Breaking the Ice (4 page)

Lars’s return to the stage with two cold bottles of Black Fang saved Bryson from a detailed reminiscence of that particular evening. “Thought you looked like you needed saving,” he said, once Geneva was out of earshot. “Though for the life of me I don’t see why. Not like you two have a lot of other options at the moment.”

“I get plenty of action, thank you very much.” Bryson’s outward appearance and glamorous occupation were an unbeatable combination. A high percentage of the town’s female visitors, even straight ones, flirted with her shamelessly. And if a ready partner wasn’t available locally, she simply got in her Cub and made the two-hour trip to Fairbanks, where she could arrange a quick rendezvous easily.

“Don’t doubt that.” Lars grinned. “Still, she’s a sweet girl, and it seems a shame to turn down such pretty company.”

“We have little in common, beyond…well,
that.
And while that may be plenty with someone I’ll never see again, it’s not enough. Besides, I’m not about to create hard feelings with one of the few women who live within a couple hundred miles.” Though she was buddies with a lot of the men she came in contact with, she craved female company, even if for a drink or a movie. “I don’t want to hurt her, and the spark I need just isn’t there. Simple as that.”

In her twenties, Bryson had dreamed of having more than a series of brief affairs, of finding that special someone who twisted her insides and made her walk on air the way they described true love in the books she read. The kind of supportive partnership her parents had shared: two souls united in building a future together.

But she needed the wild places, the truly wild places, as much as she needed air. When she looked out over her unspoiled mountains, she felt serene. Blissfully content and fully alive. And connected, somehow, to the primal and timeless nature of the universe itself.

Her four years in Fairbanks attending the University of Alaska drove home how ill-suited she was for an urban lifestyle. She’d loathed the feel of concrete and pavement beneath her feet, the smell of exhaust fumes, and waking up to a view of steel and brick and billboards.

No, she was different. She knew that. She didn’t need most of the modern conveniences others relied on, except her MP3 player and a small, battery-operated DVD player. She had a generator, but rarely used it, heating her home and cooking on a woodstove, washing her clothes and her body in a big steel tub, and reading voraciously by the light of kerosene lanterns.

When tourists came to town, chatting about some hot new TV show or Internet gossip, she had no clue what they were talking about and didn’t care to know. She had chosen an earlier, primitive way of life in one of the most inhospitable and ruthless environments on the planet, and she’d long ago accepted that she’d probably never find a woman willing to embrace it as she did. Someone who could share her dream and thrive here.

In her lonely moments, her close ties to her like-minded friends and neighbors comforted her. Of them, Lars and his wife Maggie were the closest she had to family.

“Got some nice caribou steaks from the Teekons for running them up to Anaktuvuk, and they need to be eaten,” she told Lars. “When the weather clears, you two come over and I’ll fire up the grill.” Like most bush pilots, when Bryson wasn’t booked with a tourist, she was filling whatever needs arose in her community. Her plane had served as hearse and ambulance, mail and supply transport.

She also frequently ferried the native peoples of Alaska, primarily Athabascan Indians and Nunamiut Eskimos, between the villages where they predominated. When she did, they usually paid her in moose meat, caribou, or salmon, and the arrangement worked out well. She had no refrigerator, only a thick metal box buried in the corner of her cabin and filled with straw, to keep food cool in the warmer months, so she had to eat perishables quickly. This way she had a steady supply of fresh game in addition to her stores of dried and canned food, and she rarely had to hunt. She did so only in extreme situations to survive, because it pained her to take the life of any animal.

“We’d like that,” Lars said. “Maggie’s getting a real bad case of cabin fever. Most days she’s not up for going far, but she can probably tolerate the skiff to your place.”

“Sorry I haven’t been by more, but things are really slowing down now, so I’ll drop over whenever I can.”

“Do her good.” He grinned. “But I’m warning you, she’s a right ornery cuss at times these days.”

