My phone rings and Diana’s mocking duck-face profile picture appears on my phone. An excited thrill bubbles in my stomach as I answer. “It took you this long to call me? What kind of best friend are you?” I say in greeting, a wide grin on my face as I continue up the driveway, past our hangar, toward the house. It’s been exactly four minutes since I sent her a text with a picture of my ring.
“We’re both getting married!” she shrieks.
The truck’s cab fills with the sound of our collective screams and laughter.
* * *
I stand in front of the window, huddled in a sweater, the rain and wind pelting the glass as the storm rages outside. “He should have been home by now, and he’s not answering.” My heart feels like it’s lodged in my throat.
“Mark likes to gab sometimes—”
“No.” I’m shaking my head, though she can’t see it. “I called Mark. I talked to him.” When the minutes began to stretch, I tried his office. Luckily his wife answered and was willing to pass along their satellite phone number. “He said the storm was coming in faster than expected and Jonah didn’t hang around at all. He was in a rush to get back home.”
Tears stream down my cheeks as the conversation replays in my mind—that the weather looked treacherous, that Mark told Jonah to stay with them for the night. “I have a really bad feeling, Agnes.” Is this what she felt, that fateful day when Mabel’s father didn’t arrive at his destination?
There’s a moment of silence on the other end, and then Agnes quietly says, “Call it in, Calla.”
* * *
“You’re like a caged bear lookin’ for a way out,” Muriel chides, handing Teddy another mason jar. He wordlessly dries it with a tea towel, sets it on the counter, and waits for the next.
I ignore her, hugging my chest as I pace back and forth in front of our bay window, my gaze locked on the murky sky, desperately waiting to catch a glimpse of the familiar white-and-black-striped plane.
I am looking for a way out, I think to myself.
A way out of this nightmare.
What I’ve feared most is becoming a reality.
Muriel knocked once and then strolled into the house as I stood in the kitchen, reading off details of Jonah’s itinerary to the state troopers, my hands trembling so hard, I struggled to see the words. She listened for a few minutes and then stepped outside, sliding her rarely used phone from her pocket. Shortly after, Teddy and Toby pulled up in Toby’s burgundy truck. They’ve lingered since, Muriel tasking Toby with fetching empty jars from the cellar so she and Teddy can prepare them for canning.
But all I can do is pace, my cell and the satellite phones gripped tightly in my fists, and choke down the mounting dread as I wait for news from the Alaska Air National Guard.
It’s been almost four hours since Jonah was expected back. The storm has already passed, leaving a cold, steady drizzle. It’s darker than usual at this time on account of the weather. Soon, it’ll be too dark to see anything on the ground.
My cell phone rings.
My heart stops as I check the screen, only to see that it’s my mother calling. I ignore it—I can’t deal with anyone right now—and continue pacing.
“Come on. Let’s keep our minds busy with—”
“I can’t!” I shriek, tears erupting in rivulets as I face off with Muriel. “I can’t do anything right now! I can barely breathe!”
All three of them pause, sympathy filling their expressions.
“He asked me to marry him today,” I continue in a hoarse whisper. The ring on my finger suddenly weighs a hundred pounds. “We’re supposed to spend the rest of our lives together. He’s my entire world. Why can’t he just come back?”
Muriel squeezes her eyes shut and nods. She knows what this feels like—this agonizing wait.
How long will it take them to find him?
Hours?
Days?
What if they never find him?
My chest feels like it’s going to cave in with these foreboding thoughts. “I need air.” I rush for the front door.
“Give her some space, Mom,” I hear Toby whisper, warning his mother from following.
Out on the quiet front porch, I curl up in a wicker chair, wrapping the blanket around my numb body.
And I wait, for a fate that I fear was inevitable all along.
* * *
With my stomach in my throat, I track the small glowing globes of headlights as they crawl up our driveway, just after eleven.
Have the state troopers come to tell me they’ve found Jonah’s body? Have they decided that a phone call is not enough? What is standard protocol for this sort of news?
I breathe a sigh of relief when the floodlight illuminates a plain black truck with scratched-up sides parking next to Marie’s truck.
Roy came.
Why is Roy here?
It’s a fleeting question that I quickly dismiss. It doesn’t matter why, I decide, as I sip on the tea Muriel wordlessly brought out an hour ago—now cold in my grasp. There’s nothing else for me to do as I wait for news.
It’s been more than five hours.
My vacant stare is searching the dark when the porch door creaks open and Roy slips in, wearing the same outfit he wore that night to the Ale House. Our eyes glance off each other and for a moment, I fear the insensitive comment that will fall from his mouth, that will somehow make this worse.
But then he slips off his cowboy hat and strolls over to settle into the wicker chair beside me, stretching his legs out in front of him, boots crossed, as if to get comfortable.
A loud clatter sounds inside.
“I take it Muriel’s inside, rearranging your house?” His Texan drawl is rough and grating as usual.
