The sound of the de Havilland drew her to the window. Eli. He was back, after being gone from Summit for a couple of weeks. She wondered how his leg was faring. More important, she wondered if he had brought her pizza. She smiled and looked down. She was a mess. Good. The last thing she wanted to do was look attractive. The messier the better. Maybe she ought to smear some of the rock dust over her face.
No. She was who she was. Looked the way she looked. Eli had made his decision. Besides, she had work to do. He would show up when he was good and ready. And she would go on with this day without him, just as she would return to Boston in a few weeks and resume her life without him.
They were simply not meant to be.
With some trepidation, Eli paddled across the lake with Bryn’s supplies—mortar, coffee, sugar, cornmeal, and the pizza. He could see her, moving outside the house, probably working on her fireplace.
When Bryn Skye Bailey went after something, she went after it big. And opened herself up to a very big fall. Like us, he mused. As he drew closer, the hot early-August sun high in the sky, he could see her in a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, her olive skin glistening in the sun, her ponytail half undone, smudges of gray stone dust on her arms and even on her forehead. She wore leather gloves, and as she leaned down and took another load of rock inside, she pulled her head back once with a smile of greeting.
When he beached the canoe, she came outside. A squirrel chattered madly from a nearby branch, as if telling him to go away.
“When Pizza Town says they deliver,” Bryn said, “they mean deliver.”
“Yes,” he said with a chuckle, stepping out. “That will be forty-five dollars and fifty cents, ma’am.”
Bryn’s smile grew larger. “A deal, I tell you.” She took the box from him and opened it up, groaning in pleasure. “Pure heaven. Worth any price.”
“Cold pizza? Must be a desperate bush woman.”
“I’d say,” she answered. The squirrel scolded from above them again, and a pine cone dropped nearby.
“New friend?” Eli asked.
“Ishmael,” she introduced, then shrugged. “He’s mad because I’ve filled all the holes in the roof and he has to find another home this fall. Come in. Come see my fireplace. You’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you a piece of pizza? I’m going to nurse this all week.”
“No problem.” He ducked through the low doorway and walked over to the fireplace and short hearth. “Doc, it’s …” He paused to run his hands over the stones, impressed with their perfect placement and her choice of the rocks themselves, varied in color and, from the looks of them, gathered from all around Summit. “It’s beautiful.”
Bryn smiled broadly and pulled off her gloves. “Ben says that too many people do parts of jobs, not the whole thing from beginning to end. Gives a body a sense of satisfaction.”
“Wise man, our friend.”
“Yes.” She looked Eli in the eyes, almost searchingly. “Ben is a wise man. We’ve had some good talks …” Her words trailed off as if she wanted to say more, and Eli wondered just what Ben and Bryn had been discussing.
She opened the pizza box, took out a cold slice, and bit into it as if it were manna from heaven. She turned her wide, grateful brown eyes toward him. “Mmm. Thanks for bringing this. I owe you big.”
“Nah. Check out your stitches. I still owe you.” He propped a boot up on the nearest chair and lifted his khaki-colored cargo pants. “Nice work, eh? Dr. Towne was most impressed.”
“Not bad for an emergency treatment.”
“Towne called them perfect.”
“He’s easily impressed. How’s the ankle?”
“Still a little sore when I do too much. Nothing that some Advil doesn’t whip in an instant.”
“Good, good.” Her pizza seemed forgotten in her hand as she stared at him.
“I’ll go get your other supplies,” Eli said, suddenly aware of the electricity in the room. He motioned with his thumb over his shoulder and firmly tucked his other hand in his pocket.
“Great,” she said softly, decidedly returning her attention to the pizza. “Need some help?” she asked, then took another big bite.
“Nah. Take a load off, enjoy your dinner. I’ll just bring this stuff up to the cabin and be out of your hair.”
“You have to leave right away?” Her voice was soft again.
“Yes,” he said, too fast, too defensively. “I mean, yeah. Jamie has me scheduled for a sunset flight tonight out of Talkeetna, and I have a full couple of weeks ahead.”
Bryn nodded. “I need to pull out of here in a couple of weeks myself. Can you come pick me up on the twentieth?”
