Fortunate Harbor (37 page)

“That’s awful,” Tracy said.

“Over the course of Ivy’s first year we went back to court twice. I spent so many hours working up the case. Making impromptu visits, gathering evidence. Ivy was wasting away, but Greta took a parenting class, and she made promises. The judge thought she was trying, and that was good enough for him.”

She looked up, and the emotion returned. “Then, one night, after we had failed three times to take Ivy and put her into a responsible foster home, I made another surprise visit. By then Greta realized the judge was never going to remove Ivy, and she didn’t even try to hide what was going on. I heard Ivy wailing. They lived in a hovel, and the lock on the front door was broken. Any money Greta got went straight for whatever drug she was using that month. I let myself in. Greta was passed out on the floor. And Ivy was in her crib, covered in filth. You have no idea. I can’t describe it. Her diaper hadn’t been changed, probably for days. On the floor beside the crib was a bottle. The milk was obviously spoiled. It was thick and clotted, but the baby…the baby was trying to reach it.”

She swallowed, and the picture, which had never really left her mind, came back in detail. She realized the other women were seeing it, too. Janya’s eyes were filling with tears.

“So I took her.” Dana cleared her throat. “I knew even if I got her into temporary foster care again, the judge would just send her back to her mother after Greta sobered up. I knew without a shadow of doubt that Ivy wasn’t going to survive the system. I just walked over to the crib, and I lifted her out, and I stepped over Greta on the floor and I took her. And I have never let go of her in all these years.”

Wanda looked stricken. Tracy, too, had tears in her eyes.

“How in heaven did you get away with it?” Wanda asked.

“Providence. Greta finally came to, and I guess she had no memory of anything that had happened for days. That’s what the papers said months later. The baby was gone, and she didn’t know where. She probably wondered if she’d left Ivy somewhere, or given her to somebody or done something worse. So she didn’t report her missing. She just kept taking the Social Security payments and hoped nobody would notice Ivy was gone.”

“Somebody must have,” Wanda said.

“Eventually the neighbors reported they hadn’t seen or heard the baby, and when somebody finally investigated, Greta couldn’t tell them where she was. Because she hadn’t reported it herself, Greta was arrested. They had no body, no evidence, but they held her awhile on charges of neglect and fraud.”

“And where were you?”

“By then we were in California. I’d quit my job and pleaded burnout. That wasn’t uncommon, and nobody really questioned my decision. It certainly wasn’t the first time somebody had just refused to come back to work. Ivy improved so quickly in my care it was almost a miracle. After a start like that, some children lose the will to live and wither away. I’ve seen that, too. But not Ivy. She’s a fighter and always was. I saw the newspaper accounts of the Turner mother and baby after we got to California, and knew taking their identities was my chance for a fresh start. So I secured copies of their birth certificates, and we became Dana and Elizabeth Turner.”

“And what about Ivy’s natural mother? What about Greta?”

“The local cops looked everywhere for the baby. They wanted Greta for murder, of course, but months had passed before Ivy’s disappearance was discovered, and they knew they had little chance of finding a body. Greta told them she’d been
so afraid she’d be accused of murder that she kept silent. It was one of the few times in her life she actually told the truth.”

“You let her go to prison for a crime she didn’t commit?” Wanda asked.

“No. Believe me, had it ever gotten to that point, I would have returned. I wouldn’t have let the woman spend her life in prison, not even if she deserved it. But they finally had to release her, with the idea, I think, that they would arrest her again if a body was found. Two weeks later Greta overdosed and died. No body, no evidence, the obvious suspect dead by her own hand. Most people thought poor little Ivy was just another casualty of a legal system that doesn’t value children.”

“Then why are you running?” Wanda asked.

“This was an emotional case for everybody. The cops who were working it wanted closure. Even after Greta died, they kept searching. Of course I couldn’t ask anybody what was going on, couldn’t contact any of my old friends or colleagues, because that would lead straight back to me, but I discovered whatever I could. And one day I saw my name mentioned in an interview with the police chief. The police were looking for me because they thought I might have some insight into the case as Ivy’s social worker.”

