The Simple Wild (Wild 1)

“When your dad’s not working, this is where you’ll find him. Here, or out there.” She casts a hand toward a screened-in porch on the other side of a window that’s larger than the one in the kitchen but still much too small for this size of room.

Aside from a few folded newspapers sitting in a heap on a wooden coffee table, it doesn’t look like the room is used much. As ever, Alaska Wild is clearly his priority.

But there, sitting on a side table on the far end of the gold-black-and-green woven couch, is the infamous checkers board. I wonder if it’s the same one from oh so long ago