mountain.
She felt nothing, though.
The man was right. She’d known it herself. Helena was dead.
Hearing the horrible fact was one thing. Accepting it was another. Helena dying in an avalanche was just—preposterous. This Grant Thorlow didn’t seem to realize that. But this wasn’t something you settled over the phone.
“I’ll leave tomorrow, Mr. Thorlow.” She thought of rearranging her work schedule, Davin’s schooling. “Maybe Wednesday.”
“You’re not thinking of coming here!”
“Of course I am.” God, she’d have to travel across Ontario, through the prairies of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, then Alberta and the Rocky Mountains.
“We may not be able to recover the bodies for a while, ma’am. Conditions are—”
“You said you were calling from Rogers Pass—is there a town?”
“Golden to the east and Revelstoke to the west. Rogers Pass itself is midway between the two. There’s an information center and hotel on one side of the highway and our office compound on the other. That’s where I’m calling from.”
“Helena’s apartment—where is it?”
“Revelstoke,” he said. “But—”
“I’m coming,” she repeated firmly. “And I’ll be bringing my nephew—”
Oh, Davin. How would he take the news? He’d never been close to Helena, of course. How could he be—they heard from her so rarely. But she was his mother.
“Ma’am.” There was a new, hard edge to his voice. “I strongly recommend you stay home, ma’am. Roads are especially treacherous in these winter months. Besides, there’s little you can do.”
Amalie knew what he meant. If her sister was dead, nothing could change that. So why tackle an arduous cross-country trip?
But the alternative was staying in Toronto, never knowing exactly what had happened. She couldn’t live with that. “There may not be much I can do. But I’m coming anyway.”
A pause followed while he absorbed this. “Why don’t you give me a call in the morning, when you’ve had a chance—”
“I’ll call you when I get there. In about a week. And Mr. Thorlow?”
“Yeah?”
“When we meet, please don’t call me ma’am. My name is Amalie.”
CHAPTER TWO
“MR. THORLOW?”
Grant raised his head from his paperwork and saw the face of a dead woman. Helen Fremont.
He dropped his pen, stiffened his back and stared.
It was her—exactly. Long blond hair, even features, crystalline blue eyes. Had they made a mistake? Had she and Ramsey managed to ski out of that bowl and disappear together for over a week?
Then he saw the boy at her side. He had the same coloring as the woman, and his expression was openly curious, not particularly somber.
The nephew.
The prickles, which had danced along the skin on his face and neck, subsided. Not a ghost after all; this had to be Helen’s sister.
“We were identical twins,” she said. “I take it you didn’t know.”
Her voice was different from Helen’s, not as high-pitched; or maybe it was just that she spoke slower and more quietly. One thing that was the same, however, was the slight German accent.
“No. I didn’t know.” But he sure as hell wished he had. He stood and offered his hand. “I’m Grant Thorlow.”
“Yes.” Her hand and words were cool. “I’m Amalie Fremont and this is my nephew, Davin.”
He noticed the tiny emphasis she placed on her first name, and inwardly shrugged. He was aware he’d made a bad impression over the phone. But she’d been so damn unreasonable, insisting on traveling all this way, and for what?
He realized the kid was staring at him. “Hey, Davin.”
“This place is totally awesome.”
Amalie took a small step forward. “Davin is my sister’s son.”
Whoa. Helen Fremont had had a kid? He would never have guessed, had never heard anyone refer to a child.
“Officially, I’m his mother. I adopted him at birth.”
Which meant Helen had deserted him at birth. Now, that he had no difficulty believing.
“Well, I’m sorry about your mother, Davin—and your sister.” He looked back at Amalie, jolted yet again at the resemblance between the two women. And this time by the difference, as well. It was in the eyes, he decided. Helena’s had been the blue of a shallow pond. Amalie’s held the intensity of a deep mountain lake, glacier fed.
“We haven’t heard from Helena for a while. But last I knew she was living in Seattle. I can’t imagine what could have drawn her to this place.”
He took the insult to his home without a blink.
“And I certainly can’t picture her skiing in dangerous mountain terrain.” Amalie placed her hands on his desk, her blond hair swinging forward as she leaned in toward him. “Helena was a timid person, and she was never very athletic.”
Timid? Grant thought of the woman he’d seen several times in the local pub. Clearly tipsy, dressed provocatively and hanging on to the arm of first one man, then another. She’d danced with wild abandon and drawn most, if not all, eyes to the dance floor. If this Amalie wasn’t so exactly like her sister, Grant might have thought they were referring to different women. He took Helen’s wallet from his drawer and passed it over.
“This was your sister’s.”
Amalie blinked. “Where did you find it?”
“In an overnight camping hut on the Asulkan Ridge. She and Ramsey Carter skied in Saturday and spent the night there.”
He swallowed, remembering the shock of finding out that it was Helen Fremont on the mountain with Ramsey, then seeing the horrible swath the avalanche had cut down the side of the mountain and knowing his friend was buried beneath it.
As if she was sharing his memories, Amalie’s face, already pale, grew whiter. She reached across the desk to open the soft, light-brown leather packet that had belonged to her sister. Inside, he knew, was only a social insurance card, a bank card and five dollars cash.
“Oh, Helena.”
The whisper was laced with pain. Damn, but the woman looked ready to faint. Grant hurried around the desk to find her a chair.
