by K. A. Tucker
“Is it bothering you?” He shattered that arm in a plane crash last summer, the second time Jonah went down in two years. That was one of the scariest nights of my life, waiting for a phone call from the rescue team, fearing we’d lost him for good.
“Nah. Just whining for the sake of it. Did you go down to Anchorage to watch the big dog-and-pony show?”
“Don’t you mean the dog-and-reindeer show?” The weekend before the Iditarod is always a big one, with a ceremonial start for the teams in downtown Anchorage before the mushers and their dogs are shuttled up to the official race start in Willow. The days are filled with media interviews and spectators cheering for their favorites as they set off along the eleven-mile urban stretch. It’s such an important event for the sport, the city, and the entire state that they’ll do anything to make sure it happens. One March, due to an especially mild winter, organizers hauled in a train’s worth of snow from Fairbanks to build up the track so the teams had something to slide across.
The ceremonial start is capped off with a herd of domestic reindeer running down the streets.
I shake my head. “Too busy. Prerace checks and all that.” The last step in a month-long process ahead of the Iditarod, where mushers are required to prove their dogs are fit to race, undergoing a battery of tests, deworming treatments, and veterinarian approvals. “Plus, I didn’t want to see Skip’s smug face as he waved at his adoring fans.” One of whom I suspect left a scathing review of my clinic online. I don’t have anyone named Shanna on my client roster, and her accusations about the service were vague. They seemed a personal attack on me, even going so far as to mention the Iditarod in her comments.
Jonah’s heavy brow furrows. “Is that guy still giving you problems?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“You want me to pick him up on the trail and drop him off somewhere where no one will ever find him? ’Cause I’ll do it. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the dogs get home safe.”
I laugh. The IAF has been known to answer distress calls from mushers who scratch along the trail—they may get disoriented in a whiteout, or injured, or decide they can’t go on any farther—and need a ride back to safety. While Jonah’s all talk on leaving a man to die in the Alaskan tundra, knowing him, he will make Skip’s life hell if their paths should cross.
“Let me get back to you on that, but I think Skip’ll stay away from me this year.” If anything, I should be more worried about a run-in with the Iditarod’s shiny rookie, whom I’ve heard more than a few excited whispers about.
True to his word, Howie stopped in at Frank Hartley’s the week after our confrontation and confirmed that Tyler had brought Nymeria to the clinic for treatment. The bill was enormous, and Tyler covered it all without complaint. And because Howie is Howie, he followed up again a month later, and Frank confirmed that she’s spayed, has put on almost ten pounds, and looks like a whole different dog.
Tyler hasn’t even run the race yet, and his name is already casting a warm glow on spectators and the community alike. Even Wade made mention during a casual chat with my father that Tyler’s dogs are some of the fittest they’ve ever seen, and he wouldn’t be shocked if he placed high. And apparently, there’re whisperings about the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award, handed out by the veterinarian team to the musher who demonstrates exemplary dog care during the race, based on the little of Tyler and his team that people witnessed this weekend.
Jonah’s ice-blue eyes study me for a moment. “Something buggin’ you, Lehr?”
Besides this gnawing feeling on my conscience that I allowed the Hatchetts to play on my vulnerability, that my behavior that day was far less than exemplary? Wouldn’t that be something, if word got around that I accused this guy of animal abuse, only to have him win the humanitarian award a month later? Skip would have a field day with that.
I should have at least been the bigger person and left that note in his mailbox.
I push my regret aside. “I’m fine. Just tired. I had a lot to do before I could leave.” Volunteering at race checkpoints means time away from earning money and tending to patients. Cory is holding down the fort, and my father can step in for emergencies, but it’s still a long time to shut down. Thankfully, Jonah’s offered to fly me out, saving me from hitching a ride a day early with the other veterinarians from the crew.
“Don’t worry.” He drops a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You can catch up on your sleep at the checkpoint.”
