It looks like he's been dead a long time. Maybe only days after he left here."
"Why would you say something like that? Why would you say something like that to me?" The angry red color had drained, turning her face white, white and drawn and suddenly old. "You can't hate me that much."
"I don't hate you. You've always been wrong about that. Maybe I'm ambivalent toward you most of the time, but I don't hate you. Those boys found an ice cave. It's where they took shelter part of the time they were on the mountain. He was in there. He's been in there."
"That's crazy talk. I want you to get out." Her voice rose to a hoarse shriek. "Get the hell out of here right now."
"They took pictures," Meg continued, even as Charlene grabbed one of her paperweights and heaved it against the wall. "I saw them. I recognized him."
"You did not!" She whirled, grabbed a trinket off a shelf, threw it. "You're making this up to get back at me."
"For what?" Meg ignored the statuary and glassware that smashed into walls, onto the floor, even when a shard nicked her cheek. It was Charlene's usual method of venting temper.
Break it, destroy it. Then have someone sweep it up. And buy new.
"For being a lousy mother? For being a big ho? For sleeping with the same guy I was sleeping with to prove you weren't too old to steal him from me? Maybe for telling me, most of my life, what a disappointment I am as a daughter. Which offense am I pulling out of my hat?"
"I raised you by myself. I made sacrifices for you so you could have what you wanted."
"Too bad you never gave me violin lessons. I could use one about now. And guess what, Charlene.
This isn't about you or me. It's about him. He's dead."
"I don't believe you."
"Somebody killed him. Murdered him. Somebody hacked an ice ax into his chest and left him on the mountain."
"No. No, no, no, no." Her face was frozen now, as still and cold as the sky behind her. Then it collapsed as she slid down to the floor to sit among the broken china and glass. "Oh, my God, no.
Pat. Pat."
"Get up, for God's sake. You're cutting yourself." Still angry, Meg marched around the desk, grabbed Charlene by the arms to haul her up.
"Meg. Megan." Charlene s breath hitched in and out, in and out. Her big, blue eyes swam.
"He's dead?"
"Yes."
The tears spilled over, flooded her cheeks. On a wail, she dropped her head on Meg's shoulder and clung.
Meg fought her first instinct to pull away. She let her mother weep, hold on and weep. And she realized it was the first sincere embrace they'd shared in more years than she could count.
* * *
When the storm passed, she took Charlene up the back way to her room. It was like undressing a doll, she thought, as she took off her mother's clothes. She doctored the minor cuts, slid a nightgown over Charlene's head.
"He didn't leave me."
"No." Meg walked into the bath, scanned her mother's medicine cabinet. There were always plenty of pills. She found some Xanax, filled a glass of water.
"I hated him for leaving me."
"I know."
"You hated me for it."
"Maybe. Take this."
"Murdered?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know." She set the glass aside after Charlene took the pill. "Lie down."
"I loved him."
"Maybe you did."
"I loved him," Charlene repeated as Meg pulled the covers over her. "I hated him for leaving me alone.
I can't stand to be alone."
"Go to sleep for a while."
"Will you stay?"
"No." Meg pulled the drapes, spoke into the shadows. "I don't hate being alone. And I need to be.
You won't want me when you wake up anyway."
But she stayed until Charlene slept.
She passed Sarrie Parker on the stairs on the way down. "Let her sleep. Her office is a mess."
"I heard." Sarrie raised her eyebrows. "Must've said something that put her into a hell of a temper."
"Just try to get it cleaned up before she goes back in there."
She kept walking and grabbed her coat as she swung into the restaurant. "I have to go," she said to Nate.
He pushed away from the bar, caught up with her at the door. "Where?"
"Home. I need to be home." She welcomed the cold, the light slap of the wind.
"How is she?"
"I gave her a tranquilizer. She comes out of it, she's going to crash down on you. Sorry." She pulled on her gloves, then pressed her hands to her eyes. "God. God. It was what I was expecting. Hysterics, rage, why do you hate me. The usual."
"Your face is cut."
"Just a scratch. China-poodle shrapnel. She throws things." She breathed carefully as they walked toward the river. She watched the ghost of her breath fly and fade. "But when it sank in, when she understood I wasn't messing with her, she fell apart. I didn't expect what I saw then. I didn't expect what I saw on her face. She loved him. I never considered that. I never thought she did."
"It doesn't seem like the best time for either one of you to be alone."
"She won't be. I need to be. Give me a few days, Burke. You're going to have your hands full around here anyway. Few days, this will settle in some. Come out and see me. I'll fix you a meal, take you to bed."
"Phones are back up. You could call me if you need anything."
"Yeah, I could. I won't. Don't try to save me, chief." She slid her sunglasses on. "Just handle the details."
She turned, pulled his head down to hers and indulged them both in a hot, seeking kiss. And drew back, patted his cheek with her gloved hand.
"Just a few days," she repeated, then crossed to her plane.
