Feather for Hoonah Joe Read online

  She stood up without answering and took her time, pretending to stretch while she waited to see what her husband would say next. She could count on two fingers the times that Joe had ever questioned her about anything, much less criticized her. When he remained silent, she bent over and picked up his empty teacup and carried it to the kitchen, still waiting for him to say something—anything.

  “I asked you a question, Sal. Now come on over here and sit back down and let’s talk about this.”

  Suddenly the tears came as Sal scrunched a dishtowel and held it to her eyes. Still her husband said nothing. After about fifteen minutes of the hardest sobs she had experienced in years, she quietly sat down in her own chair next to her husband’s and poured out the details of her past, including Elzianne’s attempts to implicate her deceased husband, Bert, in wrongdoing at the bank in their hometown.

  “I don’t talk much about Bert, Joey. I figure it ain’t no interest to you to hear about my ex and he’s dead anyway, so what the . . .”

  Sal dabbed her eyes as Joe sat looking dumbfounded. For the longest time he said nothing.

  “Are you going to respond to what I just told you, or have I misjudged your willingness to accept the truth about my past?” Sal said, using the perfect diction that reflected her privileged upbringing.

  Suddenly Joe jumped up from his chair.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you Sal. I’ve never seen you this way. Part of me wonders if you’re getting Alzheimer’s or dementia, or who knows what, and part of me just sits here in disbelief that I married a woman who isn’t even who I thought she was.”

  “I can understand why you’d feel that way, Joey,” Sal said. “A huge voice inside me didn’t even want to tell you about this. I had to, though. Our life together is all that matters to me. Trust me—believe me when I tell you that the day I stopped being Sylvia LaMonte Kindle, and just became Sal, was the happiest, truest, most meaningful day of my life.”

  After Joe Michael strode silently to the door, letting it slam behind him, Sylvia LaMonte crumpled to the floor and sobbed uncontrollably.

  Chapter Ten

  Are You Kidding Me?

  Sal was asleep on the floor when Mara found her the next day.

  “Sal? Joe? We’re back,” she called as she let herself in. “Doug’s putting our things in the guest cabin. It’s sure nice of you two to let us—”

  “Jane? That you?” Sal said sleepily, thankful that her persona as Sal Kindle had become second nature to her.

  “What are you doing on the floor, Sal? Where’s Joe? What’s wrong? Have you been crying? Where’s Joe, Sal? Is it his heart again?”

  Mara rushed to help the old woman up and then ran to the door.

  “Doug! Doug! C’mere. Hurry!”

  “What’s going on?” Doug asked, trying to figure out what was happening.

  “Joe’s gone and Sal was sleeping here on the floor. Something’s wrong,” Mara answered.

  “It’s not what ya think, Jane,” Sal said.

  “Well, then, what is it, Sal?” Doug said, growing impatient with all the confusion surrounding the old woman as of late.

  “Make me some tea, would ya, Jane? I’ll explain, but first let me use the restroom and get ma wits about me.”

  Doug built a fire in the woodstove while Mara helped Sal clean up and find some fresh clothes.

  “Are you hurt anywhere, Sal? A woman your age can’t be sleeping on the floor all night in this kind of weather. Don’t worry about the tea. Doug’s making it.”

  “How many times’ve I told ya that I ain’t no pansy, Jane? That bear rug was as soft and toasty as any bed I been in, and that wool blanket and a coupla sofa pillows was all I needed to be toasty warm.”

  “What’s going on, Sal? Where’s Joe?” Mara asked.

  Sal looked at her feet and didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled her sweater tightly around her and walked back to the kitchen where Doug was just finishing making the tea.

  “Joe said I gotta stop callin’ ya by everythin’ but yer given name,” she said, looking sheepishly up at Doug. “Guess he’s right, huh—Doug? Thanks fer the tea.”

  Doug pulled a chair out for Sal, glancing at Mara as he did.

  “You can call me anything you want to, Sal, but just tell us where Joe is and what’s going on.”

