A Sister Would Know Read online

  Instead, he found himself sympathizing for her position. And undeniably attracted. Reactions he couldn’t justify to himself, let alone Denise. He knew his loyalties had to lie with the people of this town. Yet he also knew that before too long, he would find another excuse to see her again.

  “I DO FEEL BAD for Denise,” Amalie said. She dropped her spoon in the mug of hot chocolate and looked cautiously at Grant, who was sitting in the opposite kitchen chair.

  He’d dropped in late, after Davin was already in bed. Ostensibly here to apologize for Denise Carter’s behavior at the information center yesterday, he’d done nothing but justify it.

  “I know you don’t agree,” Amalie continued, “but it isn’t fair for everyone to place all the blame on Helena. After all—” she lifted her spoon to emphasize the point “—he was the married one.”

  Grant didn’t appear convinced. “He was such a steady guy. A real family man. He wouldn’t have strayed unless he was sorely tempted.”

  “Davin was devastated. Denise said some pretty ugly things.” That was the part she just couldn’t forgive. She understood the other woman’s anger. But in front of a child…

  “There may be other ugly scenes to come. You know, you could always leave and he wouldn’t have to face them.”

  Amalie was reminded of what Grant had said to her the other night in the hallway. How Helena’s affair with Ramsey had been one of the reasons he hadn’t liked her.

  “Are you warning me off?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. Then changed his mind. “Hell, yes. I’m warning you off. As I tried to explain on the phone, there’s nothing you can do here. Your sister’s dead and that’s not going to change…whether we pull out the bodies tomorrow, next week or after spring thaw!”

  “Spring thaw?” Amalie thought of her financial situation and shuddered. “Could it really take that long?”

  “It might.” He slanted her an appraising look. “Are you prepared to wait it out? And what about Davin? Besides missing school, he’s going to have to face what the townspeople will say about your sister. And I’m warning you, a lot of it won’t be pretty.”

  Amalie refused to listen. Grant was biased against Helena. Absentmindedly, she stirred the cocoa again, melancholy slowing her motions. She and her sister hadn’t been close in years, but it was so hard to think that she was gone now. Forever.

  “Well, I can see I won’t change your mind.” Grant sounded disappointed.

  “That’s what you really came here for, isn’t it?” Not to apologize but to ask her to leave. And she’d thought he’d been worried about her and Davin. Which had been foolish of her. His allegiance would remain with the people from this town. People like Denise Carter.

  “Your leaving would help smooth things over.”

  For Denise, it would. And maybe, in the short term, for her and Davin, too. But in the long run, the questions would surely drive them crazy. They’d never know how Helena had ended up in Rogers Pass, why she appeared to have been hooked on drugs and alcohol, how she’d come to the point where she’d been having an affair with a married man. There had to be explanations for these things; people didn’t just change for no reason.

  “I owe it to Davin to find out the truth about his mother. About her life, as well as her death.”

  “Why? He seems more interested in my work than in what happened to Helen. He didn’t even know her, right?”

  Amalie bristled under the implied criticism. “They corresponded. Occasionally,” she had to confess.

  “Corresponded?” Grant’s eyebrows rose in dark, arched lines. “Did she ever visit him?”

  No, she never had. Not once in eleven years. It wasn’t something Amalie herself understood, but then, they’d never gone searching for Helena, either.

  “Grant, she was his mother and my sister. We can’t just shrug and return to Toronto as if she never mattered.”

  He understood. She saw the flash of sympathy in his eyes in the second before he turned away from her. In that instant she realized he wasn’t cold and unfeeling but a man torn by conflicting loyalties. Which made it easier for her to disregard his next statement.

  “It isn’t going to be pleasant for you. You’re not going to like some of the things you find out.”

  Amalie didn’t see how the situation could get much worse. “We’ll deal with that if it happens.”

  Grant’s gaze was suddenly personal. “You’re very determined. Stubborn.”

