She cast a covert glance at Jack, wondering at his solitary ways. He seemed like a good enough person, and there was no denying his physical attributes, yet he remained curiously unattached. He’d made reference to a woman who would let him sleep at her house, so no doubt he had alliances with the opposite sex, but his life for the most part seemed almost monastic. Was fishing enough of an addiction that a man could forsake all the comforts of life and not even miss them?
Another half hour droned by. No conversation was possible over the throaty roar of the engine. Every once in a while Jack would point down at something and shout to make himself heard, but though she stared where he pointed and struggled to make sense of his words, she failed to see or hear anything. Finally the plane began to descend. She peered anxiously downward, trying to keep from anticipating something so grand that she’d only be disappointed. A broad dark river twisted through the black spruce, bigger than any of the others they’d flown over. The plane banked around, dropping more swiftly. Still she saw nothing. Was the lodge so small it couldn’t be seen from the air?
Her hands clenched together in her lap and she realized she was tense with anticipation as Jack side-slipped the plane, dropped altitude quickly, lined up on a long straight section of river, and touched down so smoothly she barely felt the transition. Rather than stop the plane and cut the motor, he taxied it up the river heading for the bend.
Rounding the corner the river widened out, and on the left-hand shore Senna spied a long dock with a ramp ascending to a porch-like structure above. Above and beyond, perched on the very edge of a promontory overlooking the river, was the lodge, much larger than she had dared to hope. It was V-shaped, each wing at least sixty feet long and paralleling the river. The front of the lodge was the somewhat rounded point of the V, and was floor-to-ceiling glass. The lodge was constructed of honey-colored cedar logs that hadn’t yet begun to age and silver. The roof was metal, dark green, and evidently hard to see from the air. A massive stone chimney reared up dead center of the V and a covered porch ran along each wing facing the river, with yet another ramp descending to the lower porch above the dock. There were several matching log outbuildings, one right at the water’s edge that she assumed was a boat house, two up behind the lodge itself, and another off the far side.
Jack taxied the plane up to the dock and Charlie jumped out, dog at heel, to tether it to the big posts. The engine cut out and the prop feathered to a stop. Senna sat for a moment, taken aback by the unexpected grandeur of the log structure and the way it so gracefully blended into the landscape. “It’s much bigger than I imagined it would be,” she said, staring out the plane’s bug-spattered windscreen. “And much better-looking.”
“The admiral designed it,” Jack said. “He picked the place out, too. He spotted this knoll from the air, signaled for me to put down, and said, ‘There she’ll set, right up there on that point of land with a river view outside every window. We’ll call her the Wolf River Lodge.’
“Situated on that high point of land with the river on three sides, there’s a steady breeze that keeps the bugs away 24/7,” Jack said. “Priceless, that spot. There isn’t another like it along the whole stretch of river. You can sit on that great long porch without wearing any insect repellent at all and never be bothered by Labrador’s legendary mosquitoes.”
Senna shook her head, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the project. “How on earth did you get everything out here?”
“Freighter brought it up the coast to White Bear Bay, which is about twenty-five miles due east of here. The locals rigged up a pretty ingenious barge with a shallow draw to haul the bulk of it up the river. When the river froze up, we flew the rest of the stuff in, or dragged it by snow machine. We did whatever we had to do to get the building supplies in here.”
“How long did it take to build once all the supplies were in?”
“Forever, it seemed like. We hired some men from Goose Bay. Good workers. Great carpenters. And an old Scandinavian log joiner from St. John’s supervised the raising of the lodge. Fifty years in the business, a real artisan. Spent time with some of the best log-cabin builders in the world, teaching them the finer points.” Jack shook his head, his eyes faraway. “We worked like slaves, all of us did. Looking at the whole of it all at once, building the damn thing seemed like an impossible task, but the admiral never got discouraged. Somehow he knew just how to get the job done, step by steady step.”
“All those years of military discipline, no doubt,” Senna remarked, unbuckling her safety harness.
“No doubt,” Jack amiably agreed, his thoughts returning to the present. He grinned at her as he unbuckled his own harness. “C’mon. I think you’ll like the lodge even better close up.”
AS JACK STARTED UP THE RAMP toward the lodge he heard Senna’s light footsteps following close behind. “Where’s Charlie?” she asked.
“Dunno, but this is the first time we’ve been back here since the admiral died. I think maybe he just needs a little time to adjust.” He glanced back at Senna. “The admiral was the closest thing to real family Charlie had. The two of them were pretty close.”
Her forehead furrowed in a frown. “That just seems so unbelievable. The admiral was so aloof with us. With me. So distant. So judgmental and so damn unyielding. Nothing I said or did was good enough for him. The fact that Charlie liked him…loved him, even, just seems so…so incredible.”
Jack stopped in his tracks and turned just in time to grab Senna before she rammed into him, striding up the ramp with her head down, absorbed in her memories. He caught her by her upper arms and brought her to an abrupt halt. Her head snapped up.
