Chapter Nine
Three days.
It had been three days since Nicole had left Link, and in that time, her cabin had stayed quiet. There were no fresh wolf tracks or boot prints in the snow. There was no howl in the woods, and no new dead game on her porch. She crossed her arms as she stood in the middle of her front yard, staring at the tall trunks of the evergreens and wishing he would appear from behind one.
She’d imagined him a hundred times. Every leaf flutter was the tail of her wolf sprinting through the trees. Every sway of tough winter grass peeking through the snow was her wolf’s fur.
Nicole had made a mistake and pushed him too hard, too fast and now, she’d lost him.
When she’d driven to his cabin, he wasn’t home, and more disturbing than anything, when she’d opened the door, the fire was out in the stove and the inside of his home was almost as cold as outside. He was gone.
In a panic, she’d driven into town, but he wasn’t there either, and no one she talked to had seen him.
She’d never felt so alone.
Full of regret, she made her way onto the front porch and opened the door to Buck’s cabin, but a soft sound halted her steps. She angled her face to the road and waited as the sound grew louder. It was the loud whine of a snow machine engine. With a frown, she stood on the top porch stair as a mixture of dread and hope unfurled inside her.
Link stood up on locked legs as he maneuvered the snow machine up the thick packed road. He pulled to a stop near her truck and hit the snow without hesitation.
“Oh, my gosh,” she murmured as she bolted off the stairs and ran for him.
Link caught her and lifted her off the ground, crushing her to him so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“I missed you, I missed you,” she chanted. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You were right.” Link eased back enough for her to pull his sunglasses off.
His eyes were darker, more gray than silver today. Squeezing her eyes closed, she kissed him and reveled in the feel of his lips moving against hers. It had been so scary thinking she would never have this connection with him again. She laid little kisses on his cheeks, then rested her chin on his shoulder and hugged him as tightly as she could.
“I’m going to fight for us, Nicole, but you have to know it might not work. You have to come to terms with that, okay? I can’t do this thinking if I fail, you’ll be destroyed.”
“You won’t fail,” she said.
“I’m being serious.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Just keep doing whatever it is you have been. You make this easier by just being around me. The out-of-control feeling is more manageable when we’re together.”
She butterfly kicked her feet at the potent happiness that filled her. Jerking her chin toward the lumber-filled sled attached to the back of his snow machine, she asked, “Did you decide to help me with Buck’s cabin?”
“Yes, on four conditions.”
“Name them.”
“You stop calling it Buck’s cabin. It’s yours now, and I’m not fixing it up for you to sell. I’m fixing it up for you.”
She inhaled deeply at the thought of making this place a home instead of a temporary stop in her journey to discover where she wanted to be. “Okay,” she murmured, rubbing her gloves over the three-day designer scruff on his cheeks. “And what are the other conditions?”
“You help. This place will mean more if you have a hand in rebuilding it.”
“Done, and?”
“You don’t pay me.”
“No deal, Mr. Nibbles.”
“I’m not taking your money.”
“Do you know what the cost of living here is compared to Mission? I was just an administrative assistant for one of my stepdad’s companies, and I paid off this cabin and the land and still have enough in savings to live out here for half a decade before I have to get a job in town. I’m paying you. Now, what you do with that money is up to you. For example, you could buy us some cows, like you said Elyse runs. Or you could buy trapping supplies, or you can start an official construction business in Galena, or—”
Link’s lips collided with hers, and she giggled and gave in, melting against him.
“Stubborn,” he accused against her mouth as he walked them up the porch stairs.
“Wait, what was the last condition?”
Link set her down gently on the hollow floorboards of her entryway and pulled something out of his pocket. “The last condition is that you watch this.”
He handed her a clear case with a white DVD inside. In black marker, the words Buck Lund had been scribbled across the top.
“Did you bring a computer?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” she said in a barely audible squeak. She cleared her throat delicately and asked, “What is this?”
Link didn’t answer. Instead, he kissed her forehead, looked around her cabin once, then left, closing the door gently behind him, leaving her alone holding the mysterious treasure he’d brought her.
A minute later, as she dug her computer out of the satchel she stored it in, the generator roared to life, and she abandoned the half-charged device for the DVD player and television Buck had left sitting up against the wall in the living room.
She put on the DVD and stood back, waiting. On the small screen, the camera shook, and a woman appeared, sitting down with a log wall behind her. She had big blue eyes, leathered, aged skin, and an easy smile. “This is for Buck’s daughter?” she asked someone behind the camera.
“Yeah,” Link murmured from off camera. “Her name’s Nicole.”
The woman’s smile got bigger. “I know. He talked about her a lot. Too much sometimes. He wouldn’t shut up about her.”
“Can you say your name and how you knew Buck into the camera?” Link urged.
“Okay.” The woman looked into the camera. “I’m Desdemona Lancaster, and I was friends with Buck Lund. Her daddy.”
“Perfect. And what did he used to say about Nicole?”
“That she was marked up just like him. He was really proud his birthmark had gone to his daughter. He had pictures he showed everyone. One was of her when she lived here. She was maybe two, in this little red jumper, and Buck was holding her tight while she grinned and pulled at his beard. He said that one was his favorite because you could see both their marks.”