  There was grudging respect behind his assessment. And even a gleam of admiration in his eyes. She was unexpectedly driven to explain herself.

  “I feel that I owe Helena. I’ve always had it easy. She’s the one who was dealt all the tough breaks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Growing up with my parents…they’re good people, but they were rigid in their expectations.” Partly due to their religion and partly because they’d never lost the fear that this new, free country might somehow corrupt their daughters.

  “Oh?”

  “Nothing Helena ever did could please my mother. While I—” she shrugged disparagingly “—I could seem to do no wrong. It wasn’t fair and it only got worse when Helena announced she was pregnant.”

  “With Davin?”

  She nodded. “My parents were furious. To them, pregnancy outside of marriage was a woman’s ultimate disgrace. Unforgivable. Besides being ostracized, Helena also had to cope with severe medical problems. Believe me, she suffered terribly.”

  “She deserted her son once he was born.”

  His stark judgment proved he didn’t understand. Amalie wasn’t surprised. He couldn’t realize that when their mother had told Helena she wasn’t capable of raising a child on her own, Helena had believed her.

  Grant rubbed his face. He looked beat. Amalie remembered him telling Davin his day started at 4:30 in the morning. It was close to ten at night now. “It’s late. You must be exhausted.”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said, but the physical evidence was to the contrary. As he fought back another yawn, she took their empty mugs to the sink.

  He watched for a moment, then eventually he rose, too, looming large in Helena’s tiny kitchen. She dropped the dishrag, aware of his broad shoulders, barrel chest and powerful arms. Solid muscle, all of him. No wonder Denise had fallen against him for support. He was definitely up for it.

  “You’re right. I’d better go.” His voice rasped in the quiet of the apartment.

  Amalie turned, caught his gaze, and was surprised at what she saw in his eyes. Something tender she hadn’t noticed before. And intense. Almost as if…

  But no, he couldn’t be attracted to her. True, they’d exchanged a few unsettling looks this evening. But they hadn’t meant anything….

  “Amalie?” He took a step forward, not breaking eye contact.

  She had to fight not to hold out her hands to him. When his gaze dropped to her mouth, she guessed he was wondering what it would be like to kiss her.

  She turned away, knowing she was being foolish, that she had to be imagining his interest in her. He didn’t even like her—well, maybe he’d softened a little since their first meeting, but that hardly constituted—

  “Are you serious about delving into your sister’s life?”

  The question startled her, but her answer came quickly. “Yes, I am.”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday. I could take you to the bar where she used to work. You could talk to some of the people there.”

  “Helena worked in a bar?”

  “Yeah. The Rock Slide Saloon.”

  The name made her smile. “Yes, I’d like to go check it out.”

  He moved a few inches closer. Maybe she hadn’t imagined that spark between them. For a moment it seemed he truly would kiss her. This time she resolved she wasn’t going to back away at the last minute.

  But he surprised her by speaking, instead.

  “I still think you should return to Toronto.”

  The warning was mi
tigated by a new warmth in his smile.

  “And I say I’m staying.”

  “Then it’s a date? Tomorrow at the Rock Slide Saloon?”

  “Yes.” A date with Grant Thorlow. She never would’ve guessed the evening would end like this.

  DAVIN LISTENED TO THE SOUND of the door closing, then the scrape of metal as his aunt turned the dead bolt.

  He rolled over in his sleeping bag, careful to stay on the foam pad underneath him.

  So Grant was gone. Too bad he’d come so late. Davin had gotten up once for a drink of water, hoping his aunt would invite him to stay and visit, but they’d both been quiet until he went back to his room.

  What had they talked about? He hadn’t heard their words, only the murmur of their voices.

  But it was probably Helena. Everyone seemed to want to talk about her around here. And no one had much good to say.

  Aunt Amalie kept telling him it was because folks didn’t know her. But Davin was beginning to think maybe everyone here did know Helena. It was his aunt who was wrong.

