The House of Frozen Dreams. Seré Prince Halverson

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СКАЧАТЬ to reach out and hold him as a mother would a child—even though he was older by ten years.

      All this time she’d pictured him a boy like Niko, not a man like Vladimir. And all this time she’d thought him dead. She’d figured it out on her own, but then Lettie had confirmed. “You may as well be here. They’re all gone,” she’d said and snapped her fingers. “And Lord knows they’re never coming back.”

      When Nadia asked, “Was it the hunting trip?” because she’d seen a reference to it on the calendar and elsewhere, Lettie nodded and held a finger to her lips while a single tear ran down her worn cheek and Nadia never asked her about it again. They’d had an unspoken mutual agreement not to pry, to leave certain subjects alone.

      But now Kache stood before her, older, a grown man who had called her “Mom.” Was Elizabeth alive too?

      “Who are you?” he asked. She shook her head. She should have not spoken earlier, should have pretended she did not understand English. But already she’d given herself away. “Look—do you know me?” he said. “You called me by name. You thought I was dead? Do I know you?”

      She shook her head again, walked back and forth across the small room, touching chair, lamp, bed as she went. Moving like this, she could turn her head and glimpse him sideways without feeling so exposed face to face. The years had marked him, but he still had a youthful expression, those big dark eyes. Though Lettie had stayed clear of certain topics, Nadia knew so much about the boy: a gifted musician, an awkward teenager who felt out of place on the homestead, who fought bitterly with his father and had been a constant disappointment to him, but whose mother understood him and felt sure he would find his way. Nadia knew when he lost his first tooth (six-and-a-half years old), when he said his first word—moo-moo for moose—(ten months old). How he cried when his mother read him Charlotte’s Web.

      “Can you stop pacing?”

      She stopped. They stood in the lamplight, he staring at her, she staring down at her slippers. His mother’s slippers. He didn’t know anything—not one thing—about her, not even her name. All these years and years and years nameless, unknown. Only Lettie knew her, and Lettie must be dead. Nadia was afraid to ask.

      “What’s your name?” Kache said. “Let’s start with that.”

      Leo let out a long sigh and rested his head on his paws, sensing no more danger. How could a dog get used to having another human around so quickly?

      Squaring her shoulders, taking a deep breath, she said her name. “Nadia.” She wanted to shake him and call out, I AM NADIA! but she kept quiet, still, erect.

      He held out a large hand. “I’m Kache.”

      She kept her hands in her pockets and her eyes to the ground, even though part of her still wanted to hug him, to comfort him. She practiced the words in her head, moved her lips, then put her voice to it without looking up: “Your mother is alive?”

      “No. She died a long time ago.”

      At once the new hope vanished. “Then why do you ask this, if I was your mother?”

      “My brother and I gave her that shirt.” She felt her face flush. “I lost my head for a minute. You scared the hell out of me. And I still have no idea who you are.” She looked up to see him cross his arms and take an authoritative stance, then she turned her eyes back to the floor.

      It was her turn now to speak. This, a conversation. She was conversing with the boy she thought had died, whose bed she slept in, whose jeans she wore, always belted and rolled up at the cuffs. She had talked to herself, to Leo, to the chickens and the goats and the gulls and the sandhill cranes, to the feral cats, to any alive being, driven by the fear that she might forget how to talk. She hadn’t spoken to another human except for Lettie, four years ago. But here she was, speaking with someone, in English, no less, which is what felt natural to her now after reading nothing but English all this time.

      “Nadia.” He nodded as he said it, as if he liked the name.

      Her name. It twisted through her, and she hung her head as tears leaked down her cheeks. Soon a sob escaped, and then another. She did not cry often. What was the point? But here she was, crying for every day she hadn’t.

      “What’s wrong? I won’t hurt you, don’t cry …” but she could not stop. She had been so alone, so utterly alone for too many years, more than were possible and now, all changed. Here was someone she knew, someone who now knew her name, knew she was alive, someone who might help her or might turn on her. He touched her arm and she jumped. He stepped back and said again, “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”

      Through the stuttering gasps, more words erupted, but they came in Russian, too loud, almost screams: I am Nadia! I am Nadia! I died when I was 18.

       NINE

      Snag lay in bed, waiting to hear the gravel popping under her truck’s tires, trying not to worry but worrying anyway. Maybe Kache wouldn’t come back. Maybe he’d just drive straight to the airport and take the next flight out. She hoped not. It was so good to have him home, even though he’d brought all their ghosts with him, and now those ghosts plunked down in her room, shaking their heads at her, whispering about how disappointed they were that she hadn’t once gone back to the homestead, at least for the photo albums.

      She did have the one photo. Opening the drawer to her rickety nightstand, she pushed aside the Jafra peppermint foot balm. She told her customers how she kept it in that drawer. “Just rub some on every night and those calluses will feel smooth as a baby’s butt.” She never actually said she rubbed the stuff on herself. No one had ever felt the bottoms of her feet, and she reckoned no one ever would. Under the still-sealed Jafra foot balm was an old schedule of the tides, and under that lay a photograph wrapped in tissue with faded pink roses. This was what she was after. She carefully unwrapped it and switched on the lamp, though she almost saw the image well enough in the moonlight.

      Bets at the river: tall and slender, wearing those slim, cropped pants Audrey Hepburn wore, a sleeveless white cotton blouse and white Keds. Her hair swept back from her face in a black crown of soft curls. She had red lips and pierced ears, which until then Snag had thought of as slightly scandalous but on Bets looked pretty; she wore the silver drop earrings her Mexican grandmother had given her that matched the silver bangles on her delicate wrist.

      Snag remembered handing her the Avon Skin So Soft spray everyone used because mosquitoes hated it. Snag had broken some company record selling bottles of the stuff to tourists. Bets sprayed it on her arms and rubbed it in. Her skin glistened and looked oh so soft.

      Bets didn’t look like anyone Snag had ever come across in Caboose, or even Anchorage. Half Swedish and half Mexican, and from Snag’s perspective, the best halves of both nations had collided in Bets Jorgenson. She’d grown tired of her job as an editor in New York City, jumped on a train, then a ferry, and come to visit her Aunt Pat and Uncle Karl, who at the time lived in Caboose. Pat and Karl had asked Snag to take their niece fishing along the river.

      That СКАЧАТЬ