Wild At Heart: A Novel

by Tucker, K. A.

  “Homemade sauce from a can,” I amend sheepishly. “But I went all the way into town to get that overpriced can.” Which is about as exciting as my cooking content gets, but Di is convinced that pictures of me going grocery shopping on a Ski-Doo are hilarious.

  “Thanks. I’ll eat in a bit.” He nods toward my computer, sitting open on my lap. “What’d you do today?”

  “Lots of very important things,” I say with mock seriousness. We are two weeks into the new year and have fallen into somewhat of a routine, where Jonah goes off to Aro well before sunrise and I take breaks from toiling away on my computer to stoke the woodstove with logs that Jonah cut. Last week I focused on website design for the charter plane company, which is now ready for final touches and then launching, once he stops arguing with me about the fact that The Yeti is the perfect name for it.

  This week, it’s real estate and a crash course in business operations from Agnes, who has basically been running the administrative side of Wild for years. I’ve taken copious notes about nautical miles, basic pilot jargon, radio frequencies, topography maps, and flight itineraries. Just a scratch in the surface of this exciting world, Agnes promised.

  I flip to one of many website tabs I have open to show Jonah the house listings. There aren’t many this time of year. “What do you think about Eagle River?”

  “Eagle River,” Jonah echoes.

  “Fifteen miles northeast of Anchorage. A nineteen-minute drive. They have an airport and all the basic amenities. They even have a Walmart. And, look, they’ve got some nice houses.” Modern, new builds that surprised me, with high ceilings and tile floors and Corian countertops—all things I’d never given a moment’s thought to before I suddenly found myself entering the house-hunting market. “Look at this one. It’s got an extra-wide, two-car garage, and the view outside the kitchen window with the mountains is to die for. Or this one …” I flip through to another house, a few streets over, and show him the pictures.

  “How much land?”

  I scroll the cursor downward to reveal the details. “Almost an acre?”

  Jonah laughs. “That’s nothing, babe.”

  I frown. “But look at the yard. It goes way back.”

  “What about the planes?”

  “The airport’s like five minutes away. See?” I zoom out on the map. “It’s the same distance as Wild is to you here.”

  He rolls onto his back, his gaze settling on the ceiling tiles above us. “I’d love to have my own airstrip.”

  “What do you mean? Like, a private airport?”

  “Nah. Just a simple airstrip. A gravel stretch on my own property with a hangar to keep the planes, so I can come and go as I please, not have to deal with all the bullshit of using public airports. No one tellin’ me what to do.”

  “Do places like that even exist?”

  “In Alaska? Sure. All you need is enough land.”

  I know without checking that none of the listings I’ve looked at have enough property to land a plane. “What would something like that cost?”

  “Around Anchorage?” He sighs. “Too much.”

  “Well … we can always rent a place and invest in some land for later?”

  “I told you, Calla, I don’t wanna pay anyone’s mortgage for them, not when we can afford to buy. Do you?”

  “No, but …” Simon has now jumped onto the “rent first, buy when you’re sure about Alaska and Jonah” train, whether upon my mother’s insistence or because he felt obliged. Regardless, it’s more difficult to dismiss his advice than it is my mother’s.

  But I’m turning twenty-seven this year. When will I stop letting them influence me so much?

  Especially when Jonah doesn’t seem to have any doubts about us.

  Neither should I, I realize, because how can this work if I keep making contingency plans for it not working? “No, I think I’d rather buy, too.” I consider alternatives. “So maybe in a few years, after The Yeti is established, we can look at moving to a house on more land?”

  He shoots a severe glare my way. “We’re not goin’ with that name.”

  “We’ll see …” I mock in a singsong tone, closing out the tab, ready for Jonah to begin disturbing my clothes. That’s become his pattern, within five minutes of his body hitting the mattress, no matter how long his day has been—me, naked.

  My blood races with anticipation.

  But he doesn’t make a move yet. “Aggie had an interesting conversation with Barry earlier today.”

  It takes a moment to connect. “The farmer down the road?”