I laugh. “Jerk.” I’ll be stationed at two this year, both remote locations, without even a village for supplies or running water for a hot shower. The first, Rohn, a cabin nestled between two mountain ranges and where two major rivers converge, could see fifty-eight teams and upward of eight hundred dogs come through within a thirty-hour span. Some will stay for only a few minutes, others for a few hours. A few might decide to make the checkpoint one of their mandatory rest stops.
From there, an IAF pilot will fly me five checkpoints down the trail to Cripple, a ghost town from the days of the gold rush and the official halfway point on the route, where I’ll do it all over again.
It’ll be a cold, challenging week, and I’ll contemplate my life choices at least once a day, usually when I’m struggling to crawl out of my sleeping bag.
“You ready to get a move on soon?”
“Yeah, stuff’s loaded. You need help with yours?”
“Nah. I’m good. I don’t have much.” A subzero sleeping bag and mattress pad, and a duffel bag of warm layers to cycle through. And, of course, my medical bag that I never go anywhere without. “Where’s Calla?” She never misses seeing Jonah off before a flight.
“She had to stop by the cabin to help the renters work the coffee maker, but she should be here soon.”
I peer across the frozen lake, though the derelict little shack they turned into an Airbnb cabin rental can’t be seen from this angle. “You guys getting a lot of bookings?”
“Solid since the honeymoon. Who knew?” He shakes his head. “I thought she was crazy for wanting to sink all that money into that place, but she was right.”
“She’s right about a lot of things.” And while Calla was resistant to move to Trapper’s Crossing, she’s made what was once a rustic and trash-filled log cabin into a cozy paradise.
“Don’t tell her that. She’ll use it against me in our next fight.” He tosses a tool into the box and reaches for his coat.
I’m trekking back to my truck when I catch the faint buzz of a snowmachine. By the time I’ve hauled my belongings from the back, Calla is coasting up.
Her eyes sparkle as they size up my loaded arms. “You look like a Sherpa.”
“I feel like one.” And you look ready to grace the cover of an outdoor magazine. She’s picture-perfect as always, her long, caramel-colored hair framing her face, the fur pom-pom on her black knit hat dusted with snow. It’s hard to pinpoint what it is, but Calla has a look about her that can make even a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt look stylish. I met her mother, Susan, at the wedding, and it’s clear Calla inherited that flair from her. I’m not sure there’s a room Calla walks into where she doesn’t draw attention, without even trying.
There was a time when I was jealous of her for that, and for everything else she is that I’m not—namely, Jonah’s first choice. His only choice. I’d lie in bed at night, itemizing all the ways I’m better suited to Jonah, reasons why he should pick me. I wished she would be another Teegan, an interest that faded with time and distance. I cursed myself for not letting Jonah know how I felt sooner, as if that might have made any difference.
None of it mattered.
I wish I could say I was above the bitterness and envy, but as Cory has reminded me on more than one occasion, I’m only human. I have a heart that aches when dreams are shattered, and emotions that can pull a river of tears when hope proves false.
Just have hope.
Don’t stop hoping.
If you believe in it long and hard enoug
h, it will happen.
What a foolish and dangerous notion for a person to cling to.
Hope is what broke my heart. Not Jonah, and not this city girl from Toronto who showed up in Alaska unannounced.
“Jesus, Marie. Why are you so damn stubborn? Here, give me some of that.” Jonah sounds annoyed as he yanks the bundles from under my arms, leaving me with nothing but my black veterinarian’s bag. “You get everything sorted over there?” he throws over his shoulder to Calla, already on his way to the plane.
“Yeah. All good.” Calla climbs off her snowmachine, her white bunny boots sinking into the snow. We fall into step with each other, trailing Jonah, our breaths billowing ahead of us. “I hear your first stop is the Rohn safety cabin?”
“Yeah. You know it?”
“We’ve been there a couple times. Stayed overnight once.” Her smile is secretive. “Are you sleeping in the cabin?”
I laugh. “God, no. They use that for meals and for the mushers.” There’ll be bodies everywhere, wherever someone can fit a sleep pad down to grab an hour of rest. “I’ll be in a tent.”