“Who knows what she’s into now?” I don’t have that many jars to wash, but I know she’ll find something to keep herself busy. She and Marie, who showed up about an hour ago, after Toby called her. By the hushed whispers and the fact that he had her number in the first place, I suspect they’ve taken my advice and gone on at least one date.
Another long moment passes and then Roy’s exhale cuts into the silence. “Any news yet?”
I shake my head.
“Well … No news is good news.”
No news just means they haven’t found Jonah’s body yet.
It means he could be lying somewhere, alone, suffering.
There are multiple scenarios running through my head, and none of them look good.
A fresh wave of tears prick my eyes. “How did you know?”
“Toby came by on his way here.”
Why would Toby … I dismiss the question before it fully forms. That doesn’t matter, either. “He wanted me to go with him. I should have gone.”
“Then you’d be wherever he is right now.”
“It’s where I belong.” Beside Jonah, in the sky or in the ground. But always by his side.
I feel Roy studying my profile as I huddle in my blanket.
“You’ll survive this. You’re tough.”
I laugh, the sound hollow. “No, I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are. You’re tough in your own way, Calla. You’ll survive this.”
“What if I don’t want to survive this?” I’ll never complain about Alaska again. I’ll live here until I’m old and gray, never thinking of a way out, never wishing I were somewhere else, as long as I can have Jonah. I feel idiotic now. I let such trivial worries consume me for so long.
“It’s never up to us, though, is it?”
Heavy footfalls sound from inside a moment before the door creaks open. The low hum of voices on the TV carries out. “Oh, you’re here.” Muriel nods to Roy as she plucks the cold mug from my hand, still mostly full. “I’m makin’ you more tea. Roy, you want tea? I’ll make you tea.” With that, she turns around and disappears inside.
“I don’t like tea,” I admit after she’s gone.
“Neither do I, but every once in a while, I let that battle-ax get her way.�
�
Despite everything, I feel a small smile curl my lips, imagining the two of them out in the woods for nine days and nights. The conversations those two must have had … “Muriel told me you helped her look for Deacon, way back when.”
He makes a sound but doesn’t respond.
I don’t care if he’s annoyed that I know. Let him yell at me for bringing it up; it’ll slide off me like water off a duck’s back. Or a goose’s back, perhaps. The goose wife who waits to find out if she has lost her raven. “Why’d you do it?”
Roy doesn’t answer for a long moment, his eyes roaming the dark, as if trying to make out the tree line from here. “Because I owed her. Because a long time ago, she was the one out there, searchin’ for my kin.”
I frown. “Muriel?”
“I don’t remember much, but I do remember bein’ hungry and cold and miserable, and listenin’ to my parents fight about food.” He picks at a button on his shirt. “My father went out to check the snares for rabbits. He couldn’t catch his own foot if he stepped in a trap, but the stubborn SOB was determined not to ask for help.” He smirks. “In case you were wondering where I get that from. My mother got tired of waitin’, so she bundled up and left our house in a blizzard with the last of our money. She was gonna go to the store and see what she could buy, so we wouldn’t starve. Told me to stay put. And that’s the last time I saw her. Alive, anyway.”
An odd sense of recognition tickles me as he tells this story, as if I’ve heard it before.
“When the locals caught wind, a bunch of ’em spent days combing the forest and the road, lookin’ for her. There was this one girl with ’em. She was older than me by a few years and had a gun slung over her shoulder. She seemed tough as nails. I told myself I needed to be tough like her if I had a hope in hell of survivin’ up here.” His lips quirk. “They finally found my mother. She was frozen solid. They figure she got lost ’cause she was way off course. Probably died that first night.”
Cold realization washes over me. “That cabin.” I point across the lake. “That was yours.” Roy may sound like a Texan, but there was a time that he and his family came to Alaska to try to make a life for themselves here.
And that tough-as-nails girl out there helping search for his mother was Muriel.
“Does Muriel know?” She didn’t sound like she did.
He shakes his head.
She doesn’t remember, and he’s never told her.
I struggle to piece the rest of the story together as I remember her tell it. “So, then … you and your father went back to Texas. No, wait.” I frown. “Muriel said you were from Montana?” The same place her own family was from. That much, she remembered.
“When we left Alaska, my dad didn’t want anythin’ to do with snow, so we headed south, all the way to a town outside Dallas. That’s where I grew up, buildin’ houses and barns with my pa. He was always real smart with wood. I learned from him.” His fingers trace the brim of his hat. “By the time I found my way back, the land was already sold to someone else. So, I took the closest lot available.”
“That cabin was built really well.” Steve the contractor was amazed at how well it has withstood the elements. Everything had been done right—the solid foundation, the right wood, the wide overhangs, the drainage slope. The fact that the area has overgrown has helped protect it from the sun. “You can go see it. I mean, if you want.”
His lips twist. “I’ve been by a few times over the years. To clean out the gutters. Phil woulda let it rot.”
I think Roy’s been doing more than cleaning out gutters. Steve said it looked like someone’s been treating the exterior wood—with linseed oil and turpentine, he guessed—and patching the roof.
Roy’s been preserving his family’s history in Alaska, however tragic it was.