Bryson had been sipping her beer. His words brought an image to mind that made her laugh so hard she choked. “You forget she chucked a ladle of stew at me for offering to help her wash her hair.”

“You should see my clothes. Most of ’em are stained so bad I can’t wear ’em around clients.” He pulled back one side of his oversized flannel shirt to reveal a long ketchup stain running down the side of his T-shirt from chest to belt.

Bryson roared.

“What’d I miss?” Skeeter joined them with his own bottle when he saw them laughing, never one to miss sharing a good joke. Stocky but solid, he was recognizable at a distance by his bushy red beard and the black wool cap he wore year-round to cover a prominent bald spot. He’d gained his nickname shortly after he migrated to Alaska five years earlier, for complaining that the mosquitoes here were nearly as large as his four-seater Cessna 180.

“Just discussing Maggie’s recent interest in flinging food,” Lars replied, offering Skeeter a glimpse of the stain. “Good aim on that woman. I was at least ten feet away.”

“Kinda resembles California,” Skeeter observed, drawing another round of chuckles. When they subsided, he turned to Bryson. “Say, I’m grounded for a bit while I wait for a new prop. Any chance you’re headed to Fairbanks when the weather clears?”

“Lemme see.” Bryson reached into her back pocket and pulled out a growing “needs list” that contained the unavailable-locally items that the residents of Bettles wanted her to search for during her next trip south. She had added several items just this evening: a soccer ball, magnifying glass, microwave, down pillow, size 36C bra (black), four cartons of Virginia Slims menthol cigarettes, and two boxes of Frosted Flakes cereal. After she studied all the items on the list and calculated who had the money to actually pay her, she told Skeeter, “Guess there’s enough here to cover my gas.”

“Great. Add a couple dozen D batteries, a heavy iron skillet—big as you can find—and a couple gallons of OJ for me, would ya?”

“That fresh-squeezed stuff with the pulp, right?” Bryson penciled in the additions at the bottom of the paper.

“Yup. Bryson, I bet you and I know more about the people around here than most of their kinfolk do.”

“Yeah. Fascinating stuff, too. Like I really needed to know that Dirty Dan has a bad case of hemorrhoids, and Pete has warts somewhere he wants to get rid of.”

They all were laughing again as Grizz and Ellie made their way back to the stage for another set.

They launched into “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which Ellie was still pretty rough at, but the crowd had had a few drinks by then, so they responded with the same raucous applause.

Geneva planted herself in Bryson’s line of sight, and every time their eyes met, she licked her lips or winked flirtatiously. Bryson tried to ignore the come-ons, but she
was
human, and it had been a while. Damn, she wished Gen hadn’t reminded her how much fun it had been breaking in all her new mail-order toys. Flying to Fairbanks pretty soon was sounding better and better. She had her own addition to the “needs list.”

Atlanta, Georgia

“I’m not going away,” Stella shouted through the door before Karla could rise to answer it. She’d forgotten entirely that her best friend had vowed to come by and was startled to realize it was after six p.m.

She’d spent most of the day searching online phone records for Rasmussens. Lars and Maggie were not among those listed in Fairbanks, but Whitepages.com had supplied her with a list of 148 individuals in the whole of Alaska that included their rough ages and even the names within their households. Her heart started to pound when she spotted an entry for a Lars Rasmussen living in Anchorage. He was over sixty, but she refused to give up hope. With shaking hands, she punched in the phone number. He wasn’t the man she wanted; this one was a recent transplant to the state and his wife’s name was Inga, not Maggie. He was sorry he couldn’t help her, he said, but he’d never come across another Alaskan with his name.

Undeterred, she spent the next couple of hours calling every single Rasmussen, hoping for a relative. Those she reached couldn’t help her. She left messages for the rest, asking them to call her back and reverse the charges. As she worked her way through the list, she began to clear away the debris of her depression, washing the dirty mugs and plates and packing up the boxes. She opened the curtains and let the sun in, and even took a long, hot shower and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She paused at a mirror to look at herself before she opened the door to Stella. Her face was gaunt, and she’d never seen such dark circles around her eyes. Her hair had dried all willy-nilly, but at least she was clean and dressed. Her search for her sister had given her a purpose and a welcome distraction from her grief.

