Christmas dinner (delivered already prepared from the grocery store and heated before serving) was set for 2:00 p.m. Christmas Day, which it turned out was still full daylight in Washington State. Scotty and Cherisse were on hand for the meal, and so was the newest member of the family, my adult but only recently discovered daughter, Naomi, who also happens to be Athena’s mother. The reason Athena is in Texas while her mother is in Washington State is a long story I’ll save for another occasion. Also in attendance was Father Jared Danielson.
At the time we first learned about Naomi’s existence, Scotty hadn’t exactly been thrilled to learn that he had an adult sister he knew nothing about. I was a little nervous about how things would go, because our family Christmas celebration would be the longest period of time he and Naomi had spent in the same room. I need not have worried. The meal was perfect, and everyone got along. And when it came time to unwrap gifts, everyone loved the presents I’d obtained during my pre-Christmas shopping spree in Anchorage.
Naturally some of the conversation swirled around Christopher Danielson’s homicide, which had also surfaced in Seattle’s news media. I would have preferred it if Scotty and Naomi had peppered Jared with fewer questions about his younger brother, but Jared seemed totally at ease in answering them. Long before we knew for sure that the human remains found at Eklutna Lake belonged to Chris, Jared had resigned himself to the idea that his brother was probably deceased. He had less need to grieve now because he’d done that years earlier. Even so, grieving is never completely over.
By five o’clock in the afternoon, the guests had gone home, the table was cleared, the leftovers put away, and both dishwashers were loaded and running. In the living room, Scotty had cleared the floor and furnishings of every smidgeon of torn wrapping paper and ribbon by stuffing it all into an enormous plastic trash bag. Sarah, worn out by so much hubbub, was snoozing in front of the fireplace while Mel and I—she with a glass of wine and me with a cup of coffee—enjoyed each other’s presence in the enveloping silence.
Without presents stacked under and around it, the Christmas tree looked a bit sad. That’s when I noticed that a single gift still lingered there, hidden almost out of sight.
“Oops,” I said, getting up to retrieve it. “Someone forgot something.”
“Nobody forgot it,” Mel said as I returned with the box in hand.
“I don’t know who it’s for,” I said. “There’s no tag on it.”
“It’s yours,” Mel said. “It’s a surprise. I put it under the tree while you were loading the dishwashers.”
“How come?” I said. “Why wasn’t I allowed to open it when everybody was here?”
“Orders from headquarters,” Mel said mysteriously, “but you’re welcome to open it now.”
So I did. Mel had obviously wrapped it. The paper was the same pattern we’d used on several other packages. With the holiday wrapping removed, I was left holding a small rectangular box. It was about the size and shape that an expensive ladies’ necklace might come in, but this was plain unadorned cardboard with no identifying markings of any kind.
I shook it. There was no rattle, but I could hear a sort of soft shuffling sound coming from inside.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked.
Mel nodded. “But I’m not going to tell. Go on. Finish opening it.”
So I did. Inside was a soft leather pouch, colorfully beaded on one side. With it was a small envelope. In the envelope I found a piece of notepaper with Harriet Raines’s name embossed across the top. On it was written the following note:
Dear Beau,
Thank you for your efforts in successfully identifying Geoffrey 4/25/2008 and returning him to his family.
Yesterday I visited with a medicine man and told him about your situation with the other medicine man’s curse. He gave me this pouch and told me that the pouch and the items inside it should help with your nightmare. You don’t need to open the pouch. Just sleep with it under your pillow.
Yours respectfully,
Harry Raines
Dismayed, I looked at Mel. “Harriet Raines sent this to you?”
Mel nodded. “She mailed it to me at the office. She asked that it be given to you in private, and it was.”
I handed Mel the note, and she read it. “You must have told her about your recurring nightmare.”
“I didn’t intend to,” I said self-consciously. “I told her about Sue Danielson and the medicine man’s curse, but I don’t remember mentioning the dream.”
But I did remember what Hank Frazier had told me—that Harriet Raines was one of those people who seemed to see all and know all.
“Still, the idea of sleeping with this bag of whatever under my pillow seems a little much.”
I stuck to my guns, and hours later when Mel and I went to bed, the leather pouch still sat on the coffee table in the living room exactly where I’d left it. But sometime overnight, when Sarah cold-nosed me on the elbow saying she needed to go out, I walked her to the door. (The dog has yet to have a complete understanding of the magic of doggy doors. She much prefers having a doorman.)
It was a clear night with an almost-full moon overhead. When I came back through the living room, a tiny splash of moonlight illuminated the glass-topped coffee table—the table holding the beaded leather pouch.
“Okay, okay, Harriet,” I muttered to myself. “I guess I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Reluctantly, I grabbed up the pouch, carried it into the bedroom, and stuffed it under my pillow, grateful that Mel was sawing logs and wasn’t awake to see my capitulation.
Not long after I fell asleep, the dream came again—the same awful dream that has haunted me for years, and it started the exact same old way. I drive up to Sue Danielson’s lighted residence and switch off the engine of my vehicle. Holding my breath, I step up onto Sue’s front porch and discover that the door isn’t locked. I turn the knob and push the door open to reveal a scene awash in blood.
Sue—shot, bleeding, and dying—sits propped against the far wall as Richie Danielson, her ex, disappears from view down a short hallway. I hand her my backup weapon and then pause for an indecisive moment, torn between trying to help Sue and going after Richie. I have yet to move one way or the other when a gunshot rings out as Richie takes his own life, and then I turn back to Sue and race in her direction. Usually at that point my firearm slips from her lifeless fingers because she’s already gone.
But this time something is different. When I reach her and kneel beside her, Sue is gravely wounded and dying yes, but she’s still breathing—not only breathing but smiling up at me.
“You’ve got this, Beau,” she whispers. “You’ve got this.”
Those were her last words. I awakened out of the dream with my face wet with tears, but with sudden a sense of calm and with the certain knowledge that Sue was right. I hadn’t been able to save her life or her son’s, but I had returned her long-lost Christopher to his family, and that was what she’d really needed.
For the first time ever, the dream didn’t send me sweaty, sleepless, and shaken to spend the remainder of the night pacing the living-room floor. Instead I rolled over onto my side, threw one arm over Mel’s soft shoulder, and fell right back to sleep.
It turns out Harriet Raines was right, and so was her medicine man—that beaded leather pouch worked like a charm.