“Why would you ever want to come back after all that?” He lost his mother and his brother to this wilderness.
And then he lost his wife and daughter to something else.
Wouldn’t be the first time a person ran here to escape somethin’.
That’s what Jonah had said, that night after I saw the picture of Roy’s family in his house, the day the wood came down on top of him.
Jonah …
I close my eyes against the terror that floods back to the forefront, dulled by a moment’s distraction.
Silence hangs in the cold, damp front porch, until Muriel barrels out with two hot teas, setting them onto the small outdoor side tables I ordered, along with a bowl of sugar and glass of milk. “That’s your goat milk, Roy,” she says before heading back inside, not waiting for a thank-you. It’s shocking that she never put the pieces together to Roy’s family history in Trapper’s Crossing, being the busybody she is. Then again, she was young, the Donovan family’s stint here was brief and secluded, and many decades have passed. Why would anyone suspect that the little boy who lost so much to this place would come back years later?
“What are the chances she’s put arsenic in mine?” he studies it warily. “Lord knows I’d deserve it.”
“Why?” I find myself asking. “What’d you do, Roy?” It’s a loaded question—did he do something bad to Muriel? Did he do something bad to someone else?—and I ask it freely, not caring about repercussions.
The clang of metal against china sounds as Roy fills his tea with three heaping teaspoons of sugar and stirs. “I wasn’t always this pleasant.”
I snort at his twisted attempt at humor.
He brings his tea to his lips, and takes a long, slow sip. “I’ve had trouble with vices in the past. Booze … pills … that sort of thing. And I could get real nasty when somethin’ set me off. Truth is, it didn’t take much to set me off. My wife and I went out on the town one night. Hadn’t been out in ages, since Delyla was born. Now, Nicole? She was a real looker. Turned heads wherever she went. I hated it and loved it at the same time.” He hesitates. “That night we ran into an old flame of hers. He was the one who got away, and he was back in town for good. I knew, from the second they laid eyes on each other, that I was in trouble. At least that’s what the whiskey told me.
“One thing led to another and fists started flying. I hit him … I don’t know how many times.” He cradles the hot mug in his hand, staring intently at it. “He wasn’t the only one I hit that night.”
I try to digest what Roy is admitting to, and I’m suddenly thankful that I’m already numb.
“So you ran to Alaska?”
“When I sobered up and saw what I’d done to Nicole’s face …” His head shake is almost indecipherable. “It’s how I remembered my mother’s face, after one of their fights. Swore I’d never be like him.”
“We do that, don’t we?” I murmur absently, thinking how many times I’ve promised myself the same.
“Nicole was always too good for me. She knew it, I knew it. Her family damn well knew it. So, I packed my bags and they made sure she didn’t stop me.”
No wonder Roy doesn’t like talking about his past. Who would ever want to admit that he hit his own wife?
“Have you talked to Nicole since?”
“Just long enough to tell her where to send the divorce papers. And she did. My guess is she remarried.” He nods slowly. “Good for her.”
I don’t know what I’d feel toward Roy right now if I weren’t drowning in my own misery.
Anger?
Disgust?
Pity?
Sympathy?
All the above?
Thirty-something years ago, in a drunken rage, Roy laid fists to his wife and then took off to Alaska.
What does he deserve?
Roy has spent three decades in a form of exile, where he couldn’t hurt anyone he loved ever again, where he wouldn’t let anyone near him ever again, unwilling to take even one painkiller for fear of what he’s capable of when he loses control.
What exactly does Roy Donovan deserve?
Maybe on another day, in another headspace, I would have an opinion.
To that, Roy says nothing.
The steady drizzle intensifies to heavy rain, the drops slapping the water and gravel around us, soaking the ground. Jonah would be glad to see this rain.
Jonah …
It was supposed to be an easy trip. In and out, back in a few hours, he promised.
The shrill ring of my phone makes me jump. My eyes snap to the screen and the number displayed turns my stomach. I will my shaky hand toward it but find myself frozen—stuck between needing an answer and wanting to cling to this last shred of hope.
Or delusion.
“I can’t.” The two words are almost inaudible as I struggle to breathe.
Roy hesitates for only a second before collecting my phone. He takes a deep breath and then answers.
I squeeze myself tight.
And I pray.
I pray.
I pray that Jonah will come back to me.
“Uh-huh … Uh-huh.”
Our front door creaks open. Both Muriel and Marie poke their heads out to listen. They must have heard the ring. Marie is clutching her stomach, Muriel is holding her breath.
“Yeah … Uh-huh …” Roy’s gaze darts to me and he swallows.
That isn’t good.
The news can’t be good.
I press my lips together in my struggle to control my sobs, as I fight to hold on to hope for the last possible second.
“Yeah … Okay … Thank you, sir.” Roy ends the call and sets my phone on the table. “They found his plane in a valley north of Palmer,” he confirms somberly. “He’s alive.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Two crashes in a year since I’ve met you. I’m beginning to think you’re bad luck, Barbie,” Jonah croaks from his hospital bed.
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