An Accidental Woman (18 page)

“They look alike.”

“Yes.” She glanced up at Griffin. He was still fresh from the shower and looked handsome indeed. She might have dwelt on how much so, if the other matter hadn't been so weighty. “If this was the one your brother had on the wall, I can understand why you stared. The resemblance is . . .”

“Uncanny.”

It was, indeed. “Which doesn't mean it's her,” Poppy hastened to say, and not out of sheer obstinacy. She was grateful to Griffin for having gotten these, because it did explain why there may have been a mix-up. Still, she was Heather's friend. Out of loyalty alone, she wasn't ready to say that Heather was Lisa. “People do look alike. There are only so many different eyes, noses, and mouths. Same with hair.” She guessed that fifteen years later, Lisa Matlock might have silver strands there, too.

“And smiles? That was what got me when I was here in October. Even aside from the scar, the smile is the same.”

Poppy actually found the eyes more gripping. The graduation shot was in color, and those eyes had the same irridescence as Heather's. “According to these records, her school grades were good. Same with recommendations. It's no wonder she was offered a scholarship.” She singled one page out from the rest. It was a medical report from the emergency room of a Sacramento hospital, made eight months before Rob DiCenza's
death. The cut at the corner of Lisa's mouth wasn't the only thing mentioned. There had been other facial bruises. The doctor noted that though the patient denied it, he suspected domestic abuse.

“Why didn't he pursue it?” Poppy asked, knowing that Griffin was reading over her shoulder.

“He had no legal obligation to do that. Lisa said she was eighteen. It was a lie, but he didn't know it. He might have pursued something if she'd come in battered time and again, but she didn't. If there were other incidents, she went to a different hospital.”

“Your person didn't find other records?”

“Not yet. He's still looking.”

Poppy returned to the graduation photo. She compared it to the other photos. The scar was there in all but the driver's license. “When did she get her license?”

“Right after she turned seventeen.”

“The date of birth here says April. Heather's birthday is in November.”

Griffin said nothing.

“You're thinking Heather may have lied.” Poppy wondered it, too. “We know that Lisa is capable of lying, if she told the doctor she was eighteen when she wasn't. But no one who knows Heather here can think of any time when she lied.”

The phone bank beeped. Poppy wheeled around and returned there, setting the papers on the sofa as she passed. Not surprisingly, the call coming in was on Micah's line. One of every four she received lately was for him.

She was on edge even before she answered. “Hello?”

“Micah Smith, please,” said a deep-voiced man.

“Who's calling?”

“Samuel Atkins,
Sacramento Bee.”
His tone was nonchalant, like Micah was someone he talked with regularly.

“Samuel Atkins,
Sacramento Bee,”
Poppy repeated less nonchalantly. “And you think I'll just put the call through to Mr. Smith?”

“Who is this?”

“His press secretary. He isn't taking calls. He isn't doing interviews.”

“I'm prepared to pay.”

“Well, that's a new twist,” Poppy said, “but it would mean prostitution on the part of Mr. Smith. He isn't that desperate, Samuel Atkins,
Sacramento Bee.”
She punched off the call with a flourish and a snort. “That man has called before,” she told Griffin. “He used another name, but I know the voice.” She let out a breath, then drew in another and told herself to relax. Tossing the headset on the desk, she went back to the sofa for the packet Griffin had brought.

She returned the graduation photo to the top and searched it for something, anything that didn't match. Lisa's ears were pierced; so were Heather's. Lisa's hair was long, dark, and wavy; so was Heather's. Lisa even had the same uneven edge on her two top front teeth.

“So,” Poppy reasoned, “if I were Lisa, and I was as smart as she was, wouldn't I have done something to change my appearance?” She looked up at Griffin. “I mean, right there you have the best argument for why these women can't be the same person. It would be just dumb to disappear and then resurface somewhere else looking exactly the same.”

“Unless the somewhere else was the last place on earth where you think a lawman would look,” he reasoned. “And if she left no paper trail—if she used a new name, new driver's license, new Social Security number—it wouldn't have been so dumb. Changing the paperwork is a hell of a lot easier, and cheaper, than plastic surgery. A few questions on a street corner will tell you who to see where, and a little money closes the deal.”

Poppy tried to imagine Heather doing that. It still didn't fit. “So do you have anything on Heather yet?”

“No. But I'm working on it.” He gave a short smile. “Not that I'd give you everything I have at once, not if I want a shower a couple a times a week. You have a great shower, by the way.”

Pointedly, Poppy said, “Once you get my shower chair out of the way.”

“Light as anything, and worth it. We rich boys are suckers for oversized stalls.”