She didn't look back, but she knew he stood by the river, knew he watched her fly away. She blanked it out of her mind, all of it, and let herself soar over the tops of the trees, on the edge of the sky.
It wasn't until she saw the drift of smoke from her own chimney and the silky bullets that were her dogs race across the snow toward the lake that she felt her throat slam shut on her.
It wasn't until she saw the figure step out of her house, slowly follow the path of the dogs that she felt the tears well up in her eyes.
Her hands began to shake so she had to fight to steady them and land. He was waiting for her, the man who'd stepped in as her father when her own had stepped away.
She got out, struggled to keep her v
"Something told me to come now." He studied her face. "Something's happened."
"Yes." She nodded, bent to greet her delighted dogs. "Something happened."
"Come inside and tell me."
It wasn't until she was inside, in the warmth, when he'd brewed her tea and watered her dogs, when he listened without comment, that she broke down and wept.
Eleven
JOURNAL ENTRY February 18, 1988
I stood above the clouds. This, for me, is the defining moment of any climb. All the exhaustion, the pain, the sheer misery of the cold washes out of you, when you stand at the summit. You're reborn.
In that innocence, there is no fear of death or of life. There is no anger, no sorrow, no history and no future. There is only the moment.
You've done it. You lived.
We danced on the virgin snow, nearly thirteen thousand feet above the ground with the sun beaming in our eyes and the wind playing our mad tune. Our shouts slammed and echoed against the sky, and our giddiness swirled into the rippling ocean of clouds.
When Darth said we should jump, I nearly took the leap. What the hell. We were gods here.
He meant it. It gave me a jolt—not quite fear—to realize he was se-nous. Let's jump. Let's fly! A little too much Dex in my buddy here. A little too much speed to pump him up for the fight to the finish.
He actually grabbed my arm, daring me. I had to pull myself, and him, away from the edge. He cursed me for it, but he was laughing. We both were. Insanely.
He said something a little weird, but it was the place for it, I'd say. Rambling bitching, with that bubbling laughter, about my luck. Bagged myself the sexiest woman in Lunacy and got to sit around pissing away the days while she did the work. Get to take off, free as I please, and not only bang a whore, not only hit it big in the backroom, but I'm standing on the top of the world just because I fucking wanted to.
Now I won't even jump.
Things are going to change, that's what he told me. Things are going to turn around. He's going to get a woman other men want, he's going to hit it big. He's going to live large.
I let him stand and stew about it. It was too fine a moment for pettiness.
I passed through insane joy into the peace—utter and complete. We're not gods here, but only men who've struggled their way to one more peak. I know a thousand things I've done might be insignificant. But not this. This marks me.
We haven't conquered the mountain, but have joined with it.
I think, because I've done this, I might be a better man. A better partner, a better father. I know some of Darth's ramblings are truth. I haven't earned all that I have, not the way I earned this moment. I know the desire to be more strikes me as I stand in the battering wind above a world full of pain and beauty, curtained now by the clouds that tempt me to dive through them, to hurry back to that pain and that beauty.
Strange that I should stand here, where I so desperately wanted to be, and ache for what I left behind.
* * *
Nate studied the photographs from the ice cave.There was nothing new to see, and as he'd studied them every spare moment for the last three days, he had every detail imprinted on his brain.
He had a few stingy notes from the State Police. Weather permitting, they'd send up a forensics and recovery team within the next forty-eight hours. He knew they'd interviewed the three boys extensively, but most of what had been asked and answered he'd gotten through the grapevine rather than official channels.
He wanted to set up a case board, but it wasn't his case.
He wasn't going to be allowed to examine the cave, to sit in on the autopsy once the body was brought down. Any data passed to him would be at the investigation team's discretion.
Maybe, once the body had been positively identified as Patrick Galloway, he'd have a little more edge. But he wasn't going to be in the loop.
It surprised him how much he wanted to be. It had been a year since his juices had been stirred by a case. He wanted to work it. Maybe it was partially because Meg was connected, but for the most part it was the photographs. It was the man he saw in them.
Frozen in that moment, seventeen years before. Preserved, and all those details of his death preserved with him. The dead had the answers, if you just knew where to look.
Had he fought? Been taken by surprise? Had he known his killer? Killers?
Why was he dead?
He slid the file he'd started into a drawer when he heard the knock on his office door.
Peach stuck her head in. "Deb caught a couple of kids shoplifting over at the store. Peter's free. You want him to go round them up?"
"All right. Notify the parents, get them down here, too. What did they take?"
"Tried to get some comic books, candy bars and a six-pack of Miller. Ought to know better. Deb's got an eye like a hawk. Jacob Itu's just come in. He'd like a minute, if you've got one."
"Sure, send him back."
Nate rose, wandered to his coffeemaker. Another hour of sunlight, he calculated, though what there was of it today was gloomy and dank. He looked out his window, picked out No Name, and studied it as he sipped his coffee.
He turned when he heard Jacob approach. The man was an emblem for the classic Native Alaskan with his raw-boned face and dark,