A Wicked Snow

how she was widowed a few years back.

“Widowed? Sounds like my mother,” Hannah dead-panned.

Bauer shrugged. “Colon cancer. Doubt she could do that to anyone.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know her.”

It was the only bit of levity during their conversation, ghoulish though it might have seemed to any outsider listening in.

Bauer drank the last of his coffee and signaled to the waitress for a refill.

“I don’t know if you’ll see this as good or bad news,” he said, but the caution in his voice indicated whatever he was about to tell her was, indeed, bad news.

“Talked to Warden Thomas yesterday afternoon. Wheaton’s in the infirmary again. It looks bad for him. Doubtful that he’s going to make it to his parole hearing after all.”

“Oh no,” she said, feeling puzzled by her empathy for Wheaton. “What is it?” In a weird way, she had wanted to find her mother for Wheaton as much as for herself. He’d been stupid and devoted to her, and that needed to stop. She felt a little shaky and put her hands on her lap to hide the slight tremor of her shattered nerves.

“He couldn’t breathe on his own,” Bauer went on. “His emphysema, you understand. He’s a big guy. His lungs can’t support what he’s become, size-wise. They brought him back, but he’s not going to get out of the clinic alive. At least the warden doesn’t think so.”

While Bauer waited for more information from S.A. Ingersol in Portland, Hannah spent most of the earliest part of the day finding out how much Louise Wallace was loved by members of the Kodiak community. If anyone had deserved a park statue for selflessness, it appeared it was Louise Wallace. She’d been on this and that committee. She donated to the homeless. She even worked once a week at a food bank. But if it was an act, atonement for sins too dark to be measured, all of her good works were suspect. Hannah knew she had to face Louise Wallace herself, and there was no time like the present.

Without telling Bauer of her plans, Hannah got directions to the Wallace address from the motel clerk, a man of about forty who shook his head at the mention of the old woman’s name. With utter certainty, he said that Wallace was “getting a raw deal” and was being ha- rassed by the Feds for “something she didn’t do.” Like half the island, it seemed, the motel clerk went to church with Wallace.

“I love that lady,” he said. “We all do.”

Hannah didn’t want Bauer to know where she was going, though she knew once she was gone he’d probably figure it out. She rented the last car available from Island Rentals and it was a beaut, a pink sedan that once had been the conveyance of a top Mary Kay cosmetics sales representative. So much for traveling unnoticed, she thought, giving in to a brief smile. With all that was going on in Kodiak and at home in Santa Louisa, a smile felt welcome. Brief, but welcome.

The drive to Louise Wallace’s home was one of the most beautiful Hannah had ever experienced; trees of the deepest, nearly black, green, marched along the side of the roadway. Ferns spilled down the hillside to the crackling white waters of rushing rivers. Every now and then a break in the wall of green revealed blue, icy waters and an occasional cabin or ragtag mobile home. It was a gorgeous day, and if her business hadn’t been so grim, Hannah Griffin would have stopped to savor the moment. Alaska, she thought, is rugged, rough, but stunning at every turn. She looked to the west and saw ridge tops covered in snow, and it chilled her. Her mind started down the path toward the lady with the coveralls and down vest, and she fought it. As if in answer to a prayer, her cell phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She reached for it and looked at the display. It was Ethan. For a split second, she debated whether or not to answer. He was always worried. He’d tell her the same thing Bauer had—that she ought to go home. On the third ring, she gave in.

“Hi, honey,” she answered. When Ethan didn’t respond, she repeated herself, thinking the connection was bad. Kodiak had only three cell towers.

“Hannah, I have something very important to tell you.” Ethan was using what she always thought of as his cop voice. His words were steady and calm.

The sound of his voice frightened Hannah. “Oh my God,” she said. “Is it Amber? What happened? Did that woman come back?”

“God, no. She’s fine,” he said. “Amber’s fine. This isn’t about Amber. It is about you.”

“You just about caused me to crash. Don’t do that.”

“Are you driving?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Better pull over. This is important.” Ethan was glad his wife couldn’t see his face just then. Tears brimmed at his eyelids. In a moment, he knew, they would fall quietly down his cheeks. But she wouldn’t see them.

Hannah found a clear spot on the shoulder, slowed down, and pulled in front of a wide dirt driveway flanked by an outcropping of mailboxes. She worried it was her uncle. Someone must have died, the way Ethan sounded.

“All right,” she said. “I’ve parked. What is it? You’re scaring me.”

Ethan drew a deep breath. He had agonized over how he would tell her. He knew this was the kind of information one should give in person, but that wasn’t happening, given where his wife was and what she was about to do.

“Veronica Paine called, honey,” he began. “She told me something very upsetting.” Ethan was running out of momentum, and he knew it. He didn’t know how to couch what he had to say. He blurted it out:

“Claire wasn’t your mother, Leanna was.”

At first the words didn’t compute. How could they? “What?” Hannah sat in her pink rental car, her mouth agape, her heart a jackhammer. A car passed by. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

Ethan told her what Veronica Paine had said, his tone bouncing from concern for his wife to anger toward those who’d held the secret about her. “Leanna had you when she was fourteen. Your mother and your father,” he hesitated on those two words, unsure of amending them or going with what they’d always been to Hannah, “adopted you.”

Hannah’s jackhammer heart beat faster. “I don’t think so,” she said. She flashed on Aunt Leanna, her pretty eyes, full of love. The smell of citrus came to her. The gentleness of her hands as she brushed away tears from a nightmare. She was so gentle. So unlike her mother.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “It was a private adoption. The adoption papers were found in one of the bank deposit boxes. They were sealed by order of the court. Since Leanna was your only relative, and was coming to get you, those who knew figured she’d tell you one day.”

“How could they—she—do this?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Think about your aunt. She was just a kid when she got pregnant. It couldn’t have been easy for her. Think of the times. Her older sister offered to take you…”

Another car whizzed by, snapping Hannah back to where she was and what she was about to do.

“Are you okay? Do you want me to come up there?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Hannah said. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

She turned off the phone and stared at the road in front of her, and she cried.

Chapter Thirty-eight

The yellow house was aglow as morning sunlight poured over it like honey from the sky. Slowly pulling into the gravel driveway, Hannah could see a woman by the gazebo, setting a hose with an oscillating sprinkler among plantings of three-and four-foot spires of fox-glove and delphinium. Her nerves sparked and adrenaline pumped. She tried to shake off the uneasiness. As the sprinkler swirled, the woman turned around and noticed the car. And for a