A grave denied by Dana Stabenow Page B

saying is, we could narrow down the time of death if we looked up the dates the glacier was moving forward.”
     
    “It wouldn’t be exact,” Johnny said, frowning. “It moved forward for a while. Weeks, I think. Maybe even months.”
     
    “But it’s a place to start.” Kate sipped more coffee. “Not bad, Morgan. We’ll make a detective of you yet.”
     
    He grinned, looking very young in the reflected glows of the setting sun and the campfire. “Thank you.”
     
    “You’re welcome.” She was sorry to erase the grin from his face but there was no helping it. “So how long were you thinking of staying up here?”
     
    And there went the grin, to be replaced by a straight, stubborn line with a chin very much in evidence. “As long as it takes.”
     
    Kate nodded. “I see. Well, you’ll be eighteen in four years and no longer a minor, at which time you can tell your mother to take a hike.” She looked around at his camp. “I guess you could stay up here that long.”
     
    He looked annoyed. “I won’t be up here for four years. I just have to hide out long enough for her to get bored and leave me alone.”
     
    Kate laughed a little, and held up a hand when she saw his expression change again. “I’m not laughing at you, Johnny. But I have to say that one thing you inherited from your mother is a whole lot of stubborn. You never let anything go.” She leaned forward. “Johnny, neither does she. For whatever reason, she hates my guts, and the thought of you living with me just fries her to a crisp.”
     
    “She thinks you broke her and Dad up.”
     
    “I didn’t.”
     
    “I know that. She and Dad were way over when he brought you home that first time. You didn’t have anything to do with them. I know that, Kate. I don’t know why she doesn’t know it, too.”
     
    They contemplated the fire together in silence for a moment. “She’s not a monster, Johnny,” Kate said. “She’s a human being. She’s got the same amount of human failings as the rest of us.” And maybe a few more, she thought but didn’t say. “I think so long as your dad wasn’t with somebody else that she was fine.”
     
    “You mean she didn’t want him back until somebody else had him? But that’s so dumb!”
     
    “Maybe. It’s human, though.” She looked at Johnny and smiled. “And I have to tell you, your father wasn’t exactly unattractive to women. Maybe it was like the song says. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. It doesn’t really matter. She doesn’t want you with me.”
     
    “But I want to be here!”
     
    “That just rubs salt into the wound, Johnny. You’re her son, her underage son, I might point out, and you’re telling her you’re going to live where you want to live. That would be enough all by itself to activate the parental authority reflex, but you’re also choosing to live with her sworn enemy. Of course she’s determined to get you back. I’d expect that reaction from any parent.”
     
    “She’s no parent,” he said hotly. “She doesn’t care about what’s best for me, she never cared. I was just something to fight over with Dad. I was like… like… I was like Dad’s allowance.”
     
    “Allowance?”
     
    “Yeah, allowance. If I did all my chores at Dad’s, he’d give me my allowance. If he did everything she wanted him to, he got me.” He ducked his head, and his voice dropped to a mutter. “I heard them fighting about it one night, late, back when I was a kid. They thought I was asleep. She’d been out and she’d dropped me off at his house, and when she came to get me he wanted to know where she’d been and why she didn’t call if she knew she was going to be so late. She started yelling at him, saying she’d given him the kid he wanted, and if he thought she owed him anything else he was wrong.”
     
    Kate listened in silence, her heart wrung for the boy. Her parents had given up hope she’d ever come along and when she had, they