“We paraplegics need them, along with meds every day. If you snooped in the medicine chest, you'll have seen those, too.” He kept acting like everything was normal. Only her life wasn't normal—at least, not by most people's standards.

“I didn't snoop,” he told her. “I didn't have to. Last time I left here, I
boned up on paraplegia. I know about daily meds. They control muscle spasms.”

“ ‘Boned up on paraplegia,' ” Poppy repeated. “That makes me very uncomfortable.” It struck her that he might have gotten hold of her medical records, just like he had Lisa's. That was illegal. Not that she minded when it came to Lisa. Which, of course, made her a total hypocrite.

So she didn't argue the matter of violation of privacy and said instead, “Know what happens if I don't take the pills? These muscles can very well knot up. It's totally gross. So I'm thirty-two, and I pop pills every day. I'll have to be on them every day for the rest of my life.”

Griffin didn't look fazed. “Is it any different from a diabetic taking insulin? Sorry, angel, but that won't scare me off.”

She held his gaze. “I am not an angel. I thought I made that clear yesterday.”

“All you did yesterday was to tell me that you have moments of self-pity, and I told you that the rest of us have those, too. So I'm still not turned off.”

“Okay,” Poppy goaded. “What if I told you I have a dark past.”

“You mean, the accident?”

For a split second, she wondered just what he did know. Unable to think about it herself, though, she said, “Before the accident. I was an impossible child to raise. I was bratty and rebellious. My mother'll vouch for that.”

“Poppy, why do I care how you were as a child?”

“Because . . . because that's my true nature.”

He considered that for a bit. Then, still pensive, he said, “I don't think so. I think people's natures change. They may be one way as a child and another as an adult. Life does that. Things happen, traumas take place, people learn and wise up and adapt. That may be the case with you. It may have been the case with Heather.”

“Then you do think she is Lisa?” Poppy asked, pleased to get away from talking about herself. “If so, you're no friend of mine.” She pointed toward the door. “Leave. Now.”

He grabbed her finger and shook it gently. “I do
not
think she's Lisa. I think she's Heather.”

He didn't finish the sentence. Well, he did. But Poppy heard a final word.
Now.
He thought that Heather was Heather . . .
now.

She retrieved her finger and prepared to argue. Mustering loyalty, frustration, and fear, she opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. Her eyes fell to Lisa Matlock's graduation photo. If she hadn't known differently, she would have sworn it was Heather's.

* * *

Pain was the last thing he had wanted for his girls. He had tried to shield them when Marcy died, and now he was doing it again. He could cook. That was easy enough. He could read stories. That was easy enough, too. Hair was something else. And even if he'd been able to help, they wanted Heather.

So did he. Only she wasn't here. She was sitting in a jail, shutting him out of her life in a way that made it impossible for him to help get her home. He wondered what she was hiding. The possibilities tormented him. He felt alternately furious at her, then guilty for feeling that way. He told himself that she might have lived through awful things. He tried to understand. But he hated being shut out, hated being in the dark,
hated
feeling impotent.

Needing to do what he was best at, he put the girls to bed and then went to the corkboard that hung on the kitchen wall. A shopping list was tacked there, a school calendar, and samplings of the girls' art, along with miscellaneous phone numbers and notes written in Heather's hand. He had no idea what half of them meant.

He did know what the list in the middle was about. It was everything he needed to get done so that when the sap started to run, he was ready to boil. He had cleared enough of the sugarbush. Now he had to lay tubing through fifty acres' worth of trees. The last few years, Heather had helped him with that. Not this year.

Gritting his teeth, he stomped out the back door. The snow underfoot
was packed, but he knew it wouldn't be for long. A midday melt wasn't far off. He didn't have to check his journal, his barometer, or the Weather Channel. Nor did he rely on other signs, like hearing the caw of the crow or seeing raccoon tracks in the snow. He could feel it in his bones. He hadn't grown up a sugarmaker's son for nothing.

Nights like this were for washing pans, tools, and spiles. It had all been done the April before, when the sap had grown buddy and turned dark and stopped flowing. Now it had to be done again—everything washed in a bleach solution and triple rinsed to prevent even the slightest off taste. Cleanliness was crucial to a sugarmaker's operation, if the final product was to be top quality, and if the goal wasn't top quality, then he figured it wasn't much worth doing.

He had barely gotten the propane going to heat the water when he had an awful thought. If one of the girls had a nightmare, he wouldn't be able to hear. If one of them was sick or frightened, and he had the faucets going here, he wouldn't know a thing. He had counted on Heather keeping tabs on them while he did this.