Nicole stood stunned and slid her hand over her mouth. She sat heavily onto the couch and leaned forward to see and hear the interview better.
“And the other?” Link asked.
“The other picture was of her at high school graduation. She grew up pretty, but she’d covered the mark with make-up. Buck said his ex-wife had sent it to him. That woman wouldn’t let him be a part of Nicole’s life, but from time to time, she sent pictures and notes and little drawings Nicole did in school. He lived for those letters.”
“Did he ever re-marry?”
The woman’s face fell a little. “Not in the traditional sense, but he had a woman for many years. She was Yupik, like him.”
“Any children between them?”
Desdemona shook her head. “They were happy just the two of them. Affectionate. A good team. Always laughing when they came into town, even when they’d gone gray. She was heartbroken when he was killed.”
“If you could tell Nicole anything about her dad, what would it be?” Link asked softly.
“I would tell her he was a good man. He took care of everyone. Knew everyone’s name. He was never too busy to have a chat with someone who needed it. And he loved her.” Desdemona’s gaze arched from behind the camera to straight into the lens. “He loved you.”
As Nicole hugged a couch pillow to her middle, the next interview came on—an older man sitting in a rocking chair on a porch. He told a story about Buck going on a hunting trip with him, and them both being stuck out in the cold for a night and having to sleep on uncomfortable spruce branches in snow caves they’d dug. He told of Buck’s lov
e for macaroni and cheese, and she laughed as he described his habit of carrying the pasta in every pack he traveled with, and how he and some of their other friends nicknamed her dad Mac. She loved macaroni and cheese, too. It was the only cheap, boxed food Mom had ever allowed her to eat when she was growing up.
The interviews came one after the other with Link always asking revealing questions, always guiding them to keep talking, to share good memories. Buck had liked cats, hated trapping wolverines, lost a pinky finger on a saw, walked with a limp after he fell off a ladder in his late twenties, loved witty one-liners, adored Alaska in the winter, built his cabin from the ground up, worked at a gas station in Galena in the off-season, never met a stranger, and he died loving two people. His woman, Clotilda Black, and Nicole.
“This is the last interview,” Link said from behind her. How long he’d been standing there, Nicole hadn’t a clue. Quiet wolf.
“Come here,” she said.
Link sat on the couch next to her, draped his arm around her waist, and pulled her against his side. The beating of his heart was steady under her cheek as a pretty woman with silver hair sat down in front of a log house. She smoothed her pants and clasped her hands in her lap before she looked up at the camera.
“Can you say your name and how you knew Buck?” Link asked.
The woman didn’t look at Link but stared directly into the camera, never glancing away. “I’m Clotilda Black, and I was with Buck for fifteen years until the day he died. I guess a part of me is with him still.”
“What would you like to tell Nicole, if you could talk to her now?”
The woman’s frail shoulders lifted and fell in a steadying sigh. “That even though I don’t know you and have never spoken to you, you feel like my daughter. Buck talked about you often. Coveted pictures and trinkets your mother would send. Sometimes, as strange as it sounds, you felt like ours. Like you were just away for school.” Clotilda blinked hard and cleared her throat. “You bought his cabin. I told him that when I visited his grave. He would’ve been so happy to have you back here where you belong.”
Where you belong. Nicole bit her trembling bottom lip and snuggled closer to Link.
“I’m sure you have questions about how things got so messed up, and I guess the simplest explanation is that sometimes people just don’t fit together. Sometimes people bring out the worst in each other. You are part of this place, but your mother never was. She didn’t want to be. Her place was in a fancy house with a man who could give her warm winters and a comfortable life. You got stretched between two worlds, and you had to land somewhere. Alaska lost you for a while.” Clotilda rubbed her knuckle under her eye and smiled. “I saw you. In Galena, I saw you. I drove there as soon as I found out you’d come back, but I wasn’t brave enough to talk to you. You had that beautiful mark, and you look so much like him, but I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t strong enough yet. I followed you into the clothing store, and you smiled at me. Buck smiled at me.” Clotilda swallowed hard. “Look in the closet, Nicole. There is a box on the top shelf he left for you, just in case your mom ever slipped up and told you where you came from, and just in case you came back to Alaska looking for him. And when you’re ready, you come see me in Kaltag, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I moved in with my sister. Your man knows where. He loves you very much to go to this trouble, so don’t take him for granted. No day is promised us with the ones we love, and I’m sorry—so sorry—that you missed the chance to meet your father. But you should know that he knew you. And he loved you very much. You were never forgotten.” Clotilda looked away from the camera for the first time at Link. She nodded once, and a moment later, the screen went black.
Nicole’s shoulders shook as she tried and failed to keep her emotions inside. Link didn’t balk or try to soothe her. He stroked her hair and let her cry against his chest until his sweater was damp with her tears.
And when she finished, he kissed her gently, then stood and disappeared into the room she’d been avoiding since the day she moved into this place—Dad’s room. He wasn’t Buck anymore. He wasn’t some stranger she had no connection with. Link had brought her firsthand accounts of her father’s life that had shaped his image in her mind and given her the knowledge that she was loved. It wasn’t fair that she’d missed his vibrant life, but at least she had this. She had a piece of her dad, and that was more than she thought she would ever have.
