One nodded in her direction, said something to the others, and chuckled. Are they... laughing at me? she wondered.
Nora ignored their stares and turned her attention to the other side of the room, where the smell of burgers cooking on a grill reminded her just how hungry she was. At the far end of the bar, a pretty young blonde woman stood over a hot grill, preparing three plates. Nora walked in her direction, as the woman spread some butter onto hamburger buns then placed them on the grill.
The food smelled delicious. Nora hadn’t eaten anything on the ferry ride from Juneau and she was getting quite hungry. She took a seat on one of the bar stools and grabbed a menu lying on the bar.
As soon as she sat down, the cook turned, saw her, and smiled invitingly. Nora guessed the woman was about the same age as her, in her mid-twenties. She was slender and tall. Very tall, Nora noticed, as she wiped her hands on a towel and walked toward her. Is she really wearing shorts? In this weather? Of course, Nora was wearing a skirt, but she was also freezing. This woman didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the cold weather.
The cook grabbed a pot of coffee and a mug as she walked over, then sat the mug down in front of Nora. Without asking, she poured a cup. Her long, curly blond locks had been hastily pulled up into a ponytail, and a few stray tendrils had sprung out during the course of her shift at the pub, where she apparently did everything. She was bartender, waitress, and cook.
“Cream or sugar?” she asked, looking Nora over and seeing the exhaustion on her face. “Or maybe a nip of whiskey?” she added with a wink.
“Black is fine,” Nora said, smiling politely. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. Conspiratorially, then, the woman leaned over the bar as if she were going to share a secret. Instead, she asked Nora a question. “So, why’d you bring a car all the way out here?” she asked quietly.
Nora’s smile disappeared and was replaced by a look of both shock and embarrassment. She’d only been in town for a few minutes, she hadn’t seen a single soul, and yet the bartender in the only restaurant in town had already heard about the stupid girl who brought a vehicle to a town with no roads.
Then the woman’s face broke out into a smile.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said in an attempt to boost the newcomer’s spirits. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Why do you think they have that parking lot there, anyway?”
It was nice of her to say so, but it still didn’t alleviate Nora’s embarrassment.
The woman stuck her hand out, then. “I’m Lily, by the way. Lily Frontier. As in, Alaska, the last American frontier. Fitting, huh?” Then she stepped back away from the bar and dramatically bowed as if she were in a Shakespearean play. Nora laughed at that. The girl definitely had a flair for the dramatic. “And I’m guessing you’re Nora, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Still a little too early in the season for tourists, so I figured you must be the one Mallow called me about. He sent some papers for you,” Lily said, looking under the bar and not finding what she was looking for. “Now, if I can just remember where I put them,” she said with a grimace on her face. “Hold on a sec. I’ll be right back.”
Lily walked over to the open kitchen area of the bar, pulled three hamburgers off the grill and stacked them onto plates already prepped with buns, lettuce, and tomato. Then she balanced one plate on an arm and picked the other two up in her hands and delivered them to the three men at the other end of the restaurant. Less than a minute later, Lily was back, but then she disappeared into a small office behind the bar. She reappeared a few seconds later with a large, thick envelope. “Here it is,” she said, sliding the envelope across the bar to Nora.
Nora took the manila envelope and tore open the sealed end, eager to find out which house was hers. It looked like a bunch of paperwork, which she had expected. But she also figured there would be a set of house keys. Emptying out the envelope, she realized there were none.
“Not what you expected?” asked Lily curiously.
Nora shook her head and sighed. “No, I just thought there would be more…” She let her thought trail off, remembering Lily was a stranger. As nice as Lily seemed to be, Nora wasn’t comfortable sharing the details of her life with someone she’d just met. “Um, can you tell me how to get to my uncle’s house?”
“Who’s your uncle?”
“Pete Cooley. The address just said Heron, Alaska.” It hadn’t made sense at the time that there was no street address. But now, knowing there were no roads, Nora understood.
As soon as Nora mentioned her uncle’s name, Lily perked up. She knew him. She knew where his place was. “Yeah. I think you’re going to like his place,” she said. “The house needs some work, mind you, but the rest is absolutely beautiful.” Lily smiled reassuringly.
Nora couldn’t help but smile back. If she had felt even an ounce of apprehension about leaving everything behind and moving to a small town on a remote island in Alaska, it all dissipated in that moment. Leaving Conner and coming to Alaska might turn out to be the best decision Nora had ever made.
“Are you just visiting or are you planning to stick around?” Lily asked.
“I’m staying,” Nora said confidently.
“Well, then, you are in for a real treat,” Lily said enthusiastically. “Pete built that place up himself. I was just a kid back then, but from what I hear, he spent the first year out there sleeping under the stars. Don’t know how he did it when winter rolled around. No shelter. No neighbors. Surprised he didn’t freeze to death.”
“Wait, what do you mean, no neighbors?” Nora looked at Lily, alarmed.
“Oh, Nora, that place is a good ten miles out,” Lily explained. “Don’t worry, though. It’s right on the water. Real easy to get to.”