“If you don’t open the damn door right this minute…” Stella’s threat trailed away at the loud click of the deadbolt. She hadn’t bothered to change from her whites, or even remove her hospital ID and name tag. Sometime in the last couple of weeks, she’d had her honey-blond hair cut, from shoulder-length to just below her ears. It suited her.

“You’ll what? Pitch a tent out here? Call in reinforcements?” Karla tried to smile but knew it came off as forced and unconvincing. Stella was an expert at reading people, almost psychic, which made her an exceptional nurse. She could often determine what was going on with a patient even if they were too young or too ill to communicate effectively.

“I was about to say break a window, so I’m glad I don’t have to.” Stella frowned as she studied Karla with narrowed eyes, as though inspecting a bug under a microscope. “You look like shit. When’s the last time you ate or got a full night’s sleep?”

“Hello to you too, Little Mary Sunshine. You coming in or do you plan to stand there and insult me all night?” She stepped to the side, but Stella paused to hug her tight instead.

“Just because I love you, you know,” Stella said into her ear without releasing her. “How you doing, hon?”

“I’ve been better.” She eased away from the embrace and led Stella to the couch.

There, Stella glanced about the apartment, her gaze lingering on the boxes marked
Therese Edwards.
“Your mother’s things?”

“I’ve been going through them.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Not easy. Especially when I got to the very bottom of the last box. Apparently I have a long-lost sister. My mother left a letter for me about it that she wrote years ago.”

“Say
what?
”

“No shit, right? She had her when she was sixteen and gave her up for adoption. And I’m not the only one she kept in the dark about it. She never told my father either.”

“Wow.” Stella sat still for a moment. “That sure doesn’t sound like your mom. I mean, she was such a…such a…” Karla’s buddy since their days in nursing school together, Stella was one of the few people who knew her mother before she became ill.

“I know. Poster girl for ‘honest as the day is long.’” A bitter laugh escaped her. “But she apparently got the ability to lie really well from
her
mother. My grandmother acted as though the adoption was the end of Mother’s ‘mistake.’ But she kept track of the baby through the adoptive parents and never told my mother about it until right before she died. Goes to show you, I guess, that everybody, and I mean
everybody,
has secrets. It makes me feel like I didn’t know either one of them.”

“I bet it does. So…your grandmother kept track of your sister? Do you know where she is now?”

“Her name’s Maggie Rasmussen. She was living in Fairbanks, Alaska, with a husband named Lars when my mother wrote the letter. But that was thirteen years ago.” She glanced over at her computer. Her e-mail was on the screen, and she could see that she didn’t have any new messages. “I’ve spent all day trying to track her down. No luck so far. Apparently she doesn’t know anything about me, either, or even that she was adopted.”

“What’re you going to say to her if and when you reach her?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I really haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Stella laid a hand on Karla’s shoulder. “What can I do to help?”

“I wish I knew.” She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes, her sleep deprivation finally kicking in. “There’s got to be a way to find them,” she mused aloud. Then it hit her, and she sat up abruptly. “You don’t happen to know anyone in law enforcement, do you? Maybe I can trace them through a driver’s license or something.”

“Sorry. Sure don’t. But I’ll ask around at the hospital. Someone’s got to have a relative or friend who’s connected.” Stella squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll find a way.” When Karla frowned in disappointment, she added, “Hey, cops are in the ER all the time. If I have to, I’ll pick out a cute, single one and throw myself at him. Anything for you.”

Karla couldn’t help but smile. “The supreme sacrifice, right?” Cops were definitely not Stella’s type. She had a thing for bad boys, especially the tattooed, rough-hewn types who rode motorcycles.