that was probably a lie. Everything else she said was a lie, so why would that be any different? She showed up in town on a Greyhound bus with nothing but a couple of suitcases. She rented herself a room, went to work in one of the local dives, and set her cap for Kip Hogan. And voila, next thing you know, she tells him she’s pregnant. By then, he’s trying to be the man, so he trades shifts, takes two days off from work, and off they go to Vegas to get married. That was July fourth, 1973.”
The kitchen door swung open. Jonathan came in with his tray, two cups and saucers-a new one for Ali and one for his wife, and no Crystal.
“That poor little girl is starving,” he said to Ali. “I’m making her some toast and cheese. I hope you don’t mind.”
Having fed her one meal on the way here, Ali wondered if Crystal had a hollow leg. Jane Braeton, on the other hand, sent a grateful smile in her husband’s direction. Seeing it, Ali realized that keeping Crystal in the kitchen was a ploy on Jonathan’s part, a way of giving his wife some privacy in order to tell a story she most likely wouldn’t want to relate in front of a thirteen-year-old girl.
Jane waited until Jonathan returned to the kitchen before she continued. “They were in Vegas on their honeymoon when a train derailed coming through Kingman. A tanker loaded with liquid propane was involved, and the resulting BLEVE was huge.”
“The what?” Ali asked.
“A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion,” Jane explained. “On July fifth a rail car loaded with liquid propane caught fire and blew up. It was Kingman, Arizona’s darkest day. Eleven firemen and one civilian were killed. Several others-firemen and police officers-were seriously injured, and ninety-some-odd civilian bystanders also suffered burns.”
Ali remembered the story now but only vaguely. She had been in junior high when it happened. For days the fire had been headline news all over Arizona. Geographically Sedona was a long way away from Kingman. Eventually the story had faded, but Ali understood that for a small town like Kingman, one which had suddenly lost a whole troop of its finest young men, the fire had to be a tragedy whose tentacles still held.
“So, when all hell broke loose, Rudyard Kipling Hogan was off in Vegas honeymooning with his brand-new wife,” Jane went on. “They headed back as soon as they heard the news and arrived while the fire was still burning. Kip went to the site and looked at the damage, but he never even suited up. Instead, he left again without a word and without even bothering to unpack his suitcase. He didn’t give a damn if Amy Sue was pregnant or not. He left her that very day and never came back. Elizabeth always said it was because of the guilt-that he couldn’t stand the idea that he was alive when his friends were dead.”
“So your parents were married for two days?” Ali asked.
“Let’s just say that Kip and Amy Sue were married for two days,” Jane allowed. “Elizabeth told me that she was shocked and disappointed when her son took off like that. He left Amy Sue with nothing-no money for rent, no place to stay, no car, nothing. Even though Kip wasn’t prepared to do the right thing, Elizabeth was. She let Amy Sue move in with her, and everything was peachy keen until I was born a good month or so earlier than anyone except Amy Sue expected. Once I was there in the hospital nursery for all to see, it was pretty clear that Rudyard Kipling Hogan wasn’t my father.”
“So your mother was white then?” Ali asked.
Jane paused, sipped her tea, and then nodded. “Apparently,” she said. “I did some checking after the fact. I’m pretty sure Amy Sue was already pregnant on the day she arrived in Kingman. She targeted Kip to be her fall guy, her baby’s daddy. The problem was, he was the wrong color, and by the time she figured that out, it was too late. She stayed in the hospital for three days after I was born and didn’t even bother giving me a name. She came home to Elizabeth’s house long enough to drop me off. She left the house in the middle of the night that first night without saying good-bye to anyone. I’ve never heard from her since. I have no idea if she’s dead or alive.”
Tears welled in the corners of Jane Braeton’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” Ali murmured.
Jane shook her head as if shaking off the momentary sadness that had overtaken her. Then she continued. “For the longest time, Elizabeth didn’t even let on to anyone that Amy Sue had bailed. She was afraid if people found out, some busybody from social services would decide she was too old to be raising a baby and take me away.”
“And she’s the one who named you?” Ali asked.
Jane allowed herself a bleak smile. “Right. Jane Eyre Hogan. Who else but an Elizabeth Barrett Browning would name me that? Elizabeth hired a former student of hers, a Mexican lady named Roseann Duarte, to look after me. And those are the people who raised me, Elizabeth Hogan and Roseann. Elizabeth was never my mother, but she’s the only mother I’ve ever known. She took care of me, loved me, and saw to it that I got a good education. My husband is right. I do owe her, and that’s why we’re doing this. That’s why we’re going to the hospital tonight, and that’s the only reason-not because some stranger’s name is on my birth certificate.”
Jane looked at her watch and stood up. “We should probably get going.”
Crystal emerged from the kitchen with Jonathan right behind her. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked. “I can help with the wheelchair, whatever.”
Jane shook her head. “No,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”
“All right,” Jonathan agreed. “You and Elizabeth do what you have to do, but drive carefully.”
“I will,” Jane said. “I always do,”
Crystal was strangely subdued on the drive back to the hospital. Lost in her own thoughts, Ali let her be. Having heard Kip’s story through Jane Braeton’s point of view, Ali felt a whole lot more empathy for the man. He had come home from Vietnam damaged. Even without knowing that Amy Sue was playing him for a fool with her shotgun wedding routine, the added trauma of surviving the fire in which so many of his buddies had perished had been more than Kip could handle. His fragile ego had shattered, and he had spent decades wandering in the wilderness until Bob Larson had offered him a way out.
“They’re nice people,” Crystal said.
At first Ali thought she meant Bob and Edie Larson.
“I mean, they asked us in and gave us food and everything. While we were out in the kitchen, he was asking me about school. Did you know Jane is a teacher?”
“No,” Ali said. “I didn’t.”
“English,” Crystal said. “Junior high.”
“Kip Hogan ran away, too, didn’t he?” Crystal said thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
“How old was he?”
“I’m not sure,” Ali said. “I don’t know how old he is now. He was probably in his twenties or thirties.”
“So grown-ups run away sometimes, too.”
“Yes.”
“And his family is still mad at him about it.”
“Mad and hurt both,” Ali said.
“How come?”
“How come they’re mad?” Ali asked.
“I mean how come he ran away?”
Since Jonathan Braeton had respected his wife’s right to privacy, Ali could hardly do less.
“There was an accident,” she said. “An accident and a huge fire and lots of firemen died. Kip was working in the fire department at the time, and a lot of the people who died were friends of his.”
“So he was mad at himself for not dying, too?” Crystal asked.
Coming from someone Ali had dismissed as being totally self-absorbed, it was a very perceptive question.
“Pretty much,” Ali said.
“But nobody did anything to him? Nobody hurt him?”
“I don’t think so,” Ali said. “You heard what happened. Even after all these years, his mother’s on her way to the hospital right now to see him.”
