Midnight come again (25 page)

The girl swallowed, and the guilt threatened to swamp Kate the way the tears had the night before. "She was one of the best people I've ever met. I'm really glad she was my friend."

Stephanie raised her head. "You came and she died."

Kate drew in a sharp breath.

Stephanie's brown eyes bored into hers. "You came and she died," she repeated.

They stared at each other in silence for a moment, until the accusation in the girl's expression gave way again to grief and she hid her face.

You came and she died. Kate would have liked to deny those words, but they were true. I am the angel of death, she had told Jim the night before, the words boiling up from the depths of rage and pain and despair, yes, but maybe it was true, maybe she was.

"There's a story I know," she began, hardly aware at first of what she was going to say.

There was no response but she knew Stephanie was listening. A couple approached. "Hello, Stephanie."

"Hi, Mrs. Mather. Hello, Mr. Mather."

"We're so sorry about your mother, honey."

"Thank you."

"I brought some banana bread, would you like some?"

"No, thank you."

"Okay. I'll put it in the oven to keep warm. You can come in and get a slice whenever you want."

"Okay. Thank you."

Kate waited until they had gone up the steps and inside, and then continued, because the words had come to her now. "It's about a little boy who lived in the mountains of Tibet."

She kept her voice calm and matter-of-fact as she recounted the story from the wonderful little children's picture book by Mordecai Gerstein that she had given Katya as a christening present, that she had given as a christening present to every child of her acquaintance, all about the little boy who loves to fly kites, who grows up to be a woodcutter, who marries and has children, who lives to be very old and then dies.

A voice then offers him a choice between going to heaven or living another life. As a woodcutter he had always wanted to see the rest of the world, so he choses to live another life. Pick a star, says the voice, and he does. Pick a planet around that star, says the voice, and he does. Pick a place on that planet, says the voice, and he does. He remembers that he was a boy in his last life, so he decides to become a girl in his next. A little girl who flies kites.

It was a book that had touched Kate deeply the first time she saw it; truth be told, she owned her own copy. She'd never been religious, hadn't been brought up to it by Abel or Emaa. When asked once what she believed in, she had replied with perfect honesty, "The earth." She did, she believed in its ability to nurture her, to sustain her, to challenge her; she believed in its ability to bury her in the end. She had never bought into the idea of heaven and hell, having witnessed too many, too successful attempts by people to create the latter in this life.

But she liked the idea of being offered a second chance. A do-over. And she especially liked the idea of being given a choice in that chance.

Next to her, Stephanie stirred. "You think my mom already picked?"

Kate took a long, careful breath. "I don't know, Stephanie. Maybe."

Her voice was muffled by Mutt's fur, a Mutt who was apparently willing to sit there as long as Stephanie needed to hang onto her. "She always wanted to go to Italy." Kate thought about it. "I remember now. She had a poster of Michelangelo's David on the wall of her room at school."

"We just started studying Italian from tapes," Stephanie said, and began to recite from memory. "Buongiorno. Buona sera. Come sta molto bene. Per piacere. Dov'e il gabenettol Mom said the last one was really important," Stephanie added. Kate nodded. She had no idea what it meant but she could guess.

"So maybe Mom's a baby in Italy now," Stephanie said, her head still burrowed into Mutt's ruff.

"Maybe."

"Or maybe she's in heaven like Pastor Dave says."

"Maybe."

Stephanie shifted a little, sat up. "Maybe I should keep learning Italian."

Kate felt the knot in her stomach loosening. "I think that's a very good idea."

"Someday I'll go to Italy. So I'll need to speak Italian."

"Yes."

They were silent. A man left, and two women came. "Hello, Stephanie."

"Hello, Ms. Sirilio, in, Ms. Nicholson."

"We're so sorry about your mommy, Stephanie, so very sorry. You feel bad about anything, you know you can come to us, right?"

"I know. Thank you."

"We brought some banana bread, would you like a slice?"

Kate felt Stephanie's body tremble a little next to her, and resisted the impulse to put a protective arm around the girl.

"No, thank you."

"We'll keep it warm for you, honey."

"Okay."

The second woman had a thin, intelligent face beneath a short, permed frizz and sharp eyes. "You get that physics book I left for you at the library?"

"Yes, Ms. Nicholson, I did, and thank you."

"You have any questions, you come on over. Doesn't matter when."

"Okay. Thank you."

The two teachers went inside.

"Does everybody bring banana bread when somebody dies?" Stephanie asked.

"I guess so," Kate said.

"Weird." It was the first childlike thing Stephanie had said since Kate had sat down, and she welcomed it with open arms. "Totally."

They sat in mutual contemplation of the oddities of humankind for a few moments.

Kate stirred first. "There's something I have to tell you, Stephanie."

The wariness was back in the child's voice. "What?"

"This kind of thing shouldn't need saying, but just in case you're too young to understand, I want to lay it out for you. You are your mother's daughter. I was your mother's friend. If you ever need anything, anything at all, at any time in your life, come to me. I'll help. Right now I work at Baird Air, out at the airport. Most of the time I live on a homestead outside Niniltna. This is my post office box number, and the cell phone number of a good friend. I'll tell him you might call." She tucked it into Stephanie's shirt pocket. "Anytime you need me, anytime you need anything, you write, or you call, or you just get on a plane and come. Okay?"

"Okay," the muffled voice said.

Kate reached out, hovered over the girl's hair, shoulder, settled for a light touch on one of the clenched hands. Her own hand was possessed of a fine trembling that, try as she would, she could not control.

