The Simple Wild: A Novel(55)

“That is our website.” Agnes chuckles and then rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to convince Wren we should have one. He argued that we didn’t need to pay someone thousands of dollars because everyone in Alaska already knows us. Anyway, I finally got him to agree and we hired this designer guy from Toledo. He took our money, set up the website address, and then never did anything else. I chased him for a few months, until my emails started bouncing back.” She shrugs. “We haven’t gotten around to finding someone new yet.”

“You don’t need to pay someone. You could do it yourself.”

She snorts. “I finally figured out how to build a simple staff schedule on Excel. I know what my limits are.”

“What about that girl out front. Sharon?”

“Sharon’s good with dealing with customers. That’s her strength. Same with Maxine. She’s not here today, but you’ll meet her another day.”

“Well . . . what about Jonah, then?”

“Jonah?” She chuckles. “That guy refuses to answer his phone half the time. No . . . Jonah’s good at flying planes and telling everyone what to do, and fixing our problems. He wants nothing to do with computers.”

“Don’t planes use computers?” I mutter wryly. That explains the wristwatch, though. “Well, maybe I could do it for you guys while I’m here,” I offer, without thinking. “I mean, I don’t know anything about planes or charter companies, but I’m sure I could figure it out.” Most of what I do for the Calla & Dee site has been self-taught.

“Ah, it’s not that important. We’ll get to it, eventually. You’re only here for a week. You should spend it getting to know your dad.”

I guess.

If he’s around long enough.

Agnes rings out the dish sponge and sets it out to dry. “Did Mabel come by this morning?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, just wondering. I told her to give you space, but she doesn’t listen too well sometimes. There’s not a lot new and exciting around Bangor.” She smiles. “You are something new and exciting. And she can be overwhelming sometimes.”

Mention of Mabel reminds me why I came to Alaska Wild this morning in the first place. I hesitate to bring it up and risk making our conversation awkward. “I’m sorry about last night.”

She waves it away, much like my father did. “We can see how that confusion might have happened and how it would have been shocking for you.”

I watch Agnes’s profile for a moment as she quietly wipes spilled sugar and coffee from the countertop. Is she truly this understanding? “My dad told me about Mabel’s father. Derek, right?”

“Right.” A wistful smile lifts her cheeks. “I still remember the first day he showed up here from Oregon. He was the loud, goofy new pilot and I fell for him right away. We got married a year later.” She wanders over to sit opposite me at the table, her coffee cup gripped in her small hands. “When we got the call that he hadn’t shown up, I just knew. It took them two days to find his plane because of the fog. I was sitting on that couch over there when they told us that they’d found it.” She nods toward the baby-blue one and a ball of emotion swells in my throat.

“That’s . . . horrible.”

Pain flashes through her eyes and then, just as quickly, it’s gone again. “It was. But I always knew it was a possibility. It is with any of these guys, the conditions they fly in. We’ve lost a good few friends over the years. I can’t tell you how many times Jonah has stressed me out. Anyway . . . I was thankful that I had Mabel on the way. She’s a piece of him that I got to keep.”

“Does she ask about him a lot?” As much as I used to ask my mom about my father when I was young?

“Not a lot. Sometimes.” Agnes leans back in her chair, her eyes roving the tile ceiling. “She reminds me of Derek so much. She’s a ball of energy just like he was. She even has that raspy voice of his.”

“It’s funny how that can happen, isn’t it?”

I feel Agnes’s dark gaze land on me as I draw a finger over the wood-grain swirls in the tabletop, with hands that my mother swears are identical to my father’s.

“It was Derek’s death that made Wren decide to come visit you in Toronto. Derek had been pushing him to go and then, after he died, Wren felt he owed it to him.”

Didn’t he feel that he owed it to me?

I push that bitter thought aside. “Because he blamed himself for Derek dying. He told me.”

Agnes makes a disapproving sound. “No matter what way you slice it, Wren has a way of twisting the accident to take the blame. Either Derek wasn’t experienced enough to find his way through those mountains, which means Wren made a bad judgment call, or there was no avoiding it, and it should have been Wren flying into that ridge. It happens enough through those passes when the weather’s dicey. Pilots mistake one river for the next and they don’t turn when they’re supposed to, or turn too early. Either way, Derek should still be here. According to Wren, anyway. No one else ever saw it that way but him.” She hesitates, studying me. “He never told me that he canceled his trip to go see you until it was too late. If I’d known what he was planning, I would have insisted that he go. I feel partially responsible for what happened between you two. I’m sorry for that.”