“Sure. I’ll put it on the schedule,” he said over his shoulder, walking out. Suddenly he couldn’t get away from Bryn fast enough. The woman was as dangerous as a tarpit to a saber-toothed cat.
The afternoon before Bryn’s departure Eli returned to the Pierce cabin, bringing his mother and father with him. He couldn’t keep himself from pacing in front of the deck window, looking out across the lake.
“Go see her,” Meryl encouraged, taking his arm and looking out the window with him. “Before you wear a rut in the wood floor.”
“I can’t, Mom. I can’t be with her. It will just make things worse. The best thing to do is stay away.” He resumed his pacing.
“You’ll have to see her tomorrow.”
“Yes. But I’ll just pick her up and drop her off in Anchorage. Knowing she’s on her way out will help me keep a lid on things.” He walked over to the stove and poured himself a steaming cup of coffee. The weather had changed over the last week, from a hint of autumn to full-fledged fall. At the narrow edges of Summit, there was even the thin sheen of ice, testimony to cold nights and the coming onset of winter. The tundra’s fireweed had turned a brilliant red and had topped out its bloom; the locals called it the “red flag of winter.”
“I always forget how beautiful it is here,” his mother said, still at the window. She looked on down the lake, where Jedidiah had canoed to see Ben. Eli rejoined her at the window, as drawn to the vista as a June bug to light.
“Sure you shouldn’t go on over there?” she asked. “Say your good-byes, so she doesn’t haunt you for the next few years?”
“It isn’t going to be like that again, Mom. We didn’t spend as much time together this summer. She had some things to work out, inside, for herself.”
“Did she do that?”
Eli thought about Bryn, about how she had completed the fireplace by herself. He could see the chimney rising from the trees. And Ben had told him that she’d taken to hiking again, even after the bear attack. She definitely seemed to be moving forward, not wallowing in the pain of her father’s desertion. Eli thought about their last conversation, when he’d brought the pizza. She’d wanted to tell him something, and there had been a hint of excitement in her eyes. “Maybe. I think so,” he finally replied. He took a sip of coffee. “And tomorrow, she heads back to Boston.”
He turned away from the window. “We’re just not meant to be, Mom. I’ve given up on it. Don’t go gettin’ my nose back to the scent.”
Bryn couldn’t sleep. It was her last night here, and she had bedded down in front of the fire on top of the bearskin rug, waiting to get sleepy as the flames danced before her in hues of crimson and sapphire and aspen yellow. But sleep wouldn’t come. She supposed it was Eli being right across the lake but failing to come and see her. Or memories of Ben’s sweet good-bye hug, the most tender grandfatherly embrace she’d had since Grampa Bruce had hugged her at the airport.
Ben had made her feel whole and loved and worthy. And he had opened her eyes to God’s unfailing love for her, even though she still longed for some tangible evidence, some proof she could cling to in the days ahead. But she realized it didn’t matter. Faith was about not always having proof. Besides, the peace in her heart spoke pretty loudly. Yes, it had been a good summer for her in many ways, regardless of what had or hadn’t transpired betwe
en her and Eli.
The bright third-quarter moon rose, sending rays of silver light through the front window, calling her. She glanced at her watch, turning to see its face in the light of the fading fire. Two o’clock. She looked back to the window, sighed, and rose, pulling on a wool sweater, jeans, and parka over the long underwear she had recently taken to wearing to bed. Outside, the lake was completely still, the mountains’ reflection brilliant in the water. It was irresistible.
Bryn pulled up her hood and turned the canoe over, shoving it into the water. One last good-bye to the lake her father had once loved, the lake that had now captured her heart. She paddled outward, toward Eli’s—no, to the center, she corrected herself—so she could get a 360-degree view. The reflection of the moon on the Alaska Range’s white peaks illuminated them all around her. She was halfway out when she heard a soft whisper.
“Doc?” came Eli’s quiet voice. “That you?”
She pulled her head back, jumping slightly in her surprise. Then she laughed to herself. “Yeah, it’s me, Eli.”