Link returned with a small cardboard box with her name scribbled across the top. She sank onto her knees on the wood floor and carefully pulled the top open. It was full of pictures. The one of her in the red jumpsuit hugging him, her high school photo, and so many more. Baby pictures, and her as a toddler asleep on his chest. Her in a carrier on his back while he tramped through the snow with a grin on his face and a trap hanging from a chain in his hand. There was one of him and Mom. Her dad was grinning at the camera, so obviously happy, but Mom looked lost and haunted. That one, she folded in half so she could just see Dad’s joy. There were stacks of artwork she’d done as a child with dates and ages in the corner. A macaroni rainbow had scribbled across the bottom, Look Clotilda! Macaroni! Told you she was my kid! in the same scrawl that was on top of the box. She laughed thickly and set it down, then picked up a stack of letters. There were no addresses, but they all had her full name written across them, as if Dad had been planning on mailing them the second he found out where she lived.
She read the letters in order by date. They began formal and heavy handed, but by the third, he wasn’t talking about the weather anymore. He was talking to her like she was right there beside him. He’d detailed his life at each moment in time. What he had trapped, fur prices, meeting Clotilda, setting up his trap line. He told jokes he had heard and told her about friends and funerals. He sketched animals he saw, and sometimes, instead of signing the letters, he would paint Alaskan scenery with drippy black ink at the bottom. And in the last one, Dad told her what had happened between him and Mom. He told her how Mom had withered here. How he didn’t hate her for leaving because he’d always known it was coming. How she cried at nights, and it had broken his heart piece by piece. How he’d wanted to follow, but she forbade him to. She’d told him if she was ever going to love again and have a normal life, she had to forget him. He’d written that Mom had kept their address a secret from him in case he ever forgot the rules, but if he ever found out where Nicole lived, he was going to send these letters and hope they reached her well.
When she closed the lid to the box, emotionally drained but feeling like the empty well she’d carried in her center had finally been filled, she turned to Link with a ready smile for the man who had given her so much.
“Thank you for doing that. I thought you’d left, but you were tracking down Dad’s friends to interview instead, weren’t you?”
Link sat behind her on the floor and pulled her back tight against his chest. “Yeah. You got me fighting again. I wanted to give you something, too.”
“I don’t want to leave anymore. I don’t want to go back to Mission.”
Link bit the lobe of her ear gently and whispered, “Then don’t leave. Stay here.”
“Well, I have to stay, naturally. You gave me conditions, remember?”
“Yeah, but I want to hear it. I want it to be your choice.”
Nicole twisted in his arms and studied those blazing silver eyes she’d grown to adore. She smiled at how nervous he looked. He didn’t need to be. Not with her.
“You got me fighting too, Link. I’m staying.”
Chapter Ten
Alaska had been kicking up changes in Nicole over the weeks that she’d lived here, and with the decision to stay and give this life her all, she felt like a different person altogether. She looked down at her hands. They weren’t blistered or bleeding anymore. They were calloused and strong. She lifted her gaze to the mirror in the bathroom, and a small smile transformed her face. Proud brown eyes that came from her Yupik lineage, rosy cheeks, and shiny tresses of pit
ch-colored hair piled high up on her head in a messy bun. She wore mascara, lip moisturizer, and shimmery eye shadow for Link, but she’d stopped covering up the color on her cheek. No longer was she repulsed by it when she looked at her reflection. Instead, she was proud of it.
She only wore the green scarf now to protect her from the chill.
She’d taped the picture of her and Dad grinning at each other with their matching marks onto the side of the mirror to remind her to look for beauty in the little moments. And this life was full of them.
Nicole rinsed her hands under the small trickle of spring water that came through the faucet, then sauntered into the living room and began pulling on layers. Link had taught her so much over the past week of working on this house together, but he had yet to spend an entire night with her, and today, when he came to fix the porch with her, she was going to ask him. No, she didn’t mind splitting time between his cabin and hers, but the two miles that had seemed so minimal before now seemed like a yawning canyon. She spent most evenings with her attention on the woods outside, hoping for a glance of her wolf.
The cabin was undergoing a facelift. Link had decided to expand the porch to wrap around the house and had extended the eaves of the roof to protect it from the weather. Together, they’d repaired the dilapidated chimney, put in a new main beam to replace the last rotted one, stained the exposed rafters inside as well as over the porch, sanded down the water-damaged floorboards and refinished them, and yesterday, Link had brought in an enormous picture window, his signature for each house he rehabilitated. He’d put it in the front of the house, right next to the door, so she had a full and undiluted view of the winter woods outside. He’d even hired an electrician to patch her in to a main electrical line since they were close enough to Galena and she could afford the bill.
She hopped down the splintered porch stairs that would be replaced today and grabbed her new chainsaw from under the ledge of the porch. As she pulled the cord and let the little motor rev and warm up, she was filled with a sudden pride in her abilities out here. Every day she grew more confident in ways she’d never imagined before.