“We all change,” he said, his voice harder than he wanted it to be, but Charlie was up in the lodge searching for something he’d lost and would never find again and the boy’s pain keened on Jack and made him angry with this granddaughter who didn’t seem to understand much about anything. “All of us, every day. We adapt to our environment. We change because we have to, in order to survive. Sometimes that means we have to hide the very best parts of ourselves. Your grandfather was a man who held a position of great importance. Great power. He had to make decisions every single day that could have nothing to do with his emotions, his true feelings. He had to make decisions that sometimes caused other people to die.”
“I know that,” Senna said, her chin lifting slightly but her voice subdued. Her eyes were riveted to his, irises wide, and he could feel the trembling tension of her body.
“He kept the soft side of himself hidden because he had to in order to survive in the world he lived in. You show a weakness in that world, any weakness at all, and you’re doomed, and everyone else who depends on you is doomed.” Jack felt himself falling into the dark windows of turbulent emotions that stared back up at him. “Don’t hold that against him,” he said. “He loved you, he just didn’t know how to show it after all those years of having to be tough. He didn’t know how to love anything anymore. It took that homeless boy to bring your grandfather back to life. It took Charlie to reconnect him to his gentler side, to the part of him that could be emotional, that could care about people, that could love again.”
He eased his grip. “The admiral was a good man, and that’s all I have to say about that.” He released her and she took a step back, her eyes still wide, still drawing him into that dangerous place. He turned away and climbed the steep ramp toward the lodge.
CHAPTER FIVE
SENNA WAS STILL REELING from the vehemence of Jack’s rebuke when he led her through the front door of the lodge, which opened into the spacious living room. The dominant feature was the huge fieldstone chimney, measuring at least six feet deep by ten feet wide, with two fireplaces, one facing the living room, the other facing the dining area, the chimney itself serving as the room divider between the two. The living room was stacked with cardboard boxes and wooden crates, some of which had been opened to reveal their contents. Couches, chairs, framed pictures, tables, lamps, be
d frames…everything that was needed to furnish a fishing lodge. The floors, what little she could glimpse of them, were of polished pine, and the windows were large and looked out over the river and the black spruce forest below. The building smelled of pine shavings, cedar, varnish and sawdust, all things fresh and new.
Jack led her through the maze of boxes, past the fieldstone chimney. “This is the dining room. We assembled that damn table three weeks ago. Took forever. Custom made, seats twenty-four comfortably. We decided on one big table rather than a bunch of little ones. Telling fishing stories at suppertime is mandatory, and it’s easier if the audience is all at the same table.”
Senna ran her fingers over the satiny wood. “Cherry?”
“Two pieces of two-hundred-year-old wood, hand-planed and rubbed. Finding chairs that went with it was hard. The Shaker ladder-backs were the closest thing to what the admiral wanted, but they were costly.”
“I’m impressed,” Senna said. In fact, she was awed. The dining room was elegant in its rustic simplicity. Above the table hung a hammered-copper chandelier with a collage of hand-forged fish leaping around its five-foot circumference. It was a magnificent work of art.
“Let’s go into the kitchen. Goody hasn’t seen it all put together yet, though she’s heard all the stories.” Jack tugged her along as he spoke, through the swinging doors at the end of the dining room and into a bright and sparkling space filled with professional equipment any gourmet chef would have coveted. The stove was a big commercial Garland gas range with a griddle, two big ovens, an overhead broiler and eight burners. “Big stove. Big job getting it in here. Four men. Lots of cussing. Look at this.” He strode over to one of three stainless-steel refrigerators and pulled the door open. “Big refrigerators, propane and electric combo. Could fit a whole cow in here. See the dent in the side panel? We dropped this one halfway up the ramp. Lots more cussing.”
Senna laughed. He was already moving toward a pine-paneled door, opening it. She peeked inside. It was a large pantry, lined with ample shelves. Everything within would be in easy reach and visible, though it was empty now. Jack showed her the baking station, with stainless bins built under the counter that tipped out for access and could hold hundreds of pounds of flour and sugar. The big piece of marble inlaid into the countertop for rolling out pie dough. The deep, stainless double-bay sink with a wide window looking out at river. He pointed at the skylights overhead that allowed better light and ventilation. Work island. Pot racks, hooks empty. No utensils anywhere. Everything was still boxed up in the living room, as yet unpacked.
He guided her back out into the dining room, through the living room, onto the porch that fronted the guest rooms. Three on either end of each porch, bare of all furnishings. “There’ll be two double beds in each, table between, bureau, chair, writing desk,” he said. There were tiny closets and large picture windows in each room. Every room had water views because of how the river curved sharply around the knoll. He showed her the small but cute bathrooms in each room. Shower, toilet and sink were all installed. “No room for tubs in these little bathrooms, but wait’ll you see the sunken hot tub on the lower porch.”
The hot tub held six people, and the view of the river was magnificent from this lower private deck, looking out over a short set of rapids that filled the air with the soothing sound of water over rocks. “Good place to soak away all your aches and pains at the end of the day with a close friend and a glass of wine,” he said.
Then it was down the ramp again to the building off the dock. “Generator building,” he said, opening the door to expose a large industrial-sized generator. “It burns propane and the building’s insulated, so you don’t even hear it running.”
“How do you refuel it?” Senna asked.
