Aurora; that was a name she wouldn't hear for a while. With a shake of her head, the young woman seated in the waiting area picked at the hem of her shirt. She would need to learn to respond to Alice Ann again. No one in Unalakleet would call her by the new name. To everyone out there, she was little Alice Ann, Granny Petrova’s granddaughter. A mild snort accompanied the next thought. She wouldn’t be caught dead in the damn village, if it wasn’t for her Granny. It wasn’t Granny’s fault her daughter took up with a disreputable ex-soldier looking for a place to hide in the wilds of Alaska. Nor was it her mother’s fault she got pregnant, four times in fact, and produced Alice Ann. But, it was her father’s fault he got bored with the little hills and myriad swamps covering the point Unalakleet sat on. Val Peters packed Grace and Alice Ann up, and went to live in Slana. She was sure her father had a few screws loose to move out to that cold hole. Then, she amended that; a few more than the Veteran’s Administration’s initial diagnoses showed. Val Lowe Peters left a portion of his sanity in some Middle Eastern country. Slana was colder than hell. To her way of thinking, hell was cold, and it sucked all the heat out of you. The place warmed up a little in the summer, unlike Unalakleet. The coastal town never warmed up, but the temperature never dropped below minus forty either. Anchorage was the best of both worlds. It got snow, and once in a great while in the winter, the temperature dropped to minus twenty, or twenty-five. In the summer, it could get up to a pleasant sixty-nine, or even seventy, degrees. When it came right down to it, Aurora welcomed the opportunity to leave Anchorage. For a change, she was happy about packing her bags for the trip to Norton Sound, where she would help her Granny Petrova. To her way of thinking, hauling in crab pots beat arguing with her father. There were better things to do than dodging the old man. If she said the wrong word, the fight would begin. Not that it was anything new for her and the old man to get into it. The arguments had become an almost daily occurrence once she had entered high school. If her Auntie Penny hadn't needed help with the kids, she would still be stuck in Slana. It hadn't been great for her aunt when the father of her three children dropped dead of a heart attack, but she supposed the old cliché about every dark cloud had a point. It got her out of the village of Slana and away from her dad. Aurora shouldered the duffel bag and joined the other passengers outside. They followed one of the ramp rats out to the boarding area for the aircraft on the apron. Penny, her mother's sister, needed someone home with the kids after school, and if she hadn't got out of the house, there might have been a murder. Who did who in would have been problematical.
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