“They didn’t connect your disappearance with the baby’s?” Wanda sounded incredulous.

“They would have, if they had known exactly when Ivy disappeared. But, of course, Greta would never tell them, because I suppose she knew the longer Ivy’s disappearance had gone on, the more guilty she’d look. Their best guess was off by a whole month.”

“Well, luck fell your way on that,” Wanda said.

Dana felt as if she couldn’t stop until it was all out in the
open. “More than you know. After I left Children’s Services, my caseload was divided among the other workers while my replacement was trained. Apparently somebody made a scheduled visit to Greta, who must have passed off a friend’s baby as Ivy. The worker was a stranger to the case and wouldn’t have known one baby from another. Supposedly the house looked clean enough, and Greta was sober. That much was in the papers. More time passed before the real Ivy’s absence was discovered. So the visit confused the timing, too.”

“But still somebody is looking for you?” Tracy asked.

“Because the system had done so little to protect her, Ivy’s loss was strongly felt. The judge was forced off the bench. Learning the truth about the baby’s death became even more important to some of the detectives on the police force. The case is still mentioned in the local papers. Not often, but often enough. And I can’t take the chance of anybody ever connecting Lizzie and me with Isabel Carlsen and Ivy Greenwald. Because that would destroy my daughter—and she
is
mine. Make no mistake about it, Lizzie is mine in every way that matters. If I hadn’t taken her when I did, I am absolutely sure she would have died.”

The other women didn’t try to dispute that, each of them clearly affected by what she had heard.

“Does Lizzie know any of this?” Tracy asked at last.

“No.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

This was a question Dana asked herself over and over, but she didn’t have an answer. “If I can. If the time is ever right. But probably? No.”

“How do you think Pete Knight tracked you here?”

Dana twisted her hands. The women knew so much now,
but there was more. She debated what to tell them, but her lies were all used up.

“I had a brother. Fargo was a free spirit who lived by his own rules. My parents thought he was the family black sheep because he was always in trouble. We were a churchgoing family, but Fargo hated religion and any kind of rules, and that infuriated my parents. I was the only one at home who ever tried to understand him. The happiest times we ever spent together were here, at Happiness Haven.”

Tracy looked the most surprised. “You mean the old resort? The one this house is part of?”

Dana nodded. “We always stayed in the cottage Alice lives in now. My mother’s cousin and her husband owned the place. His family built it. Fargo, my mother and I came every July during school vacation. Mom helped in the office while we were here, and Fargo and I had our run of the place. I think Pete must have learned that somehow and decided to see if I’d been back to this area.”

“I’ll be,” Wanda said. “You’ve been here before. And here I was, showing you around.”

“After I took Lizzie and ran, Fargo was the only person who knew what I’d done. Our parents were gone by then, and I was sure he, of all people, wouldn’t turn me in. By then Fargo wasn’t just a black sheep, he’d been in and out of jail on half a dozen different charges. He was the last person who would ever go to the police. He even helped a little. Sent me money a few times, and did some checking in Grand Forks, so I’d know what was happening with the investigation. For a while he was my eyes and ears. That’s how I knew the cops weren’t letting go of the case the way they might have.”

“Pete’s name never came up?”

“Fargo couldn’t get too close.”

“What does your brother have to do with this now?” Janya asked.

“Fargo went to work for somebody in New Mexico. I don’t know what he did. I probably don’t want to know. I am sure he was making a lot of money, and from time to time he sent me some. Dana Turner has no college degree. Isabel Carlsen’s master’s in social work is useless, so I had to take low-paying jobs to support us, and sometimes it wasn’t enough. But a few years later Fargo was arrested for a bank robbery that had taken place years before. He went to prison and died of kidney failure. But before he died, he sent me a letter.”

She paused, wondering if she should share the words that were engraved in her memory. Then she shrugged, because she had given up hoping they would do her any good now. “I couldn’t go to the prison to visit him, of course. I couldn’t identify myself as his sister and chance someone finding me. So Fargo wrote me as if Dana Turner was a girlfriend from his past. And he asked that I be given his ashes after cremation. His final letter came with them.”

