Heart of Ice

Emily Kenyon doubted her Ethan Allen leather sofa cost as much as Donna’s coat.

“Nice coat,” the sheriff called to Donna from her gas pump, a row away—too close to pretend she didn’t see her. She wanted to say something about how the coat’s coloring was a near ringer for Donna’s BMW, but thought better of it. “You look like you’re headed off somewhere.”

Donna nodded in Emily’s direction. “Cary and I are going to his cabin. You know how he loves the great outdoors.”

It was the first acknowledgment between the two women that they’d both dated Cary. Emily was relieved that her liaison with Cherrystone’s most narcissistic lawyer was long since past. At the same time, she almost felt sorry for Donna. She was sleeping with the devil and didn’t even know it.

“Oh yes, the cabin,” Emily said. “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.”

Donna turned off the pump and waited for her receipt.

“Only going for one night,” she said. “Cary is such a workaholic.” Donna slid into her car, waved at Emily, and drove off.

Emily finished filling the Crown Vic, wondering how on earth the department could justify the gas-hog that barely got fifteen miles to the gallon. She also wondered who approved such a hideous kelly green livery for the small fleet of department cars. Mostly she pondered how long it would take Donna to wise up about Cary.

She’d been up to the cabin a couple of times in the beginning of her relationship with Cary. It was a few miles from the Schweitzer Mountain Resort, in northern Idaho. The whole place was a shrine to Cary and his quest to be the most formidable at all the things he did. Everything was the best. His snowmobiles, fishing gear, and ski equipment. Weekends at the cabin were exhausting, and not for the reasons most being romanced would hope.

Poor stupid, BMW-owning Donna. She’ll just have to figure out things on her own.

Chapter Forty

Stanton, California

Michael Barton was never quite sure how it came to be that he and Sarah were taken from the Hansens’ foster home to the Ogilvy Home for Children in Stanton, California. Was it something he did? The dead animals? The little fire he set? Maybe it was that he was no longer wanted once a younger boy named Jeremy came to stay.

Maybe he was really worth nothing after all?

Years later, he’d tell Olivia about it, in terms that suggested a kind of rescue, but he really felt more regret than anything.

“The Hansens were despicable,” he said one time when he let her inside a sliver of his dark past, “but it felt like home. Sick. But home. Ogilvy always felt like a concentration camp for the lost.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Olivia said. “It was state approved, wasn’t it?”

Michael allowed a wide smile across his face. Inside, he wanted to scream at the woman to whom he sought to make himself whole, normal.

“Of course. But Ms. McCutcheon did things her way.”

Marilyn McCutcheon was the floor director of the “intensive” unit of the Ogilvy Home. The building that housed the home for the wayward and the disposable had once been part of Stanton High School. It had a cafeteria, gymnasium, and forty-four classrooms which were converted in 1961 into dormitory rooms and offices for a staff of eighty, full-and part-time. Most who worked there, caring for the 220 children on the way station to either reform school or a foster home, were there because they couldn’t get a better-paying job elsewhere. If they were half decent in their appearance, skill, and work ethic, they’d be there no longer than six months.

But not Marilyn McCutcheon. The fiftyish, prematurely gray-haired, giantess of a woman with big hands and a lumbering gait was there because she loved it. She loved it because for eight hours every day at Ogilvy, she was in charge of her floor. She ran it the way she wanted. No one told her what to do or when to do it.

It wasn’t that way at home. When McCutcheon got home, her mother and father, both in their late seventies, yelled and screamed at her for being the lousy person they said she’d always been.

“I should have had my tubes tied before you were born,” her mother said at least once a month.

“No wonder you couldn’t find a man,” her father would say. “You are bigger than a football player. No man would want a woman like you.”

Marilyn wanted to kill them. She certainly thought of ways to do it. One time she even left the house after turning off the oven pilot light. She imagined that she might even hear the explosion all the way over at Ogilvy. But it never came. When she got home, she found that the oven had automatically shut off.

Her parents yelled at for her being late and all she could think of was how happy she was shopping after work, thinking they’d be dead.

Marilyn lived for the job. It was her sanctuary. Being there was her release. The children were her therapy. They were her punching bags.

The social worker told Michael and Sarah they would be at Ogilvy “temporarily” until another home opened up.

Michael was glad to leave the Hansen place. He never told anyone what Mr. Hansen had made him do, though he almost confided what had been going on to a teacher one time. It was so close; the words begged to come from his mouth as the teacher’s sympathetic eyes drew him in. She’ll help me. She’ll protect me. She’ll save me.

“Are you all right, Michael?” the teacher, a woman, asked. “I know it’s hard with your mom gone, but you can tell me. I care.”

“It’s very bad,” he said.

“Tell me what you did,” she asked.

What he had done?

If he’d spoken up, he might have changed the trajectory of his life. Her words stopped him cold. For a flicker, he thought that maybe he had deserved what Papa had done to him. After all, as far as he could tell, he’d been the only one in the Hansen household to have to do those terrible things. Maybe he had been bad? Maybe what he was doing was his fault?

No, he thought. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

What stopped him was the dark threat that Papa lobbed at him when his face was buried in the man’s smelly crotch.

“You tell on me and I will kill your sister. Papa doesn’t like little girls anyway, cowboy.”

The teacher looked at the wall clock. She had something to do.

“We can talk about it later. And, I promise,” she said, gathering her purse, “that I will help you.”

“OK,” Michael said, knowing full well that he’d never tell her. He’d never tell anyone. The danger to Sarah was too great. The door had slammed shut.

“I can tell that you’re nothing but trouble,” Marilyn McCutcheon said when she came upon Michael and Sarah ten minutes after intake. “And I won’t have it.”

“You,” she said, pointing to Sarah, “are a dirty little bird.”

“She’s not,” Michael shot back, while his sister sat on one of the stained green couches that lined the family visiting area that had once been a high school library. Shelves, though empty of books, were a visual cue that would not have been lost even on an eleven-year-old.

Marilyn grabbed Michael by the wrist and wrenched him from his seat. He started to cry out and she shoved