Forever Wild(42)

I barely notice the pointed lens anymore as Lacey discreetly captures moment after moment, stepping around us almost as if she’s not there. She showed me some of her winning shots and there’s no doubting her talent. I’m already dying to see the pictures and the day isn’t over yet.

The last six days have been a mad flurry of shopping, scavenging, collecting, crafting, and cleaning. We stripped the tackiest of the signs and pictures from the Ale House’s walls, tucking them away in boxes for the time being. Surprisingly, my mom wanted to leave the moose and deer heads. They add to the rustic charm, she insisted.

Now they quietly loom over an astonishing transformation that even caught Muriel momentarily speechless when she walked in this morning, to take in the forests’ worth of greenery and the lanterns we begged, borrowed, and bought to create ambiance. Toby and Jonah hauled tables over from the community center and lined them up into one long, banquet-style table adorned with rented copper and crystal dishes and ornate candelabras, and every available blush and burgundy flower within a hundred miles of Anchorage. Archie smelled like a florist’s cellar when Jonah arrived yesterday with the haul.

“Knock … knock,” Simon calls out from behind the cracked bedroom door. “I’ve been sent to tell you that they’re waiting, and that it’s rather cold, so”—he pokes his head in—“if you haven’t decided against marrying …” His words drift, his blue eyes roaming over my dress and face. “Yes, it looks like you’re ready to go.” An odd, sad smile touches his lips.

“I guess fashionably late doesn’t really work when you make people stand beside a frozen lake in Alaska.” I reach for the mink stole, my nerves fluttering in my stomach.

With a squeal, Diana shimmies off the bed. “Here, hold these.” She thrusts the bouquets into Simon’s hands, freeing hers up to slide on the ivory fur stole I gifted her.

Simon leans in to inhale the fragrant roses and eucalyptus leaves while he waits silently, a distinguished gentleman in his staple three-piece gray herringbone tweed suit, another procurement from home, thanks to Diana.

“Thank you.” She scoops them from his grip, leaning in to plant a kiss on his cheek before sashaying out. “I’ll be downstairs!”

“One more trip to the powder room for me,” my mom announces, sweeping past Simon with a pat against his arm.

“Would you mind giving us a moment, please?” he asks Lacey.

With a smile, the willowy blonde ducks out, grabbing her beanie from the dresser on the way.

“Any last grand words of wisdom?”

Simon sucks in a deep breath. “The powder room is code. Your mother is pulling the car around back as we speak. There’s still time to make a run for it.”

I burst out with laughter. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Well then …” He fusses with the caramel-colored buttons on his vest for a moment. “I know I’m not your cool and wild, bush plane–flying dad, but if you don’t mind”—he clears his throat, and when he speaks again, that British lilt is gruff—“I’d like to take you down there to get married now.”

Tears that I’ve managed to keep at bay stream freely now. I miss my father with every fiber of my being. I wish I could hear his soft chuckle again. I wish I could watch him climb out of his beloved planes. I wish he were here to see Jonah and me get married. I know it was what he would have wanted.

And if he were alive? He’d be walking me down the aisle.

He’d be on my right side, while Simon walked on my left. “You’re right. You’re not my cool, plane-flying dad.” I reach up to adjust his tie, an exact match to the cranberry of my mother’s dress. “You’re my wise and patient and dependable dad who will never play second fiddle to anyone. Not even Wren Fletcher.”

He swallows, his own eyes misting. “I suppose that’s pretty cool, too.”

I giggle, dabbing at my tears with my fingertips. “Yeah, it is.”

With another deep breath to gather his composure, he offers me his elbow. “Are we going to do this?”

I smile. “We are.”





Michael begins strumming his guitar as soon as Diana rounds the corner of the house. It’s followed closely by Ann’s melodic twang.

“Oh, they’re good,” Simon murmurs, holding me tight as we pick our way down the cleared path, lined with evergreen-filled urns. “Really good.”

“Yeah. Thank God,” I whisper back, another box to check off, another relief. They were away this past Sunday, so I couldn’t even go to church with Muriel to listen to them perform.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard this song. It’s lovely.”

“It is.” Twinges of nostalgia stir in my heart. I first heard it while watching Notting Hill with my father. We must have watched that movie—and every Julia Roberts movie in his collection—a half dozen times in those last weeks.

My stomach flips with nervous excitement as we clear the crop of birch trees. A huddled group of beaming familiar faces greets us, and I try to take them all in, each in turn. Everyone who was invited is here. Bobbie and George got the message on their phone while in town for supplies and flew back early from vacation at their remote cabin. Andrea and Chris entrusted the lodge’s New Year’s Eve crowd to their manager. Two of the fire boss crew that Jonah fought fires with this summer flew home from their contract jobs in California just for this.