by K. A. Tucker
I don’t bother feeding his ego with an answer, turning on my heels to walk away.
“Can’t wait to see you on the trail!” he hollers after me.
Yeah, can’t wait.
The truck’s cab is warm when I climb in. That knot in my stomach that I arrived with has dissolved, only to be replaced with general unease.
Howie backs the truck far enough to turn. “Can’t say I’ve seen you so ruffled before. You’re normally the levelheaded one.”
I realize I’m scowling. “He’s spiteful.”
“What do you expect, Marie? You showed up here with a spike for his head, and he knows it.”
“I guess I did.”
“If the guy takes care of his dogs as well as he says he does, he’s gonna take offense to this. It’s like accusing a parent of abusing their kid.” Howie smooths his palm over his face. “We should’ve handled this differently. Let’s just hope he’s all talk. That last thing I need is to be on the police chief’s shit list.”
And the absolute last thing I need is another formal complaint to Wade.
I steal one last glance in the side-view mirror as we head down the driveway. Tyler is walking toward the barn, Nymeria hobbling beside him.
CHAPTER THREE
“I asked my cat what’s two minus two.” My father pauses for effect. “She said nothing.”
A medley of laughter and exasperated groans greets me as I shake off my snow-covered boots at the door and stroll into the familiar living room. This is the only home of my parents that I’ve ever known. Aside from updated pictures within the frames and a growing collection of trinkets, nothing has changed. It still smells the same—of burning wood, apple-cinnamon potpourri, and a well-used kitchen. Even the three twin beds in the loft room that my sisters and I shared as children are the same.
“Grandpa,” Tillie moans. “You don’t even have a cat.”
“She liked my joke.” Dad gestures at Nicole, who’s rolling around on the rug, laughing hysterically. Beside her, Bentley reclines on his side, unruffled by her theatrics. No one would ever guess the black-and-white husky spent years racing across the Alaskan terrain in subarctic temperatures with the way he basks in the warmth from the woodstove.
“That’s because she’s five and she laughs at anything. She can’t even do math!”
“Oh.” His blue-gray eyes flicker to me, amusement in them. “Well, maybe I should tell the joke to your aunt Marie and see what she thinks—”
“The nine-year-old is right. It’s terrible, Pops.” I lean forward to press a kiss against his forehead.
“Ha!” My precocious niece grins, victorious.
“Jeez. Tough crowd tonight, huh, Yukon?”
The golden husky who’s never more than five feet from Dad rests his chin on my father’s arm, earning himself a head scratch. Somewhere in the house, there’s a smaller, female version of him named Aurora, who I rescued from an unsavory owner with Howie’s help. She’s skittish and likely hiding upstairs until the pint-sized people are gone.
I hug the girls. “Where is everyone?”
“Where else? Hanging out in the kitchen while they’ve left me with these two wolves.” My father adjusts his wire-rimmed glasses and then smooths a hand over his belly to fix his button-down shirt. He has always been a tall, slim man, but retirement and age have softened his body and slowed his walk. Neither have kept him from his regular hikes, though, where the seventy-four-year-old will spend hours during the summer months, his trekking poles gripped for balance and the dogs at his side. But even with that activity, my father has developed various health issues over the last decade, with type 2 diabetes being the most surprising and concerning.
“Okay, Tillie, grab those cards over there for me, will ya?”
“What for?” She collects the deck and trots over to hand it to him.
“Seeing as you’re so grown up, it’s time I taught you how to play poker. That way you can take all your daddy’s money.”
Nicole bursts with another round of roll-on-the-floor laughter. “Grandpa Jokey, you’re so funny.”
Tillie is right, her little sister finds anything my father says amusing, even when she has no idea what he’s talking about.
I chuckle as I head toward the voices. Sidney Lehr may be known around these parts as an exceptional veterinarian, but I’ve never seen anyone prouder to wear the title of “Grandpa Jokey.”
The smell of pot roast, potatoes, and roasted root vegetables—a typical Sunday meal in the Lehr household for as long as I can recall—hits me as I stroll into the kitchen.