Inside, a woman Kate didn't know was taking Saran Wrap from a loaf of bread that Kate would bet her last dime was banana and setting it on the table between two macaroni casseroles. The couch and chairs in the living room had been pushed back against the walls, the dining table chairs had been brought in to sit next to them, and there was a steady, low-voiced murmur coming from the kitchen.

Ray and Dorothy were sitting next to each other, word less in their grief. Kate tried to say something and Ray grabbed her hand. "Sit next to me, Katya."

Kate sat. He kept her hand.

"Your grandmother called you Katya."

"Yes, uncle."

"She was so proud of you." "Yes," Kate said. If he said so, it must be true. Emaa had not squandered speech on praise, unless she thought it would result in something of immediate benefit to the tribe, "You knew Alice in school, didn't you?" He was wandering in his grief.

"That's where we met, uncle."

"She made many friends there. She tried living in Anchorage after she graduated, did you know that?" "She told me."

"But she came home. She came home to Bering, to be close to her family, to raise her daughter. She was a good girl."

"She was a good friend to me, uncle."

He nodded. "She talked about you, too. She thought your job was exciting. I think she was kind of envious, sometimes."

The back of Kate's throat seemed to fill up. She was afraid she was going to be sick. The door opened, and the bank manager walked in, followed by Chris Overmore, the man Kate had seen come into the bank the afternoon she had met Alice there. "Mr. Chevak," Sullivan said, coming forward with his hand out. "I am so sorry. Mrs. Chevak. What can I say?

Alice was one of the best. We will miss her so much down at the bank."

Ray Chevak saw the other man over Sullivan's shoulder, and struggled to his feet. "Senator Overmore." Kate stood up with Ray and Dorothy, and shook hands.

"Mike, Senator Overmore, this is Kate Shugak, a friend of Alice's from college."

The women setting food on the table seemed to pause with dishes in the air, voices seemed to still in the kitchen, Overmore and Sullivan froze in the act of extending their hands.

There was no way she could have stopped it. She hadn't told Ray or Dorothy that she was in Bering under another name, and Alice had introduced her to them employing her correct name. "Senator," she said, bringing the room to life again. The ladies setting the table vanished into the kitchen, the men seated around the room began to converse in low tones. "Mr. Sullivan. We met at your bank a few days ago."

"That's right," he said. "I must not have caught your name that day. How do you do, Ms.--Shugak?" "Kate Shugak," she said. His hand was cool, his handshake brief.

"Ms. Shugak," Senator Overmore said, alive to the tension in the air and determined to take no notice of it. He gave her the practiced smile that had enough wattage to power a chain saw, but no real warmth. "A terrible tragedy, this."

"Yes," Kate echoed. "Terrible." The hair on the back of her neck lifted.

Instinctively, she pegged both men as bent. In reality, she knew nothing against either of them.

Mike Sullivan, according to Alice, was the manager and one of the owners of Alaska First Bank of Bering, a regional bank with branches in those villages large enough to support them. She seemed to remember something about them opening a branch in Anchorage as well, always news in this age of megabank takeovers, which meant they must be making enough money to stave off corporate invaders.

Senator Overmore--well, he worked in Juneau. No more really need be said. He and Sullivan were natural buddies. He was married to a Yupik woman, as she recalled, which must explain how he, a white man, had been elected from the largely Yupik District 5.

She wondered what tack to take. It was Sullivan's bank. Alice had extracted information from Sullivan's bank's files. If Alice proved to have been the victim of random violence, Kate need not come forward. If Alice had been killed as a result of pulling information Kate wanted from the bank's computer files, then Kate had a duty to come forward.

She looked up and saw Sullivan looking back, a considering expression in his eyes.

If he was bent, she could wind up like Alice.

There was a time not long since when that possibility would have been welcomed. Now she was up to indifferent. Sullivan turned to Ray again, standing patiently in front of his chair. "Ray, this is just awful. I don't know what to say. They'll catch the bastard, you know that.

Anything I can do, please, ask me."

Overmore was right behind him. ' thing, Mr. Chevak. Awful that it should happen in a peaceful place like Bering. I know our law enforcement officials will do their best to apprehend this person or persons and put them in jail." He was a politician, so he couldn't resist the opportunity to work the room, and raised his voice, not to any vulgar pitch but loud enough to be heard above the serving of franks and beans.

"The death penalty is too good for people like these. I've said so time and again, while I've been in office. I plan to make it my last work in the legislature to return the death penalty to practice in the state of Alaska, and I will continue that fight in Washington."

He shook Ray's hand again, he shook everyone in the room's hand, he admired Alice's high-school graduation and wedding pictures with Dorothy, he conferred with an elder on sovereignty, he listened respectfully as a member of the city council held forth on the need to lengthen and upgrade the airport, he sampled a plate loaded with fried salmon, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, fruit salad, carrot salad and banana bread, he praised the cooks adequately but not extravagantly, shook hands with Ray again, and left with a general and all-inclusive wave, Sullivan scurrying in his wake.

Ray said, "Have you ever noticed how all politicians sound alike after a while?"

"Right from the beginning, I always thought," Kate replied.

Both of them managed a smile.

At the back of the crowd Kamyanka and Glukhov watched the candidate mount the platform. A red-faced, beaming mayor introduced him with fulsome praise, the local Boy Scout troop paraded the colors as everyone stood to attention, a zither player accompanied The Star- Spangled Banner and Alaska's Flag, and the president of the Chamber of Commerce led the Pledge of Allegiance. The candidate took center stage and gave an impressive reading of the Declaration of Independence, punctuated by enthusiastic and rebellious outcries from the crowd.

He knew his audience, did Senator Christopher Over more of District 5.