  “I dunno,” Sal said. “I never seen him this mad.”

  “Mad?”

  “Yup. Mad as a hornet,” Sal answered.

  “But, why?” Mara asked.

  Sal stared into her teacup for what seemed like hours. Finally, she looked up at Mara and then Doug, took one of their hands into each of her own and began talking in a manner that completely blew them away.

  “You know me as Sal Kindle, widow of Bert Kindle, and wife of Joe Michael,” she began.

  Why was she talking this way—perfectly, softly, and with the utmost display of propriety that either of them had ever seen?

  “What must be obvious to you both by now is that I am more than the woman named Sal that you both know.”

  Sal chuckled lightly, resuming a serious tone when they sat stone-faced and didn’t respond.

  “My real name is Sylvia Anna Lorraine LaMonte. I was born in Rhinebeck, New York, raised by—well, raised by a series of perfectly programmed nannies, went to Yale, married an investment banker named Bert Kindle, and moved with him to Alaska to escape a growing litany—if you will—of trumped-up embezzlement and insider-trading charges brought against Bert by my younger sister, Elzianne, and by my own mother.”

  “Are you talking about Elzianne LaMonte, the society matron, who divorced her husband when she found out he was gay, and then was sued by him for support?” Mara asked.

  “One and the same, Mara,” Sal answered, calling Mara by her given name—something she rarely did. “How did you know about her?”

  “It was in all the tabloids and on all the talk shows,” Mara answered. “I think I saw something on the TV while I was working at KonaJane’s a while back.”

  “Elzianne LaMonte is my sister and she’s—well, it’s complicated, but let’s just say that she’s been here once and is coming back to spend the rest of the summer in her role as director of a museum in New York.”

  “Wow,” Doug said. “You mean that she’s been here—right here in Hoonah? So what does that mean for you? And why is Joe gone?”

  “That’s right, Doug. She was here solstice weekend. I ran into her when I went to the Beachmopper to get more supplies. That’s what we named the landing craft, you know—Beachmopper.”

  Sal took a long sip of her tea and quietly stared out the window.

  “Being anywhere near Elzianne is never good for me,” Sal continued. “I thought I had freed myself from her forever by moving to Alaska and changing everything about who I was, but fate brought us together on that remote stretch of beach and now that she’s found me, well . . .”

  “Can’t you just ignore her? Wait for her to leave?” Mara asked.

  “I wish I could,” Sal replied. “But she’s already clued me in that now that she’s found me, there will be a rough road ahead for me, and for anything and everyone attached to me.”

  “Well, she can’t change the way we feel about you,” Doug said, jumping up from his chair.

  “She’s already insinuated that she’s trying to stir up more trouble to implicate Bert, only, instead of turning our mother against me, she’s persuaded our nephew—a young lawyer—to investigate Bert’s death.”

  “What do you mean?” Mara asked.

  “I mean that she’s going to try to build a case that either Bert’s death was no accident or that he took his own life, implicating me—his sole heir—well, let’s just say negatively,” Sal answered.

  “And Joe knows all this?” Doug asked.

  “No,” Sal answered. “He only knows my real identity. He left before I could explain. I guess the shock of it all upset him more than I thought it would.”

  Sal sipped he
r tea and let Doug and Mara absorb what she had said.

  “I need to warn you both that I believe that Elzi’s going to start with trying to get both the Driftfeather and the Storm Roamer,” Sal said. “You remember that I told you that Bert and I bought them together, don’t you?”

  Mara looked at Doug, who had turned as white as a sheet.

  “Everything I have is tied up in those seiners,” he said so softly that Mara had to strain to hear him.

  “But she’s not going to stop there,” Sal continued. “Before she’s done with me, she’ll have everything Joe and I own and more, including everything we find from the tsunami debris.”

  “Oh, Sal,” Mara said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothin’ ta say, Jane,” Sal said, reverting to the persona they all knew. “Jest look out fer ma Joey fer me fer a while.”