“… maybe she’s changed her mind about having kids. She’s always on the go with work.”
“Oh, come on, Mom. We all know she wants a baby. She’s almost thirty-eight. Does she realize how hard it can be to get pregnant in your forties?” Liz’s back is to the door, her lengthy golden-blonde hair worn down today rather than in a ponytail. She’s perfectly positioned to block my mother’s view of me behind her. “And all because she had to spend years chasing after that bush pilot who wasn’t interested in her. Now she’s alone, with no prospects.”
My ears burn as I listen to my sister critique my life choices and check the ticking clock on my womb between sips of chardonnay. Also a typical Sunday event in the Lehr household, it feels sometimes.
“Well, I don’t know what to say—Marie!” Mom pulls a pan of sizzling vegetables from the oven, offering me an exaggerated smile and then Liz a scolding glare as she hip-checks the door closed. At five foot one, it’s a struggle. “You’re later than usual.”
“Yeah, busy day.”
“Hey, Mare.” Liz doesn’t have the decency to look sheepish at getting caught gossiping about me, but she’s never done ashamed well. “How was your weekend?”
“Oh, you know.” I grab a bottle of beer from the fridge, twist off the cap, and take a big swig. “Just out there, somehow surviving life without a husband.”
Liz’s eyes narrow. It’s my subtle dig at her, and we both know it, but she deserves it after what I just walked in on. Liz doesn’t know how to be single. She’s had a boyfriend since she turned sixteen and was allowed to date. When one relationship ended, it wasn’t more than a week before she was locked into a new one. She met Jim when she was twenty-four, married him at twenty-six, and was pregnant immediately after. Now they live in a beautiful modern house near Eagle River, close enough for an easy commute to Anchorage where Jim is a partner in his father’s accounting firm.
“Where is everybody else?” The pot roast is already plated and wrapped in foil.
“Jim’s working late tonight.”
“Oh yeah? How’s his football team doing?” Another subtle dig because I can’t help myself. No doubt he’s skipped family dinner to stay home and “work” in front of the television. Not that I’m complaining. Conversations with my brother-in-law always lead to talk of money—namely, how much I should be making at the clinic. He’s my accountant, an arrangement my father made and I abhor but have honored thus far to avoid family strife.
“Vicki and Oliver will be here any minute.” Mom wipes her palms across her apron and slips off her glasses to clean them against her shirt. “They were putting together the crib this weekend. Well, Vicki was putting together the crib.”
I chuckle. We all love my little sister’s husband, but instruction manuals and Allen keys have never been Oliver’s forte. He’ll be the first to admit it. “They must be getting excited.” The baby is due in two weeks.
Liz sniffs. “Are you kidding? More like anxious. Swollen ankles, eight pounds sitting on your bladder, seventy-two pillows just to try to get comfortable? That last month is hell.”
Not that you would know, I hear tacked on to the end. But that’s just my sensitivity talking. Liz isn’t outright cruel, she just speaks without thinking. Often. And ever since she had Tillie, she is the self-proclaimed expert on all things pregnancy and baby related.
“Could be any day now. The baby’s dropped.” M
om pauses to look around the kitchen as if to take stock of what still needs to be done for dinner. Her teal-blue eyes—a perfect match to mine—land on the harvest table. “Would you mind setting that for me, Marie? For eight tonight.”
I collect a stack of plates from the cupboard and set to task, happy to have something to do.
Liz, who has never been the first to volunteer when I’m around, remains where she is, leaning across the counter. “So, I ran into Jonathan at Target yesterday.”
That explains the conversation I walked in on.
“He looks really good.”
“Yeah. I heard he’s taken up running.” Though Jonathan always looked good.
“And he’s engaged. Her name’s Carrie. She seems nice. Pretty.”
“They’ve been together for a while.” Almost two years, I think. I saw them once, as I was pulling up to the grocery store and they were walking out. She’s petite and dark-haired and, I’ve heard from mutual friends, allergic to dogs. It’s like Jonathan was following an “opposite of Marie” checklist when he started dating again.
