The Simple Wild: A Novel(10)

“Right.” I sigh. “So, should I go to Alaska?”

“I don’t know. Should you?”

I roll my eyes at him. “Why can’t you be a normal parent and tell me what to do for once?”

Simon grins, in that way that tells me he’s secretly delighted that I referred to him as a parent. Even though he’s always said that he sees me as his daughter, I think he would have been happy to have children of his own, had my mother been willing. “Let me ask you this: What was your first thought when Agnes told you your father has cancer?”

“That he’s going to die.”

“And how did that thought make you feel?”

“Afraid.” I see where Simon’s going with this. “Afraid that I’ll miss my chance to meet him.” Because no matter how many times I’ve lain in bed, wondering why my father didn’t love me enough, the little girl inside me still desperately wants him to.

“Then I think you should go to Alaska. Ask the questions you need to ask, and get to know Wren. Not for him, but for you. So you don’t find yourself ruled by deep regrets in the future. Besides . . .” He bumps shoulders with me. “I don’t see any other pressing matters in your life at the moment.”

“Funny how that worked out, eh?” I murmur, thinking of the chatty custodian on the subway earlier today. “It must be fate.”

Simon gives me a flat look, and I laugh. He doesn’t believe in fate. He doesn’t even believe in astrology. He thinks people who follow their horoscopes have deeply repressed issues.

I sigh. “It’s not like he lives in the nice part of Alaska.” Not that I remember any part of Alaska from my brief time there—nice or otherwise. But Mom has used the words “barren wasteland” enough to turn me off the place. Though she tends to be dramatic. Plus, she’s a city lover. She can’t handle the Muskokas for more than a night, and not without dousing herself in mosquito repellent every fifteen minutes while reminding everyone incessantly about the risk of West Nile.

“I’ll think about it.” I mentally start reorganizing my schedule. And groan. If I leave on Sunday, I’ll miss next week’s hair appointment. Maybe I can beg Fausto to squeeze me in Saturday morning. Highly unlikely. He’s normally booked four weeks in advance. Thankfully I have a standing nail appointment on Saturday afternoons and I had my eyelashes done last weekend. “I just paid for ten more hot yoga sessions. And what about squash? Mom would need to find a replacement partner.”

“All things you managed to work around when you went to Cancún last year.”

“Yeah . . . I guess,” I admit reluctantly. “But Alaska is a million hours away.”

“Only half a million,” Simon quips.

“Will you at least give me a script for Ambi—”

“No.”

I sigh with exaggeration. “What fun is having a stepdad with a prescription pad, then?” My phone starts ringing from its resting spot on the hood of Simon’s car. “Crap, that’s Diana. She’s in a line somewhere, mentally stabbing me.” As if on cue, a black Nissan Maxima coasts up to the curb in front of the house. “And that’s my Uber.” I look down at my missing heel and my soiled dress. “And I need to change.”

Simon eases himself off the step and heads toward the waiting garbage can. “I suppose I can manage this last one for you. Just this once. After all, you have had quite the day.”

He charges forward in a funny shuffle that sends Tim and Sid scurrying into the hedge before struggling to wheel the can into place. For all that makes Simon endearing, he is neither coordinated nor strong. Mom has tried and failed to get him to a gym to add some muscle to his spindly arms.

A thought strikes me. “What are you going to do about garbage day if I go to Alaska?”

“Well, of course your mother will take care of it.” He waits a beat before turning to meet my doubtful smirk, and mutters in that dry British way he has, “That would be a bloody cold day in hell, now wouldn’t it?”





Chapter 3




“You have to go!” Diana yells over the throbbing bass, pausing long enough to flash a pearly white grin at the bartender as he sets our drink order on the bar. “It’s beautiful up there.”

“You’ve never been to Alaska!”

“Well yeah, but I’ve seen Into the Wild. All that wilderness and the mountains . . . Just don’t eat the berries.” She makes a dramatic show of placing a ten-dollar tip down so that the bartender notices. A trick for priority service the next round.

Meanwhile, the bartender’s eyes are busy dragging over the plunging neckline of my cobalt-blue dress, the first thing I yanked out of my closet in my rush to change and get out the door. He’s cute but short and brawny, with a shaved head and a full sleeve of ink—not my tall and lean, clean-cut, inkless type—and, besides, I’m not in the mood to flirt in exchange for free shots.

I humor him with a tight smile and then turn my attention back to Diana. “It’s not like that on the western side of Alaska.”

“Cheers.” We down our shots in unison. “What’s it like?”

The sickly sweet concoction makes me grimace slightly. “Flat.”

“What do you mean? Flat, like the Prairies?”