  Sal laughed and got up to pour herself another cup of tea. When she returned, she spoke as Sylvia LaMonte.

  “I need to return to New York and find a way to prove that my sister has done everything I just told you. You see, before it was enough for me to just move away, but now, well, now I have Joe to think about and as I live and breathe, Elzianne LaMonte will rue the day she ever does one single thing to hurt Joe Michael.”

  Just then the door slammed and Joe Michael walked in.

  “Did she tell you what she told me—that she’s not who we all thought she was?” he said, obviously still angry.

  “That and more, Joe,” Doug answered. “I think you need to hear her out, Joe. Sal loves you and you love her and, well, I know this is all a shock—to all of us—but once you hear the full story, I think you’ll feel differently.”

  Everyone watched as Joe Michael paced the room. None of them had ever seen him this angry except for the time he had confronted an evil criminal that threatened to harm his family. Quietly, they watched him pace until, looking more dejected than angry, he finally sat down at the table to join them.

  Joe Michael placed his weathered hand on top of Sal’s as one, then two tears rolled down his cheeks. “I think I do, too,” he said softly, squeezing Sal’s hand. “I think so, too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sixty-Some Years ago on Christmas Day

  Joe Michael had been more understanding than any man ever known to Sylvia LaMonte would have been in similar circumstances. When this was all over, could she return to him as the Sal Kindle that he loved? Her heart begged for it to be so. Their marriage, after all, had been legal, with Sylvia having used the initials of her real name to have it legally changed to Sal long before she met the wonderful man she now called her husband. And their love—well, that was real, too.