She grimaces.
“Don’t knock it. They’re way more private, and they have stoves in them. Ask Jonah. He’s stayed in one with—” I cut myself off before I make the mistake of saying Jonah stayed in a tent with me for a few nights the last time he volunteered with the IAF. We weren’t alone, and nothing happened, aside from me stuffing my ears with plugs to drown out his reprehensible snoring, but the prick of warning along my spine says that might not matter.
Calla and I seem to be on good terms now, but it’s taken time and several bumps along the way to get here. I think she saw through me that very first day we met at Alaska Wild. She’s always suspected my feelings for Jonah weren’t platonic, that I would gladly take her place. And while she’s never questioned or accused me to my face, there were some moments last year when I waited for a confrontation.
Jonah and I have a history and a close friendship, and I’ll be the first to admit I held—still hold—a possessiveness over it. But I wanted more, and she knew it. I saw it every time she looked at me, her pink lips pinched into a tight line. I heard it in her unspoken words when she tried setting me up with Toby. Find your own man, Marie. This one’s mine.
If the roles were reversed, I can’t say I would act any differently. Her wariness was understandable, just like my envy was for what she had with Jonah. Calla picked up her life and moved to another country for him, to a home that was so vastly different from everything she’d left. They faced a wave of growing pains in those first months, and here I was, that female “best friend” racing over every time Jonah needed an ear to vent to.
I can’t say whether my not-so-secret feelings for Jonah were the linchpin in her distrust, or if she would’ve felt that way about me regardless, since I had something with Jonah that she didn’t: a past.
I suspect they fought over me, but Jonah never revealed it.
I have no doubt he defended me; it’s just who he is.
But there was a stretch there where I held my breath, expecting her to give Jonah an ultimatum, and I was terrified of what his answer would be. I’m still afraid because I know who Jonah would choose.
But things have shifted since last summer, with Calla finding her own way in Alaska. The two of them are married, and she seems to have made peace with my existence in his life. Maybe one day we’ll consider each other friends. Until then, I’m not about to poke a charred log to see if it still smolders by bringing up memories of her husband and me sharing a tent.
“Hey, babe!” she hollers after Jonah. “Did you mention Bandit already?”
“He’s fine,” comes his gruff response while securing my luggage into the plane.
“Why? What’s wrong with him?” I ask.
“He’s been sleeping a lot more than usual and eating less.”
“It is winter still.” Not that raccoons hibernate, but they do tend to hide in their hovels during the colder temperatures. I’m no expert on raccoons. I know they don’t tend to live more than a few years in the wild, but Bandit leads a cushy life, complete with daily feedings and a well-insulated chicken coop that their neighbor recently built for them.
“Yeah, maybe. He just seems … I don’t know, depressed.”
Jonah snorts. “A depressed raccoon?”
“I think he needs a friend.”
“He has a friend. Zeke.”
Calla glares at Jonah. “I mean another raccoon. I was hoping he’d find one when we moved here, but I haven’t seen any around.” To me, she asks, “Does anyone ever bring strays in to you?”
I falter. “Stray raccoons? Well, no. There really aren’t any in Alaska.” There’s the odd rumor that they lurk in the southwest and on the islands, but the rest of the state is inhospitable.
“What do you mean?” she says slowly, genuine confusion furrowing her brow. “What about Bandit?”
It dawns on me then. I look to Jonah’s broad back, incredulity in my voice when I ask, “You never told her?”
“It never came up.”
“What never came up?” Calla looks from Jonah to me.
I shake my head at my friend. “We flew down to Port Angeles for the weekend to pick up some equipment I needed for the clinic, and you know how Jonah never closes his duffel bag all the way? He always leaves it open, like, six inches?”
“Yeah …” I can see the wheels turning in Calla’s mind. Maybe she hasn’t ever noticed that little habit of his.
