Page 31 of Thunder Pass

It comes from inside, she thought. It comes from standing up for yourself. Believing in yourself. Knowing that you’re important. She’d been raised to feel the opposite. Luke and Naomi hadn’t wanted her to feel that she had any power. They were power-hoarders, that’s what they were. They kept it all to themselves and doled out tiny crumbs of it to manipulate other people, even their children.

“What’s on your mind?” Gunnar asked when they’d finally spotted a coffee shack just outside Palmer, and were waiting in the drive-through line.

“Luke and Naomi.” She tucked her hands in the pockets of her sheepskin jacket. “It’s hard to believe I’m about to see Naomi again after all this time.”

“Nervous?”

“Oh yes. Naomi is very…intimidating. I was always afraid of her. She thought I was a…boring little mouse, basically.”

“A what?” Gunnar just about exploded. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Not really. I acted like a boring little mouse around her because she scared me so much. She was never like a mother, you know. My aunties were kinder to me than she was. I thought all mothers were like her—very critical and demanding—until I found some—” She broke off, amazed that she’d nearly revealed one of her biggest secrets to Gunnar. Her stash of paperbacks had shown her a different concept of motherhood, a loving one that she hadn’t recognized. But no one knew about those, and she wasn’t nearly ready to mention them.

“Some what? You can’t leave me hanging like that.”

“Yes, I can.” Her face was heating up like a solar flare. “Just move on. I’m not going to tell you and if you keep pushing me I won’t ask Naomi a thing.”

He lifted his hands from the steering wheel in a defensive gesture. “Ouch. No need to pull out the nuclear weapons. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to tell me. End of story.”

Slowly, she relaxed, her breathing returning to normal as they reached the order window. A teenage girl with a pierced eyebrow and blue lipstick took their order. Ruth decided she liked the look. It was fun seeing all the different ways people presented themselves out in the real world.

The closer they got to Eagle River, the tighter her stomach got. The towns grew bigger—Palmer, Wasilla, so many houses, cars zipping past, everyone so busy, such huge supermarkets that seemed to extend for acres. She couldn’t keep up with it, and had to close her eyes after a while. It was too much. She longed for her paperbacks and her chicken coop, for Maisie. She missed Maisie, missed Martha’s flock of sheep, and her funny sheepdogs, and the short-eared owl that hooted in the valley at night, and the rays of the morning sun that hummed to her as she awoke.

The guests in the ballroom were abuzz with curiosity. The Queen had been closeted in the throne room for weeks now, refusing to receive visitors. Would she finally open her door to the stunning newcomer? Who was this mysterious new woman in town?

The truck came to a stop and a hand settled on her knee, warm and reassuring. “You okay?” Gunnar murmured.

She opened her eyes to find that they’d arrived at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center, according to the bland lettering above the double entrance doors. The beige-painted structure didn’t look like her idea of a prison at all, which involved armed guards and iron bars.

“We’re here?”

“We are. You all right?”

“Yes. Just overwhelmed. The world is very big, isn’t it?”

“It’s big and small at the same time. There’s all that out there,” he gestured widely, “and there’s us, right here. You know me. You know this truck. You know this silly sparkly unicorn sticker Nelson put here. This is the world, too, just as much as the rest of it.”

She was nodding along to his words, which made sense to her on a visceral level and helped bring her back to some sense of normalcy. Not that anything was normal anymore. But she was still Ruth, and Gunnar was still Gunnar, and she’d offered to help him and that was why she was here right now, on the other side of a prison wall from her mother.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said firmly. “You’re coming in with me, right?”

“Oh hell yes. I’ll go as far as they let me. I’m not family, so…I guess I’m not sure how that works. I’ve actually never visited anyone in prison before.”

Her stomach dropped. Seeing Naomi was one thing, but alone…somehow, she’d assumed the whole time that Gunnar would be with her. She wasn’t even sure what to ask her mother. Gunnar was the one with the questions. What if this entire trip was pointless because she didn’t know how to get the answers he wanted?

“You’re my fiancé,” she said, inspiration striking. “We’re in town to get our marriage license, and we wanted to tell my mother before we do the deed.”

He burst out laughing. “Well, we did kiss, so…”

That got her laughing too, and by the time they walked through the doors of the correctional center, she felt…if not powerful, at least strong enough to face the force of nature known as Naomi Chilkoot.

16

Naomi was notorious for never leaving the Chilkoot compound, so the only time Gunnar had seen her before was once when he’d delivered a new carburetor for their Nissan Frontier. She looked older than he remembered, with threads of silver in her deep-red hair. Her resemblance to Ruth lay in her hair and her cheekbones, high and striking, but their eyes were completely different, Naomi’s green as a blade of grass, Ruth’s gray as morning mist.

They sat at a table facing her, surrounded by other visitors and inmates at other tables, with guards keeping a careful eye on everything. If anyone was trying to deliver contraband, they’d have to pick their moment.

The guard warned them that no physical contact was allowed, but that didn’t bother Ruth or Naomi, since neither showed any inclination to hug. How had such a compassionate human being as Ruth come from such a cold woman? Gunnar didn’t understand it, but he was glad Ruth had turned out the way she had. The world did not need another mini-Naomi like Soraya.

---