  They had reminded each other of that love at the airport before she left a week after he had learned her real identity and the story that went with it. Joe had even offered to accompany her to Rhinebeck, though he knew this was something that she would have to do alone. If there was a battle to be fought at this stage in her life, she would make sure that its main focus would be to hold on to her life with Joe Michael.

  ~~~

  When she arrived in Rhinebeck a week later, Sylvia LaMonte found that things hadn’t changed much around the old estate or around the neighboring estates that had been her childhood world. When she later stumbled upon a stooped and frail-looking old man sitting on a park bench in the church cemetery, she was shocked to recognize him as her high school sweetheart, John Thomas St. Jean.

  “So, you left me for this church and it is at this church where I now find you all these years later, J.T.,” Sylvia LaMonte said softly.

  At first he didn’t reply, choosing instead to lift his eyes briefly to meet hers. It was enough for her to see the flicker of recognition that told her he remembered her, so she sat on the bench beside him and took his gnarled, trembling hand into her own and sat silently beside him.

  “I guess you should call me Monsignor now, Sylvia,” he said, patting her hand with his free one, while slipping his other one free.

  “Monsignor?” Sylvia answered. “Right here at St. Aloysius?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “Monsignor.”

  “It was right here, right on this very bench, I believe, that you told me you were leaving for the seminary,” Sylvia said softly. “Right here—on Christmas Day nearly sixty years ago.”

  She stood up, faced him and said, “And you’ve never left?”

  “The family arranged things to keep me here,” he answered. “I didn’t think about it. I knew them all. This was my home. Why should I think of leaving? The people here needed one of their own. Someone talked to the Archbishop, donations were made, and next thing I knew, I was assigned to St. Aloysius and that never changed.”

  “I see,” Sylvia answered.

  “And don’t get me wrong, Sylvia, I have no regrets. My life is as I wanted it to be and my service to God meant as much to me here as it could have or would have anywhere else. The challenges here, although they may have seemed simplistic, were immense, but God’s will prevailed and I was able to maintain purity of direction even amongst the underlying chaos that you—having been raised here—understand all too well.”

  Sylvia stared at two clouds sailing lazily across the blue sky. A flock of birds swooped in synchrony from one tree to another and then back to the first tree again.

  “If anyone could have maintained rightness and equilibrium in the face of the circumstances that kept you against all odds in this one location for an entire lifetime, I would unhesitatingly say that it would be you, Monsignor,” Sylvia said gently.

  “It couldn’t have been easy for you knowing that politics and favoritism carved your path. I know this and you know this and so there is no sense in mincing our words about that reality.”

  “You were always able to see past it all, Sylvia,” Monsignor St. Jean replied. “I always admired that strength—envied it—even as I begged our Lord’s forgiveness for holding that jealous thought within my heart.”

  “I can see that your life has not been as easy as it would appear,” Sylvia continued.

  “You have always understood,” Monsignor St. Jean answered.

  For the next long while the two sat there in silence, while Monsignor St. Jean silently prayed his rosary, moving his frail hands along the well-worn beads as his lips mouthed the words to the prayers, and Sylvia let her thoughts drift to the years long ago when they had sat on this very bench for the second to the last time.

  He had been a man as kind as he had been handsome. Though their affection for each other had been true, she had known deep inside that they were destined for separate paths in life, and a parting that would be bittersweet.

  “May I bless you before you leave?” Monsignor St. Jean said, his silhouette surrounded by the crimson evening sky.

  Sylvia Anna Lorraine LaMonte returned to the present, lowered her head, and accepted the profound gift bestowed upon her by her long-ago friend. When she opened her eyes and looked up, Monsignor St. Jean’s tired and aged form was moving in the direction of the setting sun, slowly and steadily and once more away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rhinebeck

  It was front-page news in Rhinebeck when two days later Monsignor St. Jean was found dead of natural causes in the church rectory.

  One week later at his funeral, a young priest tapped Sylvia on her shoulder as she was leaving the church. After asking her for her full name, he handed her a mahogany box that was slightly larger than a shoebox and much more square, along with a court order stating that the box, the key and its point of access had been officially willed to her by Monsignor St. Jean.

  She sat in the last pew of the church as she opened it. Inside was Monsignor St. Jean’s rosary, a yellowed newspaper clipping about his graduation from the seminary and assignment to St. Aloysius, and a key. Engraved on the old-style key were the initials RSB and the number 7, which minimal research proved to belong to a safety deposit box at Rhinebeck State Bank.

  Sylvia closed the
lid on the box and tucked it under her arm, genuflecting for the first time in over sixty years as she left the church. By late afternoon, she had rented a cottage next to one of the old violet houses in the village, remembering the times she had visited this very location with her nanny to shop for violets for her mother.

  The old greenhouse was now empty, its perimeter overgrown with grasses and the surviving perennials that had once been meticulously kept. She sat on one of the old cement park benches that had once provided respite for husbands waiting for their wives to shop, and even for ladies who desired a moment in the sun.

  At the foot of the bench a tiny violet peeked through the grass, showing one dark purple bloom. Sylvia plucked it and held to her nose. The fragrance was the same as she remembered—strong, pure, and enticing; not at all like today’s violets that lacked any fragrance at all.

  For a moment she was a young girl again, frolicking in the gentle meadows strewn with the plentiful fieldstones, which many in the predepression era of the early 1900s had used to build their homes.

  The old greenhouse had fieldstone walls that stood about four feet tall and were topped with wooden frames likely manufactured in one of the old mills, which still held most of the original panes of the wavy antique glass produced during those times.

  Just as the violet houses had been a haven for her as a child, her nearness to this one enveloped her with momentary peace. Once back inside the cottage, she slid the mahogany box inside a pillowcase before tucking it under her clothing in the corner of her suitcase.

  How kind of J.T. to have remembered her so fondly. She looked heavenward, sure that he felt her warm regard. Then she took off her shoes and climbed onto the bed for an afternoon nap. When she awoke, the sun was setting, so she dressed in her nightclothes and crawled under the sheets for the most restful sleep she had enjoyed in weeks.

  A week later, she was back on a plane to Alaska, the mahogany box now also holding the sealed manila envelope and a yellowed and smaller tattered envelope addressed to Father St. Jean that she had found after inserting RSB key #7 into Monsignor St. Jean’s safety-deposit box at Rhinebeck State Bank.