“Well, Bandit crawled in when we were loading the plane to come home.” He didn’t make a sound the entire trip, not once during any of the fuel pit stops. He must’ve slept the whole way. I chuckle as I recall the moment we discovered him. “We were back at my place, and Jonah was dumping his clothes onto the floor. You should have heard him scream when the little black-and-gray furball tumbled out.”
Calla still looks confused. “But my dad said you found him under your porch …” She scowls as her voice trails off.
“’Cause that’s what I told him,” Jonah says.
I laugh. “Wren knew you were lying!”
His eyes shine with amusement. “He told you that?”
“Yes! He let you stick to that story so Max and the other pilots wouldn’t tease you, and because he knew you were terrified that you’d be the guy who brought a plague of raccoons to the state.” People have tried to import the creatures here, but they’ve never flourished. Jonah was convinced that this time, they’d succeed in becoming a regular nuisance. As if Bandit would somehow multiply like a gremlin when wet.
“He always was good at coverin’ my ass for me.” A wistful smile touches Jonah’s lips, as it always does when we reminisce about his old boss. His would-be father-in-law now.
“You should’ve seen him, though, Calla. Jonah was so afraid Bandit wouldn’t survive, and he didn’t want to leave him, so he spent an entire week at my place, feeding him with this tiny little baby bottle.” I hold my hand out in front of me in a cup, mimicking how Jonah held him. “And he’d wake me five times a night so I could check on Bandit—”
“All right, all right, story time’s over.” Jonah smirks.
“I wanted to murder him, I lost so much sleep that week.” The truth is, being shaken awake at three a.m. by a panicked Jonah was not enjoyable, but I didn’t want to murder him. Quite the opposite. Watching him fawn over a tiny, helpless animal like that? The whole experience only made me love him more.
And the moment I take in Calla’s face, I realize my mistake.
“Anything else I should know about that hasn’t ‘come up’? You know, seeing as I’m your wife.” There’s a distinctive annoyed edge to her tone as she levels Jonah with a steely look.
Maybe I’m just overly sensitive, but I hear the unspoken words that go along with that question. Is there anything else Marie knows that I don’t?
And here I was, trying my best not to stoke any territorial fires.
“Ready to
go?” Jonah slams Archie’s back door shut, sparing a second to shoot me a wide-eyed “thanks a lot” stare.
I offer Calla an awkward smile and then dart to my side of the plane to climb into my seat, silently cursing my best friend. As much as I love him, he has many flaws.
Calla’s irritation is splayed across her features as Jonah closes the distance. I can’t hear their conversation, but I can imagine it. Both of them are headstrong, unwilling to back down in an argument. It can be entertaining, watching them banter back and forth like opposing players on a volleyball team. Most of the time, Jonah will say something highly inappropriate and obnoxious, and it either defuses the situation or detonates a nuclear bomb.
But their fights can also be tense. I only hope my name isn’t in the mix. So far, neither have glanced this way, which is a good sign.
The corners of Calla’s mouth twitch before curling upward. She shakes her head at him. She may still be annoyed, but he’s melting her anger quickly, enough that he must feel comfortable leaving. He checks his watch and then pulls her into his arms.
I turn away as they kiss, letting my gaze settle on the frozen lake, the tree line, and the mountain range that I know is in the distance, obscured by the clouds.
And I breathe.
Will I ever have what they have?
I can’t picture it anymore.
It’s a few minutes before Jonah hauls his big body into his seat and sets to flipping switches on the cockpit panel. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” His mood hasn’t soured, so I assume all is well in the world of Calla and Jonah.
I fit the headset over my ears. “For the record, you’re an idiot.”
“It never came up!” he exclaims in defense, but then adds in a mutter, “Yeah, I know.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It’s almost seven p.m. when Keenan hollers, “I see a head lamp!”
Every volunteer—eighteen of us in total, with three veterinarians besides myself, two vet techs, two people handling communications, one person to care for return dogs, a race judge, and eight volunteers handling everything from recording musher times to cooking meals—rush for his vantage spot where we can watch the mushers coast in.