Nora’s breath caught in her throat. I can’t be hearing this right. The house wasn’t in town at all. It was out in the wilderness, with no neighbors and the only way to get there was by boat. But that couldn’t be right at all. She’d spoken with Mallow over the phone. He had said the house was in Heron, not ten miles out. How was Nora ever going to survive on her own in the wilderness? She didn’t know the first thing about survival or about being alone – not that kind of alone, anyway.
“It might be real easy to get to if I had a boat,” Nora spat out. Clearly, the whole idea of inheriting a house and property had been nothing but a cruel joke. For the first time, Nora began to question her decision to leave Los Angeles.
Lily watched Nora, her sudden anxiety evident. The property really was a gem as far as Lily was concerned, but she supposed it would take a certain type of person to live so far away from everything. Judging by the look on Nora’s face, Nora was not that type of person. Lily thought about it for a minute and then decided to help her out. After all, if Nora planned to live out there, she would need all the help she could get.
“You know what? My brother Jake can take you out there.” Lily reached across the bar and patted Nora’s hand, trying to make her feel a little better about the situation. “You wait right here and I’ll go call him,” Lily said. Then, before she walked into the office behind the bar, she added. “You look hungry and I’ll bet you didn’t eat on the boat. Can I get you anything?”
Nora looked down at the menu in front of her for the first time. She’d grown accustomed to not even looking at menus, since Conner always ordered for her. She didn’t even know where to begin.
“I think it’s going to take me a while to decide,” Nora said, unable to focus on the words on the menu. All she could think about was how foolish she’d been to get her hopes up.
Lily nodded and then disappeared into the office. Nora could hear her on the phone, telling her brother about the poor girl who needed a ride because she had brought a car to the island and not a boat. It all sounded so pathetic to Nora.
A couple minutes later, Lily hung up the phone. Nora’s seat was empty, but since her purse
was still draped over the backrest of the stool, Lily knew she hadn’t gone far. Nora’s cup of coffee was empty, so Lily refilled it. Then she went over to the kitchen area and tossed two more hamburger patties on the grill and readied some French fries for the deep fryer.
Feeling overwhelmed, Nora retreated to the ladies room and the tears came before she even closed the door. The ladies room wasn’t much, but at least it was a private area to cry. It was a tiny room, smaller than most bedroom closets. In fact, there was barely enough room for her to stand up between the toilet and the sink. It was clean, though, Nora noticed as she lowered the lid on the toilet and sat down.
Maybe it hadn’t been the smartest idea to leave everything to move to Alaska. But she couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t go back. Not to Conner and not to the elitist society she had become a part of... and grown to despise.
The sobs came silently and Nora was thankful for that. She didn’t want anyone to hear her crying in the bathroom. That was the last thing she needed right now. She’d already made enough of a fool of herself just by showing up there. She didn’t want to do anything else that might make her appear even more foolish in front of these rough-and-tumble people who would no-doubt be telling everyone about the fragile little thing that just got off the boat, literally.
Nora didn’t know how long she’d been in the bathroom and she didn’t care. She cried until the tears dried up, until she couldn’t cry anymore. This was going to be her life now. At least she had a home and some property. She could adapt. That’s what she told herself, deciding everything was going to work out fine. It had to.
When Nora emerged from the bathroom, Lily could tell she’d been crying. But Lily didn’t say anything. Instead, she walked over to the grill and pulled a hamburger off the flames. Then she returned to Nora and sat a large plate of fries and a big, juicy burger down in front of her.
“Hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of choosing something for you. It’s time for my break and I don’t like eating alone,” Lily said before Nora could say anything.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” Lily reassured Nora. She reached into the cooler behind the bar and pulled out two cans of Coke. She placed one in front of Nora. The other one, she opened and took a long drink. Then Lily walked over to the grill and loaded up another plate and sat down next to Nora at the bar.
All she’d had for breakfast was an apple, so Nora was starving. She already had half of the burger eaten by the time Lily sat down and she was working her way through the fries before she took a break.
“Thanks,” Nora said, beginning to feel a little better about her situation now that she had a full stomach. “You have no idea how much I needed that. What do I owe you?”
Lily simply nodded her head and shrugged it off. Swallowing a bite of her burger, she said, “On the house.”
“That’s very kind, but I...”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lily interrupted. “Out here, we look out for each other. We have to or else none of us would survive.”
“Is it really that bad?” Nora asked, genuinely wondering what she was in for. She’d heard about harsh Alaskan winters with temperatures dipping down to 50 degrees below zero. “Are we going to have 10 feet of snow? And does it really stay dark all winter long?”
Lily laughed and shook her head.
“No. You’d have to be a lot further north,” Lily said, grinning. “The days get short, mind you, but we still get six or seven hours of daylight in the winter. And the coldest it gets is usually in the low 20s. We have a coastal climate here, so you’ll hardly ever see the temperature drop below zero. It’s not too bad at all.
