With a last shove, Will secured the expensive black tackle boxes the Henricks twins would use to fly-fish off the shores of the Big Su. This was the brothers’ fifth trip to Alaska, and they always used Will as their pilot of choice. There were others—Ike Markham, Vince Forrest—but none flew the risky areas.
Only Will.
And Savanna Stowe wanted him to play Daddy.
He climbed from the helicopter’s cargo area and motioned to his two passengers gazing out of the windows of the tiny airstrip’s service station. Airtime.
The men, carrying shoulder packs, headed through the door, into the bright afternoon sun. As Will gave instructions, he settled them onboard.
A thousand feet up, the Talkeetna Mountains bumped along the western horizon and beyond them Denali, Alaska’s highest rock, speared the sky like a chunk of white chocolate.
As always sky time was like touching heaven. For a moment Will imagined Dennis beside him with that crazy, slanted grin, eyes full of mischief—the way Christopher’s had been when he’d said “awesometistic.”
Will’s heart thumped in his chest. God have mercy, what had he been thinking?
He couldn’t let the boy go.
Christopher was the one piece, the final piece linking Will to his brother.
Your flesh and blood, she’d said.
My family, he thought. And suddenly his eyes stung, and a knot wedged in his throat. Since Aileen died he hadn’t wanted family. Not in this lifetime, not in this world. And now here was the child of his brother, orphaned…
The bird swayed a little around a gust of air. Damn woman was right. He had to take the kid. Had to. Somehow.
Pulse rapid with the resolution, he wondered what she would say when he hunted her up later today. Likely she’d be pleased as a bear in a berry bush in August while his gut felt like he’d left it back on the helo pad.
Elke’s grandmother Georgia Martin lived in a green clapboard house. Savanna had seen pictures of the place two years ago when the woman sent Elke a Christmas card straight out of the past.
“I haven’t seen her in eleven years,” Elke had said at the time as they studied the photographs of the small home amongst eighty-foot evergreens. “My mom hadn’t wanted me to do what I did.”
To clinically conceive a child. One from Dennis’s eight-year younger brother and a man Elke had known growing up in Alaska. A man her mother, Rose, had labeled a diabolical daredevil who would one day end up killing himself or, worse, Dennis.
Georgia had told Rose to leave matters alone; the situation was between consenting adults.
The advice had fallen on deaf ears, and so to stop his mother-in-law’s haranguing and save his brother’s honor, Dennis had moved Elke to Washington state and eventually to Honduras.
Nevertheless, the pictures arriving out of the blue opened a door Elke had stepped through.
Now, with Christopher at her side, Savanna walked down a graveled road bordered by homes from an era that had fought World War Two, and which spruces, birch and willows all but sheltered from sight.
Last night’s dusting of snow crunched beneath their footfalls. “Do you see it, Chris?” she asked the boy tapping his mittened fingertips together in time with each step. After Will left their breakfast table, she had taken Christopher to Larson’s General to buy him a silver parka, along with a red polar fleece hat, scarf and mittens. Initially, she’d wanted wool, until he’d complained over its texture and weight. “Can you see a green house with a black roof?”
Through the trees she peered up trails winding to front doors of homes of various shapes and sizes and ambiances, like the two log cabins with moose racks hanging from porch roofs. Pickups and SUVs were parked on partially melted pathways.
“No. No.” Christopher tapped his fingertips faster, his agitation about Georgia increasing. He disliked meeting new people, hated detours from his routine. “This could be the wrong street,” he commented anxiously, his toe-rocking walk angling his body slightly forward.
“When I phoned this morning, Great-Nana said she lived on Mule Deer Road.”
“Yeah, Mule Deer Road. We’re meeting Great-Nana on Mule Deer Road.” He looked straight ahead. “She lives in a green house on Mule Deer Road.”
“Keep searching for it, pal.”
Elke’s grandmother had cried when she heard her great-grandson was three short blocks away. Savanna had insisted they walk the seven-minute distance rather than have Georgia pick them up at the lodge. Christopher needed the brisk air and exercise, and Savanna needed to scope out Starlight.
The town called to her. In some ways it reminded her of the Honduran villages, the camaraderie of its citizens. She wondered where Will lived, if his home resembled those on Mule Deer Road with its cozy down-home aspect that confirmed the door was always open, the coffee on the back burner.
Starlight citizens, she suspected, knew each other’s lives as well as their own. The way Mindy the dancing waitress and Shane the salmon-fishing desk clerk knew Will.
And what would Georgia say about Mr. Will Rubens? Georgia, who had known Will as a child younger than Christopher?
“There it is.” He pointed to a tiny olive house set amidst sturdy-trunked spruce and tall, elegant paper-barked birch at the road’s end.
“Ready?” she asked, watching smoke curl from the brick chimney. Around them, lazy snowflakes spiraled from a slate sky and muffled their voices.
Christopher’s fingertips tapped fast as pistons. “Uh-uh.”
She touched his cheek and his eyes drew to hers. “Christopher. This is your great-nana’s house. She is Mommy’s grandmother.”
“Mommy’s not here. She’ll never be here.”
Oh, God. He’s recalling the terrible news.
Fingers tapping, tapping. “Mom’s in heaven with Dad.”
Savanna’s chest agonized. “Yes, darlin’.”
“I don’t want to go to heaven because then I can’t go back home.”
She blinked hard and stopped to zip up the coat he’d undone as they walked. His gaze fastened on the house. “Is Great-Nana’s house a different home? Does she like maps?”
“Her home will be different because we haven’t seen it yet. And you’ll have to ask her if she likes maps.” He’d spent hours on the plane studying the state’s cities, towns, lakes, rivers, mountains. She gave him a quick hug. “Remember, be polite.”
“Okay.”
An ache ringed her heart. Elke should be here introducing her child to her family’s oldest relative.
They started up the narrow trail through the trees, past the rusted white pickup and a dented wheelbarrow potted with last summer’s annuals, to the front door.
The house had been given a coat of paint in the past year. White shutters bracketed the single front window. Before Savanna could knock on the door, it opened and a tiny woman in whitewashed jeans and a pink sweatshirt smiled at them. Silver curls sprang wildly around her head as her clear-sky eyes beamed happiness.
“Well, now,” she exclaimed. “If this just don’t beat all.”
“Georgia Martin?” Savanna asked.
“And you’re Savanna Stowe.” She spotted Christopher flapping his hands and her expression filled with instant