She looked up. “I committed his ashes to the bay at a place just at the edge of your property, Tracy. It’s a little inlet the locals call Fortunate Harbor. It was our favorite place as children. Ask a native about it someday. They’ll tell you the story of how it got its name.”

“What was in the letter that made you come here? Did he just ask you to scatter his ashes there?”

“It was strangely cryptic and flowery, nothing like his usual letters, which were riffs on prison life. He said he wished he had more to leave me, but the memories we shared were a haven of happiness.”

“Happiness Haven,” Tracy said, understanding right away.

“Yes. Then he went on to say he hoped I would find those memories in my heart and examine them carefully, because memories are golden. He ended by saying I would be fortunate if I looked to the heavens, where he would be watching me, because then I would have the key to my own happiness.”

“A strange message,” Janya said. “What do you think he was trying to tell you?”

“Fargo and I rarely spoke. But in our last phone call before he was arrested, he told me he was working on something big, and if it panned out, he was going to share the results. He liked to brag, so I didn’t pay much attention at the time. I told him I didn’t want any ill-gotten gains, but he said he had earned this fair and square. He told me he was going to ‘our old stomping grounds,’ and when I asked him what he meant, he said he couldn’t say more, but he sure didn’t mean the family farm.”

“So he came here?” Wanda asked.

“It’s all there in the letter. Happiness Haven, the key to happiness—Happiness Key—my being ‘fortunate’ if I paid attention to what he was trying to tell me.”

“Look to the heavens?”

“Yes, because he would be dead by the time I got here. And the only thing I would have to go on was his letter.”

The women pondered Dana’s words. Tracy was the first to speak. “What do you think it means?”

“I think Fargo buried something, and I can only imagine it’s gold, since he says our memories were ‘golden.’ Coins or bullion, I don’t know. It’s on the key somewhere. I think he converted his assets and buried the result for safekeeping, so if he got into trouble, the gold would be waiting for him when he got out of prison. But years of hard living caught up with him.”

Tracy didn’t look convinced. “I can see why he didn’t just stash whatever it was in a bank where it could be traced back to him and confiscated. But why here? The land didn’t belong to him. Wasn’t he afraid someone would develop it and find whatever he’d left in the process?”

“I’ve figured that out. At the time of our last phone call, the husband of my mother’s cousin was in a nursing home, but he still owned the property. By then Happiness Haven had been abandoned for some time, and the only thing of value was the land. Fargo must have thought burying whatever he did was a temporary measure, and that even if the old man died, any sale would take long enough to complete that he’d have plenty of time to get back and dig up whatever it was. But things turned out differently. The old man died immediately afterward, and his heirs, our distant cousins, sold the property immediately. Your husband bought it, Tracy, to turn it into Happiness Key, and right afterward, before he could get back here, Fargo went to prison.”

“And whatever he left behind is still here,” Wanda said.

Dana rose. “I’ll never know. I’ve got to leave tonight, before Pete gets here. And you’ve got to let me. Please. I have to protect Lizzie. If all this comes out, I’ll go to jail and they’ll slap her in foster care. Our life isn’t perfect, but I’m the only mother she knows.”

“What you did?” Wanda said. “It’s what anybody who loves kids would have done in—”

“Look to the heavens,” Janya said, interrupting. “I think perhaps you have made a mistake, Dana. Exactly where have you looked for this golden memory?”

Dana was perplexed by the question. “I’ve dug everywhere I could think of.”

“So that’s why you’ve been so hot to plant all those flowers,” Wanda said.

Dana listed the places she’d looked. “I’ve dug all around Alice’s cottage, where we used to stay. And in front of the office, where my mother used to make us wait while she finished work in the evenings after it got dark. Fargo used to wade into the pond there and get whatever coins people had tossed for good luck. I thought maybe that was the memory he wanted me to ‘examine.’ But there’s nothing there. I’ve gone over and over every area I can think of with Lizzie’s metal detector. I’ve found nails and sheet metal and no treasure. I’ve gone over every inch of the area around Fortunate Harbor, because we used to play pirates there and buried treasure, boxes of bottle caps and shiny rocks. I’ve been going at night with a flashlight after Lizzie falls asleep. Nothing.”