I’d been expecting a run-in, eventually. It’s impossible to not cross paths with your ex when you live within five miles of each other, but I’ve succeeded in avoiding any close encounters so far. That day, I waited in my truck until they were gone. I heard they bought a house in a new subdivision in Palmer, so the likelihood of a grocery store meeting has diminished considerably.
“She’s pregnant.”
“Oh yeah?” I swallow my surprise with a swig of my beer, feeling an unexpected twinge at that news. Predictable, though it must not have been planned. Jonathan was always adamant that the wedding comes before the baby.
“She’s due in March. A boy. He told me its name, but I can’t remember—”
“Clancy,” I finish. After his grandfather. Jonathan has had that name chosen for years. It was just the mother of his son who he had to swap out.
Liz is observing me as if I’m a bug beneath a microscope. I know what she’s doing—searching for proof that I regret handing back that diamond ring. She never understood why I would. Jonathan is husband material on paper—handsome, smart, faithful, successful, well mannered. And to be fair, there was never anything wrong with him, nothing concrete that I could add to the cons column for why I shouldn’t marry him other than “doesn’t make my heart race like Jonah does.”
Liz and Jonathan got along famously. At one point, I thought she might have had a secret crush on him. She has never met Jonah, but I know she would never approve of him. She approves of very little in my life lately.
It wasn’t always that way. Liz and I are sixteen months apart—I was born in February and Liz the following year in June. Growing up, we had people convinced we were legitimate twins because we looked so much alike, and we were inseparable. I can still remember sitting on the clinic floor with our legs stretched wide to form a makeshift pen for the litter of sled dog puppies our father had rescued from being culled. We laughed as they stumbled around, unable to control their bladders, peeing all over. It didn’t bother us any. We had grand plans to take over Dad’s clinic one day, working side by side as Dr. Lehr and Dr. Lehr.
But then something shifted in Liz. She stopped coming around the clinic to help with the animals, and she no longer wanted to hang out. The usual sisterly spats turned into major blowouts, and what used to be friendly teasing morphed into vicious competition. It upset me until my father sat me down and explained that for all our similarities, there were glaring differences. Namely, how easily my grades came to me while Liz struggled for her mediocre ones. Playing pretend veterinarians was one thing; getting into a veterinarian school was another. Liz was beginning to see the reality of that, and she has never handled jealousy well.
The tension eased by the time we reached our twenties, once I left for school and Liz seemed content in her receptionist position at a car dealership in Anchorage, “running the office,” as she claimed. But the bond we once had has never returned, and that sense of rivalry still lingers.
Honestly, I’m not sure if my sister is bringing up Jonathan’s pregnant fiancée now because she’s genuinely curious where my head’s at, or if she sees it as a chance to feel superior. Liz, the happily married Lehr sister with two beautiful kids and a smart, successful husband.
Marie, the lonely, childless Lehr who still spends her days getting peed on by dogs.
I keep my fears to myself, but sometimes, late at night, when the rain beats against my cabin’s tin roof and I’m unable to sleep, I do question if I made a horrible mistake. I wonder how different my life would look had I chosen the other path, the one where I married Jonathan. Would I be happy enough?
I never wonder too hard, though, because if I’d truly been content with him, I wouldn’t have been so easily swayed by that hairy-faced bush pilot’s charm.
But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought long and hard about whether that choice tucked my desire for children into a sturdy coffin. I always assumed I would be a mother one day, once my career was established and the time was right. Longed for it. Nobody has to remind me of my climbing age and the challenges it might present, especially given our family’s history—the two miscarriages Mom had between Liz and Vicki, the one Liz had between her two girls. I remind myself of it every time I see a pregnant woman walk down the grocery store aisle or hear a baby’s cry.
Lately, I worry that I’ve already missed my chance and I just haven’t realized it yet.
