DANA SAT IN the passenger seat beside Sam as they retraced their route along the highway back to Anchorage. He hadn’t said a word for hours now, his face expressionless as he drove. Kimmik stirred in the back seat and gave a mighty yawn. Next, he rested his front paws on the back of their seat and snuffled his nose against Dana’s hair. It tickled.
Her giggle finally brought a little smile to Sam’s face. “Kimmik, get down. What are you doing?”
Dana twisted around so she could rub the dog’s ears. He thumped his tail against the seat. “I bet he just wanted to make sure we were still breathing up here.”
“Probably.”
She watched Sam’s face for a moment. “You okay?”
“Sure. I mean, nothing’s really changed, right?”
“Not really. I guess if they were partners, I can see why your mother thought he owed her money and wrote those letters. Apparently he disagreed, since he never paid.”
Sam rubbed his chin. “I know for sure my mother received a check from him at least once, but she tore it up.”
“What? When?”
“When I was a kid. I remember her getting a check, and it made her angry. She tore it to shreds.”
“How old were you?”
“About nine.”
Dana did the math. “One of the letters we found was dated a couple of years after that. So why did she tear up a check and then turn around and demand payment?”
He shrugged. “Maybe she thought the check was a way to buy her off instead of giving her what she thought he owed.”
“So obviously she didn’t trust him.”
“Maybe she had a good reason not to trust him.”
“Your mother wasn’t a rational person. You said so.”
“I said she drank. When she wasn’t drinking, she was quite rational. And she said she wouldn’t accept blood money from Wayne Raynott.”
Blood money? Dana almost pointed out that rational people didn’t abandon their twelve-year-olds, but she bit her tongue. Sam knew better than anyone what his mother had done. So why would he trust her judgment in anything? The official reports were on her dad’s side. They’d gone back to the paper this morning to get copies of follow-up articles, including when the insurance settled the investigation and paid the claim. “The investigation cleared him of arson.”
“They failed to find evidence of arson.”
“Same thing.”
“Not exactly.” He glanced at her. “Inability to prove guilt isn’t proof of innocence.”
“Well, it sure isn’t proof of guilt.”
“True.” At least Sam gave her that. “But if he sent money—”
“Maybe he just felt sorry for her. You have to admit, the facts support him.”
“No.” He raised his chin. “I don’t.”
She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. After a minute, Sam glanced her way. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
She shrugged.
Sam reached across the seat and touched her arm. “I need some time to think about this before I come to any conclusions.”
“You can have all the time you want. I’m just here to determine if you, as Roy Petrov’s son, have a legitimate claim on my father’s estate, not whether he burned down a bar. Because I’ll never believe he was an arsonist.”
“Well, then, let me check off that agenda item for you. I don’t want anything to do with Wayne Raynott or his money. You can tell the lawyers that.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You think he did it.”
“I. Don’t. Know.” From the back seat, Kimmik whined, upset by Sam’s tone. He continued in a softer voice. “I never met him. You tell me he was an honorable man. But that doesn’t quite jibe with Chris cutting ties with him. I’d like to hear what Chris has to say about this.” They came around a bend and found themselves in some tiny town. “I need to get gas. Would you mind going inside and getting me a cup of coffee?”
“Fine.” Dana went in, used the ladies’ room and bought two cups of coffee. She carried them to the truck and handed one to Sam. “Black, right?”
“Thank you.” Sam took a sip and set it in the cup holder. He turned to face her. “Really. Thank you.”
Dana nodded. By unspoken agreement, they didn’t discuss anything they’d learned in Fairbanks for the rest of the drive home. Sam pointed out a few sights along the way, but his heart obviously wasn’t in it. They had lapsed back into silence by the time they reached the outskirts of Anchorage.
Sam made a left into his neighborhood. “Hungry?”
Dana agreed. “A little.”
“How does pizza sound?”
“Fine.”
He pulled into the garage. “I’ll call in the order. What do you like on it?”
She shrugged. “I like everything.”
“Good, because that’s exactly how I like it. With everything.” They grabbed their bags and he followed her up the stairs, Kimmik bounding on ahead.
Dana opened the refrigerator door and checked the contents. “I’ll make a salad to go with it.”
“Sounds good.”
Sam pulled his phone from his pocket and disappeared into his bedroom. Dana allowed herself to shoot an imaginary dagger into his back before she went to work slicing a carrot and a tomato. She was tossing them with the salad greens when Kimmik ran toward the front door, wagging his tail. Steps sounded on the stairs outside. That was fast. Dana stepped over to grab her purse for a tip.
The door flew open and she spun around, startled. But not as startled as Chris looked when he spotted her.