“No, it’s not the weather here that gets to people. It’s the isolation,” Lily went on. “You’d think a town of more than a hundred and fifty people would be enough to keep each other company. And I suppose it is. We have plenty of people here and most of them get along fine. I think it’s the realization you can’t go anywhere that gets to some people. You already know what I mean. That ferry ride in from Juneau takes about seven hours and the ferry only comes twice a month in the summer, once a month in the winter. If you want to leave, say to go shopping in the city, it’s a real ordeal to get out of here and then back again. Of course, if you can afford it, the float plane comes in almost daily if the weather’s good, so there’s that. But most folks have to wait for the ferry to come around and they can get a little stir crazy.”
Lily didn’t look up from her meal to notice Nora’s face had grown paler at the portrait of Alaskan life she was describing. She kept on going, talking in between bites.
“It does rain a lot here, though,” Lily explained. “And we do get a fair amount of snow, but that’s not so bad either. The main thing you have to deal with in the winter here are the rough waters. High winds and choppy seas will make it difficult for you to get into town in the winter, so you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of supplies to get you through. And then there’s the fog, too. When winter rolls around, you could be stuck out there by yourself for weeks at a time, so you’ll have to be prepared.”
Lily looked up at Nora, then. The look on Nora’s face had Lily wondering if she’d gone too far. Maybe she should let Nora see the property first and get settled in before she started telling horror stories about people who got stuck out in the wilderness.
“I’m not trying to scare you, now,” Lily said reassuringly. “You’re going to love it. That piece of property has the best view of the mountains across the inlet.”
“If the property is so great, maybe I could sell it?” Nora asked hopefully.
Lily shook her head. “You could try, but I doubt you’d have much luck. It takes a certain kind of person to buy property that far out. The land is gorgeous, but there aren’t too many people lining up to live that far away from everything. You know what I mean?”
Nora didn’t say anything. She just nodded her head. She knew exactly what Lily meant because that’s exactly how she felt. She didn’t want to live ten miles out in the wilderness. She was a city girl. She had expected the house to be in town, around other people.
“I’m a little jealous, you know,” Lily said, trying to reassure Nora. “I wouldn’t mind getting out of town and away from all these yahoos.” She cocked her head in the direction of the three older men across the room, one of whom was animatedly telling a story about a whale that had surfaced right next to his fishing boat the day before while he was out trolling. “These guys are mild right now, but they can get unbelievable rowdy. If I didn’t have my dad to think about, I wouldn’t mind disappearing into the wilderness for a bit. The peace and quiet would do me some good, not to mention what fun it would be. Fending for yourself. Surviving on nothing but your wits.” Lily grinned. “Seems like it would be quite an adventure. And you came at just the right time… spring,” she said. “Why, if I were you I’d plant a little garden or maybe build a small greenhouse. Then you could grow some fresh food and not have to buy that nearly rotten crap Nate sells at The General Store. Have you been to The General Store yet?” Lily didn’t wait for Nora to answer. “It isn’t much, but Nate carries almost anything you’ll need. And if he doesn’t have it, he’ll order it for you. You should swing by there before Jake takes you out to the property. You’re going to want to stock up on canned goods. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to be able to come into town every day for groceries, or anything.”
Nora sat there, not sure what to say. She had some groceries in the car, but would they be enough? How long would her supplies last? Nora had no idea. Lily noticed her silence.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I’m rambling now, aren’t I?”
Nora shook her head. “No, it’s fine. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“Well, don’t think about it too much. You just need to get out there and see the place.”
“But I’ve never been isolated from other people like that,” Nora said. “What if I can’t handle it? I could go
crazy out there.”
“Oh, well if that’s the case, then don’t risk it,” said Lily jokingly. “The last thing we need is another crazy person out here. We have enough of those already. The ferry doesn’t pull out for another 45 minutes, so there’s still time to hop on it and go back home.”
Nora shook her head. “No,” was all she said.
“Good.” Lily smiled. “You want my advice? Just go out there and see what it’s like. I bet you’re going to love it. Out there, you’ll be just far enough away from all of these crazies,” she said, raising her voice so the men eating their lunch across the restaurant could hear her. The scruffiest one of the bunch turned and flashed a bearded grin at her.
“Lily’s the craziest of ‘em all,” he hollered back at them. “She keeps begging me to marry her. That’s why I carry this umbrella around. Got to have something to beat her away with.”
Lily turned back to Nora, laughing at the old man. “Anyway, you came here for a reason, right? Maybe it’s not what you expected, but you’re here now. You owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. You’re the only one who knows if you’re capable of surviving out there. And besides, if you need help you do have neighbors.”
“Neighbors?” Nora perked up. “I thought you said there were no neighbors.”
“Oh, well there weren’t when Pete first moved out there. But like I said, that was a long time ago. Now there are three other cabins out that way, none of them terribly close to you but all of them a lot closer than town,” she said. “Tom and Catty Baker live in a float house further down the inlet. Then there’s Hilly Duncan. His cabin is about halfway up Long Mountain. And the closest one is Willie. I don’t know his last name because he won’t tell anybody. But he lives right on the water, about a mile from your place. If you need a hand, I’m sure any one of them would be willing to help you out.”
Water's Edge (Alaskan Frontier Romance Book 1) Page 2