The Simple Wild: A Novel(27)

“Found it.” Agnes holds out a slip of paper between stubby fingers. Her nails are naked of any polish and chewed to the quick.

“Great. Thanks. Where can I do laundry? My clothes are wet, thanks to Jonah.” I don’t bother hiding the bitterness in my voice.

She huffs softly and then reaches for the basket. “Jonah lost his father to cancer a few years back and he’s having a hard time dealing with Wren’s news. I think maybe you got the brunt of it today.”

“So, he does know.”

She nods. “Wren didn’t want to tell him yet, but Jonah’s too aware. He weaseled it out of me earlier today. Anyway, I’m sorry if he was a bit difficult.”

Is that what crawled up Jonah’s butt and put him in such a foul mood? If it is, it’s still far from acceptable, but I don’t have to dig too deep to find sympathy for him.

But shouldn’t he also feel at least a shred of sympathy for me, then?

“The machines are off the kitchen. Come on, I’ll show you.” She slows, her dark eyes widening as she takes in the myriad of hair product, brushes, and pretty cosmetics cases that ate up half the track bag and now cover the top of the chest of drawers. “Do you use all of that every day?”

“Pretty much . . . yeah.” There’s double that sitting in my room at home; I only brought the staples with me.

She shakes her head, murmuring, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

A car door slams somewhere outside. Agnes turns toward it, pausing to listen. A few moments later, heavy footfalls land on the wooden steps leading up to the front door.

She takes a deep, sharp breath and for the first time since hearing her voice in the receiver, I sense nervousness radiating from her. Still, she smiles. “Your dad’s home.”





Chapter 7




I hang back, watching Agnes’s slight form as she walks calmly and casually down the hall, laundry basket balanced on her right hip.

Nothing about this is calm or casual.

Flutters thrash in my stomach, an odd combustion of anticipation and dread. Will Wren Fletcher be the version I imagined as a small child growing up, his picture firmly grasped between my small hands? A quiet but kind man who would pick me up and toss me in the air after a long day of flying planes?

Or will I be facing the version he became later, after he broke my heart? The real version. The one who has never made an effort to know me.

“So? How did it go?” Agnes leans against the wall that leads into the kitchen, her back to me. As if this is another typical day.

“They’ve got their supplies,” comes the deep male response, with a hint of rasp.

An odd sense of déjà vu rises deep inside me. I’ve heard that voice say those words before. Many years ago, through a receiver, carried along thousands of kilometers of wire, occasionally tinged by static and the hint of an echo. Probably when I asked him what he’d done that day.

“And the elk?”

He responds with a faint chuckle and it sends shivers down my spine, because that sound is familiar, too. “They finally chased them off the sandbar and to the east. Took ’em long enough, though. I almost had to turn around.”

Silence lingers for one . . . two . . . three beats.

And then . . . “So?”

One word with such heavy meaning.

“She’s in her room, getting settled. Jonah was a pain in the ass.”

Another chuckle. “When isn’t he?”

If my dad is angry with Agnes for bringing me to Alaska, he’s hiding it well.

“Well . . . I’ll let you go and say hello.” Agnes disappears into the kitchen.

I hold my breath as my heart races, listening to the floor creak and the footfalls of approaching boots.

And then suddenly I find myself face-to-face with my father.

He’s so much older now than he was in that tattered picture still tucked beneath my sweaters at home, and yet it’s like he stepped out of the frame and into real life. His wavy hair still hangs a touch too long, like something from the 1970s, but the brown has been mostly replaced by gray. Where his skin used to be taut and smooth, age has carved deep lines and crevices. He’s wearing the same outfit—jeans, hiking boots, and a layer of checkered flannel.

And he looks . . . healthy. Only now do I realize that I’d been preparing myself for a male version of Mrs. Hagler—brittle and hunched over, with an ashen complexion and a chest-rattling cough. But to look at him, you’d never know he has lung cancer.

Ten feet lingers between us and neither of us seems to be ready to make a move to close it.

“Hi . . .” I falter. I haven’t called him “Dad”—to him—since I was fourteen years old. Suddenly it feels awkward. I swallow my discomfort. “Hi.”

“Hello, Calla.” His chest rises and falls with a deep breath. “Gosh, you’re all grown up now, aren’t you?”

Since the last time you saw me, twenty-four years ago? Yeah, I should hope so.

But I don’t feel like a twenty-six-year-old woman right now. Right now, I feel like an angry and hurt fourteen-year-old girl, brimming with insecurity and doubt, acknowledging that this man—the one not moving a muscle to close this last bit of -distance—made a conscious decision to not be in my life.