“In the spring we can bring fuel in on barges from White Bear Bay. In September, you’d run aground if you tried to freight up the rapids, so we put enough tanks in to last the summer and then some, and planned to fill them up every spring. Everything in the lodge runs on propane, too. The good thing is, we don’t need to run the generator except for pumping water up into the big storage tank. Once the tank is full, gravity feeds the water into the lodge’s systems, but we also have a water pump for when guests want to take showers.”
“What’s that other building down behind the lodge, the one you haven’t shown me yet?”
“Guides’ quarters. That’s where your grandfather, Charlie and I were going to hang out. There’s another little cabin for Goody and her niece, and next to her digs is a shed and fenced area for her coopies.”
“Coopies?”
“Chickens. Laying hens. She says she won’t leave home without them, so we built her a shed and figured the fresh eggs would be a bonus.” He was leading her back to the lodge as he spoke, and though it seemed overly familiar, Senna liked very much the way he took her hand to help her up the steep ramp. She attributed his friendliness to his boyish enthusiasm over the lodge. Now, as they regained the porch and she stood looking about the property, her self-consciousness grew and she pulled out of his grasp. “There’s still quite a bit left to do.”
He shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets and slouched against a log porch post. “You should’ve seen the place a year ago,” he said.
Senna studied him, measuring his character against the results of his labors. “I have to admit, the lodge is nothing at all like what I expected. I’m…” She hesitated, not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding as if she’d doubted Jack and her grandfather could pull something on this grand a scale together and make it work.
“…thinking about spending the summer here and helping out?” Jack supplied with a hopeful look.
Senna laughed in spite of herself. “I’m impressed,” she corrected, effectively dodging the subject, at least for the moment. “I’m also starving. Let’s go find Charlie and catch some fish. I’m hungry enough now to eat anything.”
Charlie was in the guides’ cabin, sitting on the bottom bunk and thumbing through a leather-bound notebook. He glanced up and laid the book aside when Jack entered, Senna right behind him. Jack picked up the book and glanced at it. His expression darkened as he handed it to Senna. “It’s the admiral’s journal. I have no idea how it got here.” Then to the boy he said, “A journal isn’t like a regular book, Charlie. It’s personal, and you shouldn’t read it unless the person who wrote it invites you to. How’d you happen to find it?”
“It was on the admiral’s desk the morning he died.”
“And you took it without asking? Why?”
“I wanted to know if I was in it,” Charlie said.
Senna felt a pang at the boy’s stoic yet vulnerable expression and touched Jack’s arm. “It’s all right,” she said. “There’s no harm done.”
“Where’s Ula?” Jack said, his voice not quite as hard.
Charlie pushed off the bed, eyes inscrutable. “She swam after a duck down on the river.”
“When?”
“Right after we landed.”
Jack swore softly. “That’s it, then. We probably won’t see her for hours or days. Maybe months and years. Damn dog!” He noted Charlie’s stricken expression and to Senna’s relief he clasped the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. She’ll turn up. Let’s catch a mess of fish. Maybe the smell of trout frying in the pan’ll bring her on home.” Jack reached for the box of hand-tied salmon flies on the little table by the window, handed it to Senna, who still held the journal. “You fish?”
She took the box of flies and shook her head. “My brothers did when they were young, but I never took to it. I didn’t like putting the worms on the hook and I don’t like eating fish so I couldn’t see the point in pursuing the sport.”
“Worms? Woman, perish the very thought. We’re fly-fishing on this river, not bait-casting. There’s a world of difference.” He put a can of bug repellent in his jacket and stuffed his other pocket with hard candy from a bowl on the table. “We’ll take the skiff,” he said t
o Charlie. “Water’s pretty high to be poling the canoe through the riffs. Don’t want to get the wedding planner wet. That is, if she wants to come along.”
“I certainly do, and I wish you’d stop calling me that,” Senna said, as they exited the guides’ cabin.
“That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I do, not who I am.”
“The admiral was right,” Jack said, striding toward the lodge at a pace that had Senna half running to keep up. “I’ve only known you for a day, but I think you could have been much more.”
“I’m good at what I do, good enough that I make a damn decent salary, and there’s nothing wrong with that!” Senna realized how foolish it was to be defending herself to a virtual stranger who had no business making such a disparaging remark about her job but nonetheless her words were delivered in a rush of anger. Jack kept walking. He gained the lodge’s deck and crossed the long porch to the ramp that descended to the dock. “Is there?” she prodded, maddened by his indifference.
“No, not at all,” Jack said over his shoulder, not slowing his stride. “You reminded the admiral of himself, that’s all, and he thought you should have followed the same path he did.”
“And just what path might that be? Sailing the high and mighty oceans searching for enemy to kill?”
“Not exactly. He thought you should have kept on as a wildlife biologist. He thought you should have championed your causes to the bitter end. He admired the way you fought for the coyotes and the bear and was disappointed when you gave up the fight. The admiral took up a similar fight here, on behalf of the wolves. I guess he hoped you’d follow in his footsteps.”
“Was that his idea of love, insinuating his own dreams into my life and expecting me to live up to them?” she said, wishing he would slow down and wishing she could just ignore his infuriating words.
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