He paddled toward her and, when he glided alongside, reached out to grab the edge of her canoe. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
“No. Too much on my mind. And it was too pretty outside.”
“Yeah. Know what you mean.”
They sat there together in silence, drifting a little, staring all about. In the distance—up north toward Denali—a faint green light streaked across the sky, then another and another, like a giant artist making his first strokes on a naked canvas. “Eli—”
“Yeah, I see it, Doc.”
As they stared in awe, the neon-green streaks connected and then grew in a sinuous, undulating wave, coming south, rolling onward like a wave across the sea. “Oh, Eli,” Bryn gasped. She had seen the aurora over the years, but nothing as brilliant as this.
The lights continued to dance, rolling with a faint stroke of white across the bed of green like wind in wheat. And then, at the bottom, the streaks turned a faint red. Minutes later, that red grew more vibrant, and the light changed direction, cascading downward in what Bryn could only describe as the gossamer wings of angels. Even more breathtaking was the bright scarlet hue those wings took; the closer they came to Summit, the deeper they became. “Oh, Eli,” Bryn repeated.
Tears coursed down her cheeks, and a joy bubbled from deep inside her—a joy she had never known before. Surely this was like the kiss of God. A gift. A miraculous gift. She could not take her eyes from it. She felt embraced, surrounded, blessed from above. This was the tangible she had craved, and God in his goodness had given it to her. Undeserving as she was.
“My father would say they’re sixty miles away, the product of a solar wind stream,” she mused. She could feel Eli’s gaze upon her but could not draw her own eyes away from the arcs and bands and rays and filmy draperies that surrounded them.
“What would you say, Doc?”
“I’d say this is the breath of heaven,” she said, weeping all the more.
Eli looked upward again. “Ben calls it an angel walk, when they come down like that. That we’re seeing them descend, the multitudes from heaven.”
Bryn nodded. She had been given a vision from heaven, had seen the hand of God. “That’s right,” she whispered. “I can see why he’d say that.”
She looked up again and cried even harder as the lights continued in their dance, celebrating over her. Bryn grinned through her tears. Thank you, Father. Fill me. Make me your own. Teach me! Show me!
Eli seemed to sense her need for quiet and remained still in his own canoe, staring upward too. At long last he reached out and brushed his fingers over her cheek. “You all right, Doc?”
“Better than ever.”
“This been a good summer for you?”
“The best, Eli, the best. You were right, you know.” She looked at his handsome face, outlined by moonlight.
“About what?”
“About God being here, showing himself to me, talking to me.” Bryn looked skyward again, and wiped her cheeks, but the tears kept coming. “Eli, he’s here. Right here. With us.”
Eli paused, obviously surprised by her revelation. “Always has been, Doc. Waiting.”
Part 3
Homeward Bound, 2001
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bryn couldn’t believe she was back in Alaska, regardless of the fact that it was her year to be here. If she hadn’t come, something would be missing, something integrally wrong in her life. At least she wasn’t heading back to Talkeetna or Summit Lake this year. She was going to steer clear of Eli Pierce. He had occupied enough of her dreams—day and night—for the last decade. Besides, he was probably married with two kids. No, this year she had a new goal.
A full-fledged doctor now, as newly minted as a 2001 quarter, Bryn had elected to come to Alaska with Housecalls, a relief organization that would fly her to remote bush families or communities to tend to their medical needs. It was how she would spend the summer; then she would return to the Lower 48 and look for that perfect job that every new physician dreams of. But serving Alaska’s people for a summer was a way of giving back, returning a part of the gift she’d been given five years ago in 1996. The summer she’d first known she was a chosen child of God.
She turned her thoughts to her hospital buddies—friendships forged over the last five years. When she had gone home to Boston after her summer on Summit, it was as if something inside had burst loose, and she felt free for the first time to join in and meld with others. That summer had changed her life in many ways. She shook her head in awe. “Thank you, Lord,” she murmured, looking skyward from an Anchorage taxi.