“You’re still here?” There was a note of panic in his voice.
“Obviously.”
“Then you’ve met—”
“Yes, she has.” Sam strode in from the hallway. “I can’t tell you how surprised I was to discover you have a sister. And that was only the first surprise of many.”
Chris looked back and forth between them like he was expecting an attack from both sides. He held up his hands. “I can explain.”
“You better make it good.” Sam came to stand beside Dana. “Because right now I’m not sure if I believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”
* * *
BEFORE ANYONE COULD explain anything, the pizza arrived. Sam decided the discussion might go better on a full stomach, anyway. He tipped the delivery guy and carried the pizza to the bar.
“Let’s eat first.” He looked pointedly at Chris. “And then you can tell us exactly what’s been going through that so-called mind of yours.”
Chris gave a smirk, probably assuming that if Sam was ribbing him, he wasn’t about to blow a gasket at him. Which was true. Nevertheless, Sam didn’t intend to let him get away with anything short of full disclosure.
Dana set out plates, dropping the one in front of Chris with more force than necessary. Sam was amused to see the look of trepidation on Chris’s face when he realized how angry Dana was. Good. They could work together to get the truth out of Chris.
Chris opened the pizza box and wrinkled his nose. “Mushrooms?” At Dana’s withering gaze, he set a slice on his plate. “I’ll pick them off.”
“Good plan.”
Sam took some of the salad Dana had made and passed it to her. She caught his eye and, for a moment, he felt they were on the same side. Then he remembered their argument in the car. She must have remembered, too, because she broke eye contact and served herself some salad.
Once the pizza was gone, they moved to the living room. Chris settled on the couch. Dana perched on the other end, and Sam sat in a nearby chair. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and stared into Chris’s face. “Okay, talk.”
“I don’t know what you know—”
“Then why don’t you tell us everything? From the beginning. Starting with why you came to Alaska.”
Sam glanced at Dana. She was staring at Chris, her usually soft brown eyes focused like a laser on her brother. “Yeah. Let’s start with the day you left home.”
Chris looked toward the ceiling and sighed. “Okay. But first, I need to show you something. Wait here.”
Chris trotted down the stairs to his bedroom. After a few minutes, he returned carrying a metal box. He unlocked it and, after shuffling through a few papers, pulled out a yellowed envelope. “I was up in the attic, putting away some stuff, and I happened to see an old trunk I thought I could use in my apartment at school. When I opened it, I found these.”
He spread the contents of the envelope on the coffee table. Dana leaned forward to examine them. Even upside down, Sam could read Chris’s State of Alaska birth certificate listing his mother as Fiona McCarthy Raynott. A yellowed clipping of the article they had seen about the fire rested beside it on the table. Dana picked up the two cardboard photograph folders and opened the top one. She examined it, a trace of a smile crossing her face, and then she handed it to Sam.
The man on the right could have almost been Sam, if he’d grown his hair into a shaggy mullet and dressed in a really loud polyester shirt. The grin on his father’s face indicated a day of celebration, as did his arm around the shoulders of the man Sam could only assume was Wayne Raynott. Each of the men held a full mug of beer.
As he looked closer, he could see some resemblance to Chris: the stubborn jaw, the broad shoulders. Raynott seemed happy, too. Behind them, Sam recognized the gold pans and pickaxes from the photos in the newspaper. Carefully, he slipped the photo from the folder and found a handwritten note on the back. Wayne Raynott and Roy Petrov. Opening Day at The Nugget.
He looked up to see Dana staring hard at the other picture. She finally closed the folder and set it on the table. She turned to Chris. “So I gather you were as much in the dark as me that we didn’t have the same mother?”
“Before that day in the attic, I had no idea. Although looking back, I seldom got a lot of warm fuzzies from Mom. On the other hand, neither did you.”
Dana nodded as if that was old news. “So what did you do?”
“I confronted Wayne. He wouldn’t tell me anything, even confirm that the birth certificate was genuine. He told me to forget what I’d seen and mind my own business. Eventually, I said if he wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know, I was going to Alaska to get the truth. He said if I did, he wouldn’t welcome me back. I decided I could live with that.”
“And you drove off without saying goodbye.” Dana’s voice was small, the hurt of the teenager coming through.
“I’m sorry, Dana. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You could have contacted me later, told me what happened and where you were.”
“I didn’t want to get you in trouble with the old man. You know he never backs down.”
Dana closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists, as though trying to keep some violent emotion in check. Sam fought the urge to thump Chris on the head. Did he realize when he ran away how much he would be hurting his sister? Sam had to believe he didn’t. Chris could be a bit clueless, but he was never deliberately cruel.