I can feel Liz’s gaze boring into the back of my head as I set the last plate down. “I guess it’s good I never married him, then.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because he’d never have had a chance to name a son Clancy.” It’s the running joke in our family that to be born with a Y chromosome, you have to be canine. Mom has three sisters, three daughters, and two—soon to be three—granddaughters.
The door to the kitchen swings open and a gust of cold air sweeps in. “We’re here! We’re here! Don’t start without us!” Vicki waddles in, her cheeks puffy, one hand on her swollen belly, the other on her back for support. She looks as wide as she is tall. Of the three of us, she’s the only one who inherited our mother’s petite stature.
Oliver follows closely after, his lanky arms saddled with bags of empty Tupperware containers that Mom will gleefully refill for their freezer. Having children who still need her in their twenties and thirties keeps her young, she always says.
The smile that fills my face when I see my twenty-nine-year-old baby sister is genuine. “You look good.”
“I look like a beached whale. Get this thing out of me already!” she wails.
Liz’s snicker vanishes in her glass of wine.
* * *
“Whatever happened to that guy you were seeing?” Vicki looks ready to explode in her chair, her cheeks flushed, her palms rubbing over her enormous belly in a futile effort to help digest her meal. “What was his name, Tom or Cody, something like that—thanks, babe.”
Oliver collects Vicki’s empty plate and gives her shoulder a comforting squeeze. I’d label him a doting husband to his uncomfortably pregnant wife, but he has always been that way, catering to Vicki’s every need.
In contrast, my other brother-in-law has never once put his own dishes into the dishwasher, let alone anyone else’s.
“Toby.” I pass my plate to Oliver’s waiting hand and nod my thanks. “It didn’t go anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He’s a really nice guy. He’s just not for me.” As I knew would be the case when I agreed to dinner with Jonah and Calla’s neighbor and friend.
“Oh.” Vicki’s brow furrows with disappointment. “That’s too bad. He seemed like your type.”
I laugh. “You’ve never even met him.”
“Well, yeah, I know, but you said he was big and burly and … and …” Vicki searches for words, settling on “hairy.” She caps that with a burp that earns giggles from Tillie
and Nicole.
He sounded like Jonah is what she’s saying. Unlike Liz, Vicki has met my best friend before, and even though she married a man who couldn’t be more different—a gangly, baby-faced sweetheart with a total of four chest hairs (Vicki has counted)—she immediately saw Jonah’s rugged appeal.
But Toby is nothing like Jonah.
There is nobody out there like that guy.
“What about Cook?” Oliver chirps from the kitchen sink where he’s already scrubbing a dirty pot.
“Who, Steve Cook? Your boss?” Vicki’s face scrunches up. “Isn’t he living with someone?”
“Nah, they broke up. He’s single again. I think he’s, like, forty-two? Maybe forty-four?”
“Oh.” Vicki ponders that a second and then shrugs as if to say, Why not? “Yeah, you should try Steve.”
As if he were a pair of socks to test out.
Being the perpetually single Lehr sister—and the oldest, at that—for the past few years, I’m used to this. Every family dinner inevitably veers to the topic of my love life … or lack thereof. It’s usually Jim throwing out single friends’ names, though. Oliver must feel like he has to fill the void.
I tap my foot beneath the table as I finish off the last of my beer. Are all families like this or just mine?
“Anything exciting happen at work this week?” My dad changes the topic, saving me from more matchmaking.
“Not until today. You almost had another dog.”
“Don’t you dare bring any more animals into this house!” Mom protests, collecting the last of the dirty dishes before heading to the dishwasher, pausing long enough to toss scraps of meat to Yukon’s and Bentley’s waiting maws. “I thought I was done running a rescue house when your father retired.”
Dad and I share an amused look. All three dogs currently living under this roof are here because Mom offered to foster them and then wouldn’t give them up.
“And what was this one’s story?” he asks.
“On that note …” Vicki eases out of her seat to waddle toward the living room. Though she can’t resist a box of kittens, she was never bitten by the veterinarian bug and finds our chatter “depressing.”