And the moment I take in Calla’s face, I realize my mistake.
“Anything else I should know about that hasn’t ‘come up’? You know, seeing as I’m your wife.” There’s a distinctive annoyed edge to her tone as she levels Jonah with a steely look.
Maybe I’m just overly sensitive, but I hear the unspoken words that go along with that question. Is there anything else Marie knows that I don’t?
And here I was, trying my best not to stoke any territorial fires.
“Ready to go?” Jonah slams Archie’s back door shut, sparing a second to shoot me a wide-eyed “thanks a lot” stare.
I offer Calla an awkward smile and then dart to my side of the plane to climb into my seat, silently cursing my best friend. As much as I love him, he has many flaws.
Calla’s irritation is splayed across her features as Jonah closes the distance. I can’t hear their conversation, but I can imagine it. Both of them are headstrong, unwilling to back down in an argument. It can be entertaining, watching them banter back and forth like opposing players on a volleyball team. Most of the time, Jonah will say something highly inappropriate and obnoxious, and it either defuses the situation or detonates a nuclear bomb.
But their fights can also be tense. I only hope my name isn’t in the mix. So far, neither have glanced this way, which is a good sign.
The corners of Calla’s mouth twitch before curling upward. She shakes her head at him. She may still be annoyed, but he’s melting her anger quickly, enough that he must feel comfortable leaving. He checks his watch and then pulls her into his arms.
I turn away as they kiss, letting my gaze settle on the frozen lake, the tree line, and the mountain range that I know is in the distance, obscured by the clouds.
And I breathe.
Will I ever have what they have?
I can’t picture it anymore.
It’s a few minutes before Jonah hauls his big body into his seat and sets to flipping switches on the cockpit panel. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” His mood hasn’t soured, so I assume all is well in the world of Calla and Jonah.
I fit the headset over my ears. “For the record, you’re an idiot.”
“It never came up!” he exclaims in defense, but then adds in a mutter, “Yeah, I know.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It’s almost seven p.m. when Keenan hollers, “I see a head lamp!”
Every volunteer—eighteen of us in total, with three veterinarians besides myself, two vet techs, two people handling communications, one person to care for return dogs, a race judge, and eight volunteers handling everything from recording musher times to cooking meals—rush for his vantage spot where we can watch the mushers coast in.
The Rohn checkpoint is just under two hundred miles into the race, but the stretch they need to navigate to get here is the highest on the thousand-mile trail, the elevation over three thousand feet in the Alaska range. And once they pass that, they face the Dalzell Gorge, which, depending on the weather, can be either a delightful excursion or a white-knuckled ordeal. More than one musher has arrived at this stop with broken sleds and injuries—everything from bloodied foreheads to fractured ankles.
Fortunately, the weather has cooperated this year, and the snow bridgeways the trail crew built over the creek have held.
“Who do you think it is?” Keenan, the big-bellied man who has been running the checkpoint for the past two decades, asks no one in particular, squinting past the spruce trees and into the murky distance. It’ll be pitch-black soon; the gift of a full moon is useless behind the thick ceiling of clouds.
Each sled has a GPS tracker pinned to its front that tells fans following along exactly where the racers are and how fast they’re going, but out here, where there’s only a small generator to keep the communications team collecting and sharing race data, information is sparse and spotty. Besides, it’s more exciting to find out in person.
“My money’s on Hatchett,” Marty declares. “He was the first to Rohn last year.”
“Skip has been training hard,” Roger counters. “I’ll bet it’s him. In fact, I’m betting he wins this whole thing.”
I school my expression. I’ve worked with all these volunteers before, so I know them well. Roger’s a helpful and kind man, his only fault being his taste in mushers.
For my sake, I hope he’s wrong because Terry, the head checkpoint veterinarian, assigned me to the first team in.
“Look! There’s another one!” someone else hollers, pointing to the light trailing not far behind.
I huddle in my parka and watch the teams approach through the thicket of trees, mentally preparing myself for the steady stream of dogs arriving between now and tomorrow morning. The more competitive racers will be in first and gone quickly, while the teams racing simply to say they finished the Iditarod will trickle in through the night and rest for five or six hours. But short of any issues, they’ll all roll out of here by tomorrow night.