Page 71 of Snow Creek

She stops, takes another tissue.

It was the week after the memorial service at Sunset Memorial Park in Bellevue, she tells me. Laurna Volkmann directed a Guatemalan moving crew to take some things to storage. Her sister’s house was a large one, stuffed with things that became a love/hate test for Laurna. She’d watched the Japanese expert on a TV show explain how to edit down the things that do nothing for you. That even make one anxious.

As the young men helped her ready the house for painting and staging, Laurna said, so many of the things she had elected to keep were items that had a strong connection to her sister. A pair of childhood sleds she and Carrie had used every winter even when there was only a dusting over the hillsides by their house. Pictures from a family trip to Six Flags four years ago. She also found some belongings of Hudson’s, that were precious and related to his family. As he hadn’t any family that she could remember at that time, she put all of those in a box and then found her way to Ellie’s bedroom.

Her niece’s room was beginning to show the stirrings of the transition from teen to adult. The last time she’d been there, it had been painted French Poodle Pink. And while Laurna adored the color, it was almost too much, even for her. Now, the pink was gone for a pale gray hue. So was the shelving that had once held up a collection of plush animals. In its place were books and boys. One wall was plastered with images of celebrities and Abercrombie boys, their pouty lips and eyes aimed at her.

Laurna shifted her gaze to the shabby chic desk. An open book sat just as Ellie had left it. Laurna sat still for the longest time, she told me, her home movies playing in her mind. It was like she was sleepwalking or something. Foggy. Sad. In need of another stiff drink.

She ran her hands over the comforter. It was silk and cool to the touch. Smooth. When she put her hands down to lift herself up, she felt something under the hand closest to the headboard.

It was a small notebook, spiral bound, with a unicorn sticker on its purple cover.

Ellie was still at that spot in life that teeters, sometimes unsteadily, toward adulthood.

She smiled, thinking of the girl that had been a joy until the past year. Ellie, Laurna knew, would have been her favorite niece forever, even if she had a thousand nieces. Carrie had complained a little and said that she wondered if she’d make it through dealing with a teenage daughter.

“Mom did,” Laurna had reminded her.

Carrie gave her a knowing smile. “Touché.”

That was the week before the accident.

It was the last time they spoke… Sisterhood is one of the world’s most impenetrable bonds. It can only break if a husband’s mother has something to say about it.

I get up and give Ms. Volkmann some water from a small table behind us. She takes it and starts drinking. I know she’s weighing what she’s about to tell me.

“Honestly,” she goes on, lingering on the word that liars have the hardest time saying with any volition, “I didn’t think much of what she wrote. It was the same kind of teenage angst Carrie and I reveled in when we were her age.”

“What did she write?”

“The usual. I wish my mom or dad would die in a car crash. That kind of thing.”

Her eyes widen some. She wants to say more. I want her to, too.

“All right, it seemed more like a list of ways to get rid of her folks. Not just I hate the world. I made a photocopy. Gave the entire book to the detectives in Port Angeles.”

She pulls a piece of paper from her purse and hands it to me.

She’s right. It is a list.

There are a dozen methods listed, detailing the different ways that Ellie could get rid of her parents. Some have stars against them. Some have been crossed out. It’s like she was trying to decide the best way. Her thought process, fantasy or not, seemed to err on the side of less violent murders. Poison was a possibility. It had a star. Overdosing on drugs also was underlined.

Drowning in a boating accident was the clear favorite. Two stars and two underlines.

She drew an arrow to combine the overdosing and the boating accident.

“It’s what happened,” Laurna says.

I scan her eyes. I think she might be right. I replay things I heard and saw. I think about how Sarah touched her brother, so tenderly. Too tenderly, I remember thinking. I remember the yelling that Ruth reported hearing the night after the memorial and how she told him to go back to bed. And how he leaned in to whisper in her ear. Something else struck me as odd: The first time I saw Joshua he was wearing the Miller beer T-shirt, and the next time she was wearing it.

But if that is Ellie, where is Sarah Wheaton?

I ask Laurna if I can duplicate her niece’s note, and she follows me to the copy room. While the old machine flashes to copy, I make plans to drive out to the Wheaton place.

“Are you staying in town?”

“At the Seaport Inn,” she says. “My husband and I. Hans thinks I’m being silly about all of this.Out of my mind, he repeated all the way here from Wenatchee. You don’t think I am, do you, Detective?”

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