  Helena had been a bad person. That’s what Grant thought. And so did the woman who’d been crying at the information center yesterday.

  Davin agreed. Leaving your kid to be raised by your sister wasn’t normal. He’d figured that much out in kindergarten.

  Sometimes he wished Aunt Amalie had never told him about Helena. He wished she’d just pretended he was hers, and they could be like a regular family and he could call her Mom, which was what she was, after all.

  More than Helena, that was for sure. A mother wasn’t someone who wrote a letter or sent a present sometimes, only when she felt like it. And always something the wrong size or a toy he wasn’t interested in.

  Some nights he made up stories to get himself to sleep. He imagined his aunt coming into his room and explaining that it was all a mistake. She really was his mother, and that woman who wrote the letters and stuff was his aunt.

  Only it wasn’t that way.

  Helena was his mother and now she was dead, and he didn’t even care.

  Davin stared up at the ceiling, remembering his aunt calling him to their kitchen in Toronto to tell him about the avalanche, to explain that they had to drive to Rogers Pass.

  At first he’d been excited. They were going on a trip, and he was going to miss school. It had seemed like an adventure, setting out to find where his mother had lived and what she’d been like.

  And it had been exciting to meet Grant and to learn about the awesome stuff they did to control the avalanches around here.

  But this apartment—it was so weird it was spooky, the way Helena didn’t seem to have owned anything. He and Aunt Amalie didn’t have much money, either, but their house was warm and cozy, with all the regular stuff most other people had, like cushions and chairs, lamps and pictures.

  That was another thing. There were no photographs in this place. A few times they’d had a box number to write to, and his aunt had included several photographs with his thank-you letters for her presents. He’d always imagined Helena would have his picture stuck to her fridge, or maybe in a frame by her bed. Now he knew Helena had probably chucked them out as soon as she got them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “AW, AUNTY, this China stuff sucks!” Davin tossed down his pencil and crossed his arms. “I don’t want to study about some country on the other side of the world.”

  Amalie felt a tug of sympathy. “But Davin, it’s part of the curriculum.”

  “I don’t care. Why can’t I research something interesting?”

  “Such as?” Amalie bent to pick up the pencil that had rolled onto the floor.

  “Avalanches!” Davin twisted his head so he could see out the window, where a thick coating of snow covered every object in sight.

  Living in Toronto, they were used to snow, but not in these quantities. Yesterday Grant had told them that Glacier National Park had received the greatest recorded average yearly snowfall in Canada, and she believed it.

  At least the temperatures weren’t as cold as on the prairies, but even this was a mixed blessing. It was the westerly flow of mild, humid air that created the unstable snow layers that eventually caused avalanches.

  “You want to study avalanches instead of China?” Strange how a subject that frightened her so was fascinating to Davin.

  Of course, he hadn’t experienced what she had the day of Jeremy’s party. The memory of Helena’s suffering was a constant companion. That feeling of suffocation, the terror of not being able to suck in a breath of air…Getting caught in an avalanche was a horrific way to die.

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked.

  “I want to do a report on what causes them and how dangerous they are, and on Grant’s job of trying to manage them. I could take pictures and do research at the information center. And I bet Grant would answer all my questions if he knew it was for a school project.”

  Amalie was amused at Davin’s earnestness. Grant would answer his questions under any circumstances, she was sure. He’d already demonstrated such patience with the young boy.

  “I promised your teacher we’d follow the curriculum.”

  Davin’s excited grin faded, and his gaze settled on the table surface. “But I don’t care about this stuff,” he reiterated, pushing aside the book from the local library.

  Amalie reconsidered. Enthusiasm ought to count for something. And the project would teach him important research skills. “Well, maybe we could make an exception in this one subject area. If you promise to keep up with all the others.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Davin jumped up from his chair, giving her a high-five.