Dana blew out a long breath and opened her eyes. Her features were once again calm and in control. “What happened next?”
“I went to Fairbanks. Actually, it took me more than a year to earn enough money to make the trip, but I arrived in late summer. I changed my name in the meantime. I figured if I didn’t have a father anymore, I didn’t need his name. Once I made it to Fairbanks, I asked around, did some digging and finally found a group of old-timers in a bar who remembered the whole scandal.”
Chris opened the photo folder Dana had inspected to display what was obviously a wedding picture. Almost as tall as her husband but slender and delicate, Fiona wore a gauzy white dress and had a wreath of daisies nested in auburn curls. Wayne wore a rust-colored suit and lizard cowboy boots. They smiled at each other, looking happy and very much in love.
Chris squirmed and looked at the table. “Most of the town seemed to be of the opinion that Wayne caught his partner and his wife in a compromising situation and started a fire that burned down the bar.”
“But the investigation didn’t find arson,” Dana piped up.
Frown lines formed on Chris’s forehead. “So you know about the fire?”
“We read the newspaper article,” Sam said. “What else did you hear?”
“Some of the group used to be regulars at The Nugget. They said Fiona and Roy both worked in the bar and had never shown the slightest romantic interest in one another. In fact, they said Roy was in love with another girl, but kept it quiet because—” he darted a glance of apology at Sam “—Wayne didn’t like her.”
Raynott sounded like a real prize. Sam raised an eyebrow. “My mother, I assume?”
Chris nodded. “They said after Roy died, Wayne skipped off with all the insurance money. Roy was supposed to be an equal partner, but with him dead, who was left to question the settlement? By that time, Roy’s girlfriend had her baby. After Wayne skipped town, she kept asking around, trying to find him. Eventually she found somebody who remembered where he moved. She said she was going to make him pay, but nothing ever came of it, as far as anybody knew.”
Sam sat back and crossed his arms. “Okay, this makes a nice story, but you’re not going to sell me on the idea that you just happened to meet me and had no idea who I was.”
“No.” Chris shook his head. “They remembered your name. I found you easily enough through newspaper articles.” Chris turned to Dana. “There were several pieces in the Anchorage paper. Sam had earned quite a few scholarships when he graduated high school and told the reporter he planned to major in mechanical engineering at UAF.” He shifted his attention back to Sam. “It wasn’t hard. I hung around the engineering dorm, got somebody to point you out and followed you. The place you were working had a Help Wanted sign in the window, so that seemed like the easiest way to meet you.”
“Why did you go to all that trouble?”
Chris shrugged. “I don’t know. The guys in the bar seemed to think your dad’s death kinda knocked your mother off-balance. If my father was responsible for you not having a father, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I was fine,” Sam barked. It was true, thanks to Ursula and Tommy.
Chris gave him that crooked grin. “You were fine. In fact, you had your life together a lot more than I did.”
“So why’d you stick around?”
“Honestly? I liked you.”
“Not enough to tell me the truth.”
Chris had the grace to look embarrassed. “Fair enough. But put yourself in my position. As far as you knew, I was just a guy who ran off to Alaska on a lark. I had no influence with Wayne, no access to his money. I couldn’t actually do anything to right past wrongs. All I could do was keep an eye on you, watch your back. If I told you who my father was, would you have let me hang around?”
“Maybe.” Sam thought about it. “Probably not.”
It was true. Chris did watch his back. In college, he’d shown up in time to throw a few punches and help run off a drunken mob yelling slurs at Sam when he was walking home from his job late one night. Years later, Chris warned him away from a girl he was considering dating. A coworker got involved with her instead. That woman was drama 24/7 and still making the man’s life miserable. Sam had never had a reason to doubt Chris’s loyalty. Not until his sister showed up and spilled his secret.
Sam looked over at Dana. She sat very still, her eyes on Chris, but as Sam watched, a tear escaped and slid down her cheek. Sam wasn’t sure why she was crying: for her father, for the years she’d lost with her brother or for some other reason, but he couldn’t stand to sit and watch her cry, and Chris was oblivious. Sam moved to the couch beside her and pulled her against his shoulder.
“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t cry.” He wiped the tear with his thumb. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“B-but you both think that my father… That he—”
“It doesn’t matter. We can’t change things that happened before we were born.”
Dana shook her head and sniffed. She wiped away any trace of tears and sat up, drawing away from him.
Sam turned to see Chris eyeing them, his expression indicating he’d just added up two and two and wasn’t altogether pleased with the answer. He met Sam’s eyes and held them. “Does that answer all your questions?”
“For now.” Sam’s gaze didn’t falter. He wasn’t the one in the wrong here.
“Good. Because I may have a few of my own tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to bed.”