Thinking that he couldn't afford not to use this time to wash, he went ahead with the job, filling the large stainless steel sink, adding the right amount of bleach.

Then, thinking twice, he let the whole thing out, turned the propane off, and stomped back to the house.

“Who's there?” he called, shielding his eyes. When he realized that whoever it was couldn't hear him over the engine's noise, he waved an arm.

The headlight veered to the side, taking the noise with it. In the light reflected off the snow on the lake, Griffin made out a snowmobile. He caught sight of something large behind it, before the whole thing disappeared around the back of his island. Seconds later, the engine went still.

Closing the door, he checked his watch. It was barely six in the morning. The woodstove had burned down during the night and the cabin was cold, though nowhere near as cold as it had been when he had first arrived. He also had extra logs inside now, which meant that they were dry and ready to burn.

He added several to the woodstove. They quickly caught flame.

In the light from the blaze, Griffin pulled on his clothes and boots, grabbed his parka and the battery-powered lantern that he'd purchased at Charlie's, and went outside. The path to the lake was packed down now and easily crossed, and once he hit the lake itself, he walked in the ruts made by the snowmobile and its trailer. They led him a short distance off the tail end of Little Bear. He raised the lantern.

“How ya doin'?” came the voice of an old man.

Griffin approached. “Billy Farraway, I take it?”

“The same.”

“They said you'd get here sooner or later.”

“Sooner's only because of Ice Days. I was up on the far side of Elbow Island, and the fishin' was good. But others'll be setting up shop there this weekend. Don't see the point in sharing my space with whoever chooses to fish. There should be trout here. Got any coffee?”

“Not yet. I can make some,” Griffin offered.

“You do that while I set up house. No need to fuss. I take it black.”

Griffin returned to the cabin, perked a pot of coffee, and carried two large, steaming mugs back outside. By then, dawn had spread over the lake. In its pale purple light, he saw that Billy Farraway's house was . . . indeed, a house. It was small, no more than eight feet by ten feet, and made of wood, with a tin roof and a pipe for exhaust. It sat on a platform, which rested on runners, now immobilized by bricks front and rear.

As Griffin approached, a dim light began to shine through the house's single small window. He opened the door. Inside was a cot piled with down covers, a cushioned chair, and a stove. Shelves on the walls supported canned goods and books. One basket held bananas, another eggs. A blackened fry pan sat on top of the stove.

The old man himself was a vision of bushy gray hair and eyebrows, ruddy hands and cheeks. His clothing was a mix of Sherpa and wool, all well-worn but not tattered. He was on his knees, feeding the stove from a pile of wood on the side.

Closing the stove door, he said, “This is the big danger, y'know. Fire. Gotta watch it close.”

Griffin handed him one of the mugs. “Are you out here all winter?”

“Just about.”

“With your loon pipe.”

“With my loon pipe.” The old man drank from the mug.

“What about when it storms?”

“What about it? I got a roof here. I got food.” He turned on his knees, reached into a corner, and pulled up on a hook. A trap door opened. “I take my auger and make a hole right here. Drop the line, set the trap,
close the hatch, then wait for the flag to flip and tell me I have a bite. Meantime, I'm warm enough.”

Griffin eyed the woodbin. “That little bit of wood won't last you long.”

“The woodman delivers.”

“Who's the woodman?” When Billy pushed the question aside with a negligent wave, Griffin asked, “Where do you live when it isn't winter?”

“Downtown. I got a camp on the shore. There's a bunch of us old guys.”

“Where are they now?”

“Florida.” He snorted. “Won't get
me
there.” He put the mug to his mouth, took another swallow, set it down. “Nah. Lake winter's in my blood.”

“You've lived here all your life?”

He nodded. “All my life.” He kept nodding. “This is my season coming up.”

“Spring's your favorite?”

The old man looked lost in thought. “Don't know what happened with her, though. I liked her.”

“Spring?”

“Heather.” He shot Griffin an annoyed glance. “Heather. Who'd you think I was talking about? Who's
anyone
around here talking about? Doesn't matter if you live on the lake like I do. You hear. You hear lots. Course, they don't ask me what
I
know.”

“What do you know?” Griffin asked nonchalantly.

Billy looked at him long and hard. “I know that I don't know
you.”

Griffin held up a hand. “I'm safe.”

Billy snorted. “I know about sugaring, I'll tell you that. Know how to drill to hit sapwood. Know how to keep the pan from burning. Know ju-ust that instant when the boil changes texture and you got syrup.”

“How do you know that?”

He frowned, then scowled. “Achh. Doesn't matter.” His brows rose and his expression brightened. “Want to watch me wet a line?”