  “Especially literature,” she stressed. “One book report every week.”

  Davin rolled his eyes, but even that piece of news couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. “This will be so sweet. The kids at school are going to be so impressed.”

  “We can start on your research tomorrow. I thought we’d take a break from studying now and have lunch. Is there anything you’d like to do this afternoon?”

  “Could we try cross-country skiing in the mountains?”

  Davin’s answer dismayed her.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather check out the town? Maybe we could catch an afternoon matinee, if there are any good movies playing.”

  “We can watch a movie anytime. I want to go exploring.” Davin pushed back from the table. “We can rent the equipment, Aunty. We wouldn’t have to buy anything.”

  His automatic concern for her finances gave her a pang. “Well, there are probably some safe, groomed trails we could try.”

  “Let’s go to the information center and ask,” he suggested.

  The information center. Perhaps Grant Thorlow would be there. Suddenly, Davin’s idea for an outing was a little more appealing.

  ON THEIR WAY OUT to the car, Amalie and Davin ran into Heidi Eitelbach. Their landlady was carrying a stack of newspapers, and Davin stepped forward to help without being asked. Amalie followed them to the basement, where Heidi had the recycling containers arranged in a neat row.

  Today their landlady was dressed in long pants and a top that looked like pajamas. They were purple and fuzzy, and she had her hair in curlers and her feet in suede slippers.

  She stood with her hands on her hips once the papers were properly sorted and regarded the two of them.

  “Well. Where are you off to today?” she asked, eyeing Amalie’s wool-lined, brown suede coat.

  The coat had been a splurge, purchased at fifty percent off last spring. Amalie was wearing it with a matching pair of brown cords and a cream-colored turtleneck.

  “We thought we’d check into cross-country skiing. I was hoping to rent some equipment today, then go out tomorrow. Could you recommend a shop?”

  Heidi’s pale eyes sparked. “After what happened to your sister, I would have thought you’d steer clear of our mountains.”

  Amalie’s own reservations skyrocketed, but she fought to remain logical
. “We’re certainly not going into the backcountry. We just thought we’d try a safe little trail and get some exercise.”

  Heidi nodded, although her eyes gleamed with mischief. She gave Amalie the name of a store that would rent them equipment, then touched her arm as they prepared to leave.

  “There was a terrible accident back in ’93 on the Bruins Pass. I’d stay clear of it, if I were you.”

  Amalie nodded and turned for the door, but Davin had stopped in his tracks.

  “What happened?” His blue eyes were wide with fascination.

  “Well…” Heidi leaned against the concrete wall, making herself comfortable. Amalie prepared herself for a bit of a wait.

  “It was two men out skiing together that time. March 17 it happened, but believe me there was no sign of green on the mountains that day. Avalanche danger was high and just two days previous we’d had about twenty-five centimeters of fresh snow.”

  “Is that bad?” Davin asked, his eyes riveted on the older lady.

  “Oh sure. Sometimes a heavy snowfall itself can trigger an avalanche,” Heidi replied. “Anyway, one of the lads wanted to call it a day, but the other one wouldn’t let him. So they kept climbing until they reached about twenty-five hundred meters.”

  “Wow!”

  “They were at opposite ends of a horizontal path across the mountain, when the lead skier—this was the guy who’d refused to quit—hit a weak pillow of snow. His weight triggered the avalanche, but both men were caught up in it.”

  “Then what happened?” Davin and Amalie asked simultaneously.

  “Well, the second guy, the fellow who’d wanted to quit—he was smart. He released his bindings, threw off his pack and poles and swam through the snow. When it was over, he’d traveled about three hundred meters and was still on the surface.”

  “And the other guy?” Davin asked, breathlessly.

  “Not so lucky.” Heidi buffed the newspapers’ black ink from her hands onto the legs of her pajamas. “He was able to throw off his poles, but he had the safety straps on his skis and the bindings wouldn’t release.”