Forever Wild (Wild 2.50)

We talked for over an hour, until my mother came in, tapping her watch impatiently.

Delyla thanked me and asked if she could call me sometime in the future.

She called the next week.

The week after that, I emailed her a few candid shots of Roy from our wedding. She thanked me profusely.

And the next week, she emailed a letter for Roy that she asked me to print out and give to him. I left it on his kitchen table. He grumbled and snarled for three days, dubbing me Muriel Junior. And then he showed up at our house out of the blue, asking me to teach him how to use one of those goddamn computers. So I set him up with an account and left him alone to type out his thoughts. It took him three hours to finish that first email and hit Send. Delyla confided in me that it was only seven sentences long and riddled with apologies.

After that, Roy started showing up at our house every Monday like clockwork, with handwritten drafts of what he wants to say to his daughter. I leave him be in the office. He’s sometimes in there for hours, cursing at the keyboard, his two-fingered typing painfully slow.

In April, I set up a video call for the two of them. He barely said two words. He seemed dumbstruck. It didn’t matter because Delyla likes to talk. For a while, I was worried he’d complain about his ear falling off, but he didn’t. He’s improved his video-calling skills since then, asking questions and answering them with complete sentences. I’ve even caught him with that rare smile, which doesn’t seem to be quite so rare anymore, especially when Gavin and Lauren are present.

I’ve found a kinship with Delyla, either because of our connection to Roy or my own estrangement with my father. We’ve forged a friendship of our own over the long winter months, sometimes spending hours on FaceTime, laughing and chatting about nothing and everything.

When she suggested coming up to Alaska, I didn’t hesitate to offer her a place to stay. It took me three days to work up the nerve to tell Roy that his daughter was coming here to meet him face-to-face. He was annoyed at first, but he didn’t damn me to hell for meddling.

I’d say the curmudgeon is definitely coming around.

I check my phone. “Jonah should be back from flying Marie to the villages.” She came to our house in a huff the other day, begging to tag along on this trip to Bangor. She said she needed to get away “from it all.” I’m not sure what “it all” is, but I’m guessing it has to do with a certain sled dog breeder that Toby said she’s feuding with.

I study the simple solemn cross, still remembering the day it was placed. An ache stirs in my chest. “Why does it feel like we’re leaving you behind?” Like the last ties to Western Alaska are being cut. With Agnes and Mabel in Trapper’s Crossing, there’s no real reason to come this way anymore. “I guess that’s not really possible, though, is it? You’re still everywhere to me.” When I hear the buzz of a plane overhead, I like to think it’s Wren Fletcher, doing what he loves most, flying high over the mountains, over the land he loved so deeply. He just doesn’t need to land anymore.

“Hey, Calla!” Jonah’s deep voice carries from the edge of the cemetery. I didn’t hear him pull up. “Sorry, but are you about done there? ’Cause there’s some weather comin’ in that I’d like to get ahead of. Aggie’s all packed.”

I see him leaning against George’s borrowed truck, his USAF ball cap pulled low on his brow, a soft, black cotton T-shirt clinging to his powerful frame. He’ll wait for me out there. He never intrudes on my time at my dad’s grave.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back here again.” I bite my lip as my stomach erupts in a wild rush of butterflies. “But can I let you in on a little secret? One I haven’t even told Jonah yet?”

I lean in.

And I whisper the words that are about to make my husband very happy.

Catch up with Calla, Jonah, and the rest of

Trapper’s Crossing, Alaska in

Dr. Marie Lehr’s story.

* * *

Title and release date to come.

The Player Next Door - Sneak Peek

Chapter One

2007

* * *

I survived Day One without puking or crying.

Do they make T-shirts with that slogan? They must. I can’t be the only person to head back to school after summer vacation with a broken heart. Though, I’d be lying if I wore that T-shirt. I did cry today; I just didn’t do it in public. I ducked into a restroom stall as the first fat tear rolled down my cheek and then spent my entire lunch period with my butt planted on a toilet seat, struggling to muffle my sobs as giggling girls streamed in and out, oblivious.

And all it took was one look from Shane Beckett to cause that reaction. Or rather, the lack of a look. A passing glance as we crossed paths in the hallway between third and fourth period, when his beautiful whiskey-colored eyes touched mine before flickering away, as if the momentary connection was accidental.

As if the seventeen-year-old, six-foot star quarterback for the Polson Falls Panthers and I hadn’t spent the summer in a semipermanent lip-lock.