* * *

Today the rear box contained two dozen large pizzas in insulated bags. They were held in place by bungee cords and Missy and Star, the two girls half-hidden under their helmets.

Poppy raised her faceplate and looked back. “You girls okay?” Both helmeted heads bobbed. “Ready to go?” There were two yips of assent.

She gave them a thumbs-up, or as much of one as she could with heavy ski gloves on her hands, and waited. They each raised a mittened thumb and grinned.

The grins were what Poppy wanted most. There had been none at all that morning when Micah had dropped them off. They'd been half-asleep, wearing nightgowns with their parkas, hats, and boots, none too happy to have been uprooted at first light for a reason other than seeing Heather.

“Gotta work,” was all Micah said when Poppy opened the door, and she didn't argue. Yes, the girls needed him. With Heather gone for however long—and Marcy gone for good—he was the only parent they had left. But Poppy knew enough about sugaring to understand the pressure he felt.

She had grown up with seasonal pressure, albeit with apples rather than sap. She knew what it meant to harvest those apples and get them to market while they were crisp, then press the rest into cider before they spoiled. Sugarmaking wasn't much different. A small window opened, during which time the work had to be done. A family's income depended on it.

Cidermaking was the last crop of the year, sugarmaking the first. With it, the cycle started again. Poppy had always loved the poetry of that.

She wasn't thinking of poetry, though, when Micah arrived with the girls. Barely awake herself, she had taken the two right back to bed with
her. They piled the pillows high, pulled up the quilt, and turned on the television—and for Poppy, it was sinfully sweet. In her own home, with the girls right there, she felt safe. She felt useful. She felt able. Pushing aside her nagging thoughts of Heather, she took pleasure in the warmth of the two little bodies snuggling close, and relief that at this moment the two were content.

Likewise, as they sat on the Arctic Cat now, their grins were a balm.

Facing forward, she lowered her faceplate and shifted her wrist. Taking care where the rocky shoreline made bumps in the snow, she drove the Cat out onto the lake to the pizza hut that Charlie had set up. When Charlie's two oldest boys had unloaded the boxes, she returned to shore for another load. After the pizzas came drinks, and after that, hot dogs, hamburgers, buns, and relish.

Work done, they explored. They drove around in a slow arc, passing incoming snowmobiles, cross-country skiers, and snowshoers. Farther out, there were car races to watch, and farther still, open patches where ice sailers caught the wind in a stream of vivid colors against the snow.

When they had seen it all, she retraced the route. By the time they were back at the town beach, the girls were hungry enough to share a hot dog and a slice of pizza, and the crowds had arrived. Pickups lined the road; snowmobiles formed impressive side-by-side displays. Snowsuited crowds milled on the lake, their breath white as they talked, their cheeks red. They wore every color of the rainbow, bringing gaiety to stands that sold not only food, but T-shirts, fur hats, and wood plaques. Aware that there was prize money at stake, spectators and fishermen mingled around the big board at the fishing derby headquarters, applauding the arrival of new catches as each was weighed, tagged, and hung on display.

Poppy knew that if past years were any indication, there were out-of-staters in the crowd. She was sure there were media people among them, and tried to pick them out, but the only one she spotted for sure was Griffin. The bright sun brought out the red in his hair, and with only a blue wool headband to keep his ears warm, that hair was a beacon. She seemed to see it everywhere. She refused to look for it, but there it was.

He caught her eye once and waved. She waved back and returned to the conversation at hand, because there always was that. Ice Days was a
social event. People who had been inside for the worst of the winter months were aching to be outside, aching to see friends, aching to talk. There was incidental gossip—a birth, a death, a divorce. There was talk of the weather—of snow that was forecast, of how long it would last, how cold it would be, what impact it would have on Micah, when the sap might start to run. Of course, there was talk of Heather, and since Poppy was Heather's closest friend, she was a target for questions.

The first few questions were the least harmful, running along the line of the ones Poppy so often asked herself.
Why Heather? Why so suddenly? Why Lake Henry? Why now?

Then came observations that should have been innocent, but carried a probing edge.
Did you see the picture they showed on TV? That one sure looks like our Heather. What do you think?

By midday, the questions went deeper.
Where is she from? Why don't we know that? Where was she born? Where did she grow up? She must have people somewhere. You're her friend, Poppy. What do you know?
And then,
What does Micah know? He has to know more than we do. He's lived with her these last few years.

Consternation seemed to be the bottom line.
We don't know a thing. She's been one of us for fourteen years, and we're in the dark. How can a person keep so much of herself hidden?

* * *