Page 69

“Yes, dear.” She scribbles with her red pen absently.

I follow her line of sight. The sidewalk is empty, so is the street. Snow piled up along the curb opposite, where the park runs down to the creek. Even the ravens that usually hang out by the trash cans are gone.

“Your festival piece ran long.” She shuffles through some papers on her desk. “I cut it to six hundred words, and it was better. It’ll run tomorrow. Don’t sulk.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“You’re sulking about something.” She stops writing on her notepad. “I suppose it’s Nick, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She tips her head a degree to the left, and I’m being reprimanded. “You’ve reorganized the stationery cupboard twice this week. Speak plainly, dear. What’s really got you in a twist?”

I decide to fix a pot of tea anyway, noticing the untouched cup stone cold on her desk. She starts typing while I fill the teapot with boiling water from the urn.

“He doesn’t know what he wants. One minute, he’s one way. The next, he’s changed his mind. I don’t know if this is like a rule or an exception?”

I swap out her cold cup for a steaming one.

“Ah.” She stops typing and leans back in her oak banker’s chair, picking up her cup. “Well, the thing about Nick is he’s had to carry a lot of responsibility that he wasn’t prepared for. He gave up a lot for his family, and for this town, and in the process, I think he gave up on the notion that he could have anything more. Then you came along, and now he’s figuring out how that changes things.”

I roll my chair over to her desk. I wasn’t planning to spill all my insecurities to Roslyn today, but here we are. She’s chosen her words very carefully, which tells me there’s more.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you want to know if Nick is a good man, worthy of your efforts?”

“I guess. Yeah.”

She takes off her glasses and lets them rest against her cardigan.

“I can’t promise he won’t disappoint you, Ellery, but when you get right down to the core of the man, he is wholly good and armed only with the best intentions. That much I know.” She returns to typing away on her computer.

I roll my chair back to my workstation. I wonder what he did to fill her with such certainty. Roslyn’s a journalist at heart. She doesn’t take anyone or anything at face value. Nick has proven himself to her, and I want to see that evidence too.

With a sigh, I pull out a folder marked Photographs 1850–1900, feeling more in the mood to explore pictures than trawl through dense passages. Black-and-white photos, some faded and scratched, carefully filed with labels and dates. Soot-faced men standing outside a dark gash in the rock, pickaxes over their shoulders. Others next to a felled tree as wide as a car. Immigrants cooking in camp kitchens. A stunning lady in a long skirt on the back of a horse with a young man holding the reins. She has a commanding air about her, and I scan down to the label for her name. Juliette Valzera.

I find a magnifying glass and study the photo again. The man is the spitting image of Nick’s dad. Right down to the neatly combed side part and thick mustache. The genes run strong in this family. I pull up the post Luca made on the Nightwatch account when Mikel died and set the two side by side.

It takes a full minute of staring to spot any difference. Other than the clothes, and about a hundred and fifty years, I’d swear these men were twins. I wonder if there’s a Valzera family tree mapped out somewhere in these files.

I flip back through my notebook, trying to find my other notes about Mikel, and stop at the name I found in Nick’s pocket. Kodiak Cold Storage and Distribution.

I bring up the website again on my phone. Same warehouse photo, same phone number. This time I go further to the “About” page, and there’s a line at the bottom I didn’t scroll to before.

Family owned and operated since 1974. And a name.

Lund.

That name was also among the founding families in the bicentennial article.

“Mrs. Thorndale, do the Lunds own any businesses?”

She doesn’t stop typing. “The Lunds own a great deal, dear.”

“What about a cold chain logistics company in Anchorage?”

The steady rhythm of her fingers across the keys falters, but she doesn’t look up. “Where’d you see that?”

“A receipt.” I don’t say where I found it. “I wondered what they transport?”