  “Yeah. He’s interested in buying our houses. This one and Wren’s.”

  “Really?” They’ve already got a nice two-story home.

  “Business is booming and he wants to expand his crops.”

  “Well … that’s good, right? We were afraid it’d take forever to sell.”

  “He wants the land, Calla. He might demo the houses.”

  It takes a second to process. “What, you mean, like, tear them down?”

  “Yeah.” I feel Jonah’s gaze on me. “What do you think about that?”

  Houses where my father and grandparents lived for decades, where my mother and father lived and loved, where I lived, a place that still wears my mother’s hand-painted flowers from almost twenty-seven years ago. These two simple modular houses on this cold expanse of tundra—one a mossy green, the other a buttery yellow—that meant nothing to me when I first saw them, now feel like a lost childhood somehow rediscovered.

  And Barry Whittamore wants to make them disappear?

  But do I even have a right to be upset? Jonah and I are leaving Bangor, starting our lives elsewhere.

  “Honestly, I don’t know what I should think. What do you think?”

  He bites his bottom lip in thought. It’s a moment before he answers. “I’ve got no use for this place if we’re moving. Still … I guess I always saw another family living here.”

  “Right. Same. And Agnes? What does she think?”

  He snorts. “Well, of course she doesn’t like it. The damn woman is driving around in Wren’s shitty-ass, beaten-up truck with bald tires because she’s so nostalgic. But she doesn’t need two houses to look after. She told Barry he should rent the houses out and farm around them. He sounded open to it. And selling to Barry would be the smart move. Otherwise who knows how long we’ll be sittin’ on these listings. And who’s to say that whoever buys them doesn’t tear them down, anyway.”

  “Right.” I wait for him to continue, sensing a “but.”

  Jonah shrugs. “It seems wrong, you know? Wren’s gone, Alaska Wild is gone. And now even his house might disappear. It’s like he’s being erased.”

  I feel what he’s saying. My dad said there’d always be a home for me in Alaska, and yet it won’t technically be true.

  Silence lingers, and I study the struggle in Jonah’s features—his jaw tensing, his eyes tracing the lines of the ceiling tiles as if my dad set them there with his own bare hands. What is he really asking me?

  Perhaps he’s looking for my permission to let someone possibly level my family’s history.

  “What would my dad say if he were here?” I hate that I can’t confidently guess, that I didn’t know him that well.

  But Jonah did. My father was more a father to him than he ever was to me.

  Jonah thinks on it a moment and then a slow smile curls his lips. “He’d ask if this is some karmic twist for refusing to eat his broccoli and carrots. Somethin’ like that.”

  I laugh, because I can almost picture my father standing at the living room threshold, scratching his chin, his weathered brow furrowed with consideration, saying those exact words.

  Jonah’s smile turns wistful. “But then he’d tell us to sell. That it’s just a house. To not make the same mistakes he did by tying ourselves down at the expense of people we love.”

  My head bobs in agreement. Jonah’s right. My father sold Alaska Wild—our family’s fifty-four-year-old
legacy—because it was time for everyone to move on. That house next to us is just a bunch of walls and a roof and two hundred forty-four mallards with hand-drawn nipples. The Fletcher family is gone. “Then there’s your answer. You guys should sell to Barry.”

  He nods slowly. “I guess it’s time to do some serious house-hunting, then. What else you got here?” He flips through tabs on my laptop, pausing to frown. “You wanna live on a farm?”

  “No. That’s an Instagrammer I’ve started following,” I admit, scrolling through the pretty array of pictures. Since deciding to move here, I’ve been branching out with different lifestyle bloggers for inspiration, specifically ones who live in rural settings. “She’s an interior designer, and she’s been renovating this old place in Nebraska with her husband, and chronicling it. I love her style. And the house has so much character. That’s what I want—a house with character.”

  “It’s all white,” he scoffs.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “The walls are white, the floors are white, the curtains are off-white …” He smirks. “Even the couch is white! Where the hell do they sit?”

  “It’s slipcovered.”

