He merely shrugged and beat the eggs.
“Have you seen Angie?” Valerie asked.
“Angie doesn’t usually work the breakfast shift.”
“I know, but ... never mind. I’ll be right back.” Valerie hurried to the lobby, looked out the front windows, and finally spotted Angie sitting on an Adirondack chair, staring out at the water.
Valerie joined her in the next chair. “You’re up.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Angie replied. “Joe’s on his way to get me now.”
The news came as a surprise. “Did you talk to him about what happened?”
“Not really,” Angie explained. “I just called him and told him where I was, and I asked him to come and get me.” She let out a sigh of defeat. “I don’t know what to expect after this. All I know is that I love him and he’s the father of my baby. So I have to go home.”
A car rolled into the parking lot, and Angie rose to her feet. As soon as Joe got out, she ran across the veranda and down the steps and collided with him in a passionate embrace. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, then drew her close and hugged her tight, rocking back and forth.
Valerie couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other, but it was obvious they were apologizing and groveling in equal measures.
Valerie hoped that what happened the night before was a onetime thing and Joe wouldn’t hurt Angie like that again.
He helped Angie into the car, shut the door, and looked up at Valerie, who was watching from the deck. He did not wave or acknowledge her. He simply got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and sped off.
Valerie sat for a while in the fresh morning air. When she finally stood to go back inside, she spotted Jeremy in his skiff, floating far from shore. He must have also been watching when Angie ran into Joe’s arms.
Jeremy waved, and Valerie waved back. Then he started his noisy outboard motor, spun the boat in a circle, and roared off toward Shoup Bay. Valerie watched until he disappeared.
If it was true—that he loved Angie—he was probably miserable right now. Valerie decided that the next time she saw him, she would try to be more friendly.
Little did she know that it would be many months before she saw him again, and by then, she would rarely be seeing anyone.
CHAPTER 17
Valdez
February 1964
Wilderness Lodge had closed for the winter season on January 3. On that day, Valerie had moved into the Wilsons’ cozy little house on the hill, where Maud kept a fire burning constantly in the hearth. Valerie had her own room on the second floor, where she spent many hours during the long days of darkness with her guitar, writing music. Years later, she would look back on those days with fondness and an awareness of a creative awakening, where melodies and lyrics poured out of her like a waterfall.
When she first moved in with the Wilsons, she wrote love songs about yearning and unrequited love.
She wrote more letters to Drew as well, always waiting longingly for a reply, but nothing ever came for her. By late February, when her belly was large and round and she could feel her baby kicking at night—as if he or she were dancing to the music she strummed on her guitar—she finally began to let go of her romantic dreams of a happily ever after with the man she loved. Drew had not responded to any of her letters, so she forced herself to accept that he would not be a part of her life.
In time, his importance began to fade. He was no longer the center of her world. Visions of her future lay elsewhere, in the love she felt for her unborn child.
Sometimes she lay in bed at night singing to him or her, rubbing her fingers in tiny circles around her belly button, imagining what it would feel like to finally hold her baby in her arms and look into his or her sweet eyes, offer comfort when there were tears. Dreams like that, day after day, changed something in Valerie, and it was a deep, internal transformation. By mid-February, she felt older and wiser and possessed a fierce ambition to defy her father’s plans for her and keep this baby and raise it, somehow, on her own.
Her music changed as well. Her melodies became less melancholy, and her lyrics evoked images of the natural world, the change of seasons, and an acceptance of life’s beautiful rhythm and flow.
She wasn’t sure what she would do with all this music she had written. Perhaps she could find a way to support herself and her baby as a songwriter—though she had no idea how to make that happen, not in Valdez, Alaska, so far from cultural centers, theaters, and recording studios. It was a world she knew very little about, but she was nothing if not driven. She wanted to keep her baby, so she had the will, and by God, she would find a way.
At the end of February, snow fell for three days straight. On the third day, a raging wind swept down from the peaks of the Chugach Mountains like a hungry beast. In its wake, it left snowdrifts fifteen feet high.
The Wilson house stood strong and sturdy in the storm, though at times it creaked and groaned like an old ship in a gale. The windows rattled constantly in the cold gusts until Valerie feared they might shatter and explode out of their casings.
They lost power one afternoon, so Blaine hauled an extra load of firewood on a sled from the stack out behind the house. Maud prepared cold ham sandwiches and opened a can of beans, which she heated on the woodstove. They ate by candlelight in the kitchen at dinnertime.
About eight o’clock, the wind finally began to die down. Valerie went to the front window. The night sky was visible in patches behind shifting clouds, and the moon cast a bluish light on the fresh, clean snow.