She was glad her Grampa Bruce’s mind had been clear enough to know she had embraced Jesus. It was the happiest she’d ever seen him, the day she’d shared her news. He’d suffered several small strokes in the intervening years, rendering him incapable of caring for himself. It broke her heart every time she saw him, made her yearn for heaven for him. Where he would be whole again, fully functioning, his eyes as keen and bright as they once were. When he would be reunited with his beloved wife, gone now these last fifteen years.
In short order the cab pulled up outside a dilapidated building that looked like an old warehouse, half refurbished. A hand-painted sign outside read HOUSECALLS, and a light shone through a window. Bryn paid the cab driver and got out. “Wait until I make sure someone’s here,” she said. Obediently the cabby waited, the engine roughly idling.
When the knob turned, she waved at the driver and he gave her a dismissive flip of one hand and drove away. Bryn turned back to the small front room and closed the door behind her. When no one appeared, she called out, “Hello? Anyone here?”
“Coming!” a male voice called from the back. He emerged through a hallway and smiled as he turned the corner, a tall man, as dark as Bryn, with handsome features. About her age, too.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Bryn Bailey,” she said, reaching out her hand.
“Ah, Bryn Bailey,” he said, taking her hand in his and covering it with his other in a warm gesture of greeting. “I’m so glad to meet you, Doctor.”
Even after her years as an intern and resident, Bryn was still getting used to the title. “And you are …?”
“Oh!” he said, his eyes smiling at her. “I’m Doc Carmine Kostas, in charge of this most impressive operation,” he said, waving about at his humble surroundings. Greek and a sense of humor, she mused. It just might be a romantic summer after all. “Come on back,” he invited, already on the move. “We’ll sit in my office.”
She followed him down the hallway, past a couple of people who were talking on the phone in cubicles, past a conference room lined with maps and a whiteboard on an easel.
“We run a pretty lean operation,” Carmine said. “Thus the lack of a receptionist. We want to make sure we get as much of our donated dollar as we can out to the people who need it. So we set up each volunteer doctor in his own location, with his own phone or radio and supplies. We’re”
—he waved his arm to indicate the office—“simply the conduit of information. Once your area’s people find out you’re around—and believe me, word gets out fast—they’ll come to you direct. At that point, you only contact us on a weekly basis to ask for needed supplies and to report on the week’s activity.”
“How many doctors do you have this year?”
Carmine sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of him. “We have fifteen this summer. Five year-round.” He glanced back at an extensive map of Alaska, with sections divided by different colors. From what she had studied, she guessed it was divided up by native tribes.
“So, Doc Kostas,” she said gamely, “where are you sending me?” She had thought about being stationed someplace very isolated, prepared herself for it. Maybe up on the Arctic Coast, in Barrow, serving the Eskimo population, or out on the Alaska Peninsula, with the Aleuts. Or maybe—
“Talkeetna,” he said, smiling as if he were Santa Claus bestowing a gift.
“Excuse me?”
“Talkeetna. We have a new outpost there. There’s a clinic that’s growing in case you have an emergency, a small hospital in Willow—”
“Ex-excuse me?”
Carmine’s face fell, his eyes betraying disappointment at her reaction. “What? Have you been there? It’s incredible! It’s one of the best locations in the field—”
“I can’t go to Talkeetna,” Bryn said, shaking her head. “Doc Kostas, please. Send me someplace else.”
“You’re crazy, girl! I’m telling you, there’s not a better place to be in Alaska come summer—”
“I can’t! I can’t go there.”
The director leaned back in his chair, clearly puzzled. “Want to tell me why?”
Bryn sighed. “Not particularly. Let’s just say I have some history in Talkeetna that I’d like to remain a fond memory, not a trip back in time.”
Carmine studied her, looked upward, then to the map. After a long moment, he turned back to her. “No, it won’t work. The two other areas I could assign you to already have better doctors in the field”—he raised his hands up as if to guard himself—“not a comment on your medical skills. They know the native languages.” He gazed back at the map. “Shannon is near Wainwright; she speaks Inupiaq, and Eric is going to an outpost east of Bethel and speaks Yupik. The rest of my doctors are established with their populations, having at least been to their regions in previous summers. No, the only place that makes sense is Talkeetna, Bryn.”
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