  He shakes his head, chuckling. “For the love of God, please don’t make me live in an all-white house.”

  “Her story is interesting! She’s all about upcycling and sustainable living. They’ve got animals and she grows all her own vegetables.”

  Jonah’s eyebrow arches. “So you do wanna live on a farm.”

  “No! I didn’t say that—”

  “I can see it now.” He stretches out on his back, tucking his arms under his head in a mock-relaxed pose, the hem of his shirt creeping up, exposing his taut stomach muscles. “Calla Fletcher, farmer. I’ll get you some big, ugly rubber boots and a straw hat for your birthday. And a basket, for all the eggs. We have to have chickens.”

  I scrunch my nose. “Chickens smell. And don’t they attract bears?”

  “And a cute little goat or two,” he goes on, ignoring me.

  “I hate goats.”

  “What?”

  “No goats.”

  Jonah turns to stare at me, his brows raised in shock. “You’re being serious.”

  “Yes!”

  “Goats. Those cute little farm animals.”

  “With the creepy horizontal pupils. Yes.”

  “How can you hate goats?” He sounds legitimately baffled.

  “I have my reasons. So, what do you think about solar panels? Do they work in Alaska with the short—”

  “Uh-uh.” Jonah shakes his head, his blue eyes twinkling with mischief. “No way, Barbie. Spill it or I’m gonna come home with ten cute little pygmy goats for your farm.”

  Knowing Jonah, he will. I mean, we have an unofficial “pet” raccoon living under the porch.

  I groan, already knowing how this will play out. “Fine! When I was six, I got mauled by a bunch of them on a school trip and ever since then …” My words are drowned out by Jonah’s burst of laughter.

  “Mauled by goats?”

  I elbow him. “It’s not funny!” Even though I’m struggling to suppress my smile.

  “Okay, okay. You’re right. It’s not.” He holds his hands in the air in surrender. “Show me your scars.”

  “Well, I don’t actually have any physical scars.”

  “Because they’re all on the inside?” he asks with fake seriousness.

  “Shut up! When you’re six and you’re surrounded by a herd of animals nipping at your clothes and fingers, and you get knocked into a fresh pile of shit, you never forget!” I shudder for emphasis.

  He shakes his head, his laughter dying down to a soft chuckle. “Come here, my little goat hater.” He slaps my laptop shut and pushes it off to the side. In one smooth roll, his heavy body is pinning me down and his mouth is on mine.

  Chapter Seven

  February

  “This is George’s friend?” I ask, huddled in the depths of my parka as Jonah steers Veronica toward a long, flat stretch of land, lined on either side by tapered evergreens. Two forest-green, metal-roofed buildings sit off to one side—both simple rectangles; one large structure, the second a small replica of the first. Next to the frozen lake is a log cabin. A plume of dark smoke curls from its chimney, dissipating into the murky sky. Elsewhere, tucked in among the trees, are several lean-tos and sheds. A staple for any home in Alaska, I’m learning, to shelter everything from chopped wood and propane and water jugs to ATVs and snow machines.

  “Who, Phil? Yeah. They knew each other in the air force. I’ve met him a few times over the years. Good guy. He lost his wife to a stroke, back in the fall. Around the same time Wren passed.”

  “Is he all alone out here?” There aren’t any other cabins on the lake, from what I can see.

  “Yup. His son lives somewhere south. Oregon or Idaho, something like that.” Jonah nods toward the back, to the cooler of moose meat that George asked us to drop off on our way to Anchorage’s suburbs to check out open houses. “He’ll appreciate that.”

  Our plane catches a wind current and jolts, and my hand shoots out to clutch Jonah’s forearm on instinct. He chuckles, offering me an easy, confident wink of reassurance that everything is fine, that we’re fine.

  That’s how things have been between us since he rescued me from a Christmas alone over a month ago—easy. We’ve fallen seamlessly into our old rhythm, except without that once-persistent cloud of dread that lingered in the background as we watched my father deteriorate, day by day, and wished for more time.

  Now our conversations are dominated by excitement about our future—of must-haves for the house we’re going to buy, of what we need to do ahead of launching the charter company, of which sunny, warm destination we’ll vacation at when we need a break from the long, dark winter. Our nights are filled with laughter as we lay tangled in sheets, talking and planning and teasing each other, our contentment palpable.

  And now that Jonah is officially done at Aro—they had a farewell party for him yesterday—and the lawyers are working on paperwork for the sale of the houses to Barry, our life together is moving ahead, faster than I anticipated.

  It’s everything I imagined being in love could feel like, back when I was trying to figure out what love is, when I couldn’t form a definition in my mind for it.

  It’s this.

  It’s us.

  It’s the swell of emotion every time Jonah first walks into the room, it’s the impatience I feel whenever he’s not around, it’s the way my heart skips every time I make him laugh.

  On impulse, I lean over and press a quick kiss against Jonah’s cheek, above his freshly trimmed beard.

  He regards me, a curious glint in his eye. “What’s that for?”

  “For being you.” I shift my focus back to the approaching ground below. Even painted the same stark white of winter, this area of Alaska is a vastly different landscape from the frozen tundra we left at first light. On this side, the houses are dispersed but more numerous, the lakes and rivers clearly marked by the cut of dense forest around their shorelines.

  Jonah follows my gaze. “This is a really nice part of Alaska.”

  I’m momentarily enthralled with the jagged white peaks of the mountain in the distance, even more distinct against the crisp blue backdrop of the sky. Will all these mountain ranges ever become commonplace to me? “Which one is that?”

  “Denali. Highest mountain peak in North America.”

  I sigh. It does seem nice here. “Too bad it’s so remote.”

  “It’s not that remote. It’s considered part of the Anchorage metropolitan area.”

  “And how far is the actual city from here?”

  “Only about an hour and a half.”

  “An hour and a half.” I emphasize. “That’s a three-hour commute. In good weather.”

  Jonah shrugs. “Not like Bangor, though.”

  “No, I guess not,” I admit.

  Jonah brings Veronica down on the snowy air
strip, her skies sliding effortlessly over a lane that’s been plowed recently, likely by the tractor parked off to the side. “Beautiful sight line … nicely graded …” His voice is full of admiration.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the runways.”

  He yanks off his headset and flicks a multitude of switches by rote, bringing the plane’s engine to a halt. Leaning in to plant a fast but hard kiss on my lips and to whisper “smart-ass,” he pops open his door and hops out of the plane.

  My boots hit the ground with a crunch, the stark contrast between the heated plane cabin and the frigid temperature outside making me shrink into my coat.

  A man emerges from the tall metal building—a hangar, I realize, spotting a red plane wing inside, through the gaping door. He approaches, his steps hobbled and chosen prudently as he moves along the narrow, shoveled path. He must be in his seventies, his face weathered with age, the wisps of hair peeking from the base of his black toque white to match the snow.

  Jonah closes the distance to meet him halfway, the cooler of meat dangling from one hand. He offers him a hearty handshake with the other. “Phil. Good to see you again.”

  “It sure has been awhile.” Phil grins, highlighting a missing front molar. Gray-blue eyes shift to me, and I note how the left one is cloudy. “This the missus?”

  “Not officially yet but, yeah.”

  My heart sings at Jonah’s response, at all the promises and intentions buried within—though we haven’t discussed marriage seriously yet—and delivered without hesitation or fear, in typical blunt Jonah style. It’s a quality I despised when I first met him, how he so brazenly told me what he thought of me in less-than-glowing terms, and now I’m not sure I could survive here without it. It’s easy to trust a person unequivocally when you don’t have to worry about what they’re not telling you.

  Jonah stretches an arm back to beckon me forward. “This is Calla. Wren Fletcher’s daughter.”

  “Sorry to hear about your father. What a shame. Gone way too soon.”

  “Thanks.” I rush to add, “And Jonah told me about your wife. I’m sorry, too.”

  His lips press together and he offers me a curt nod of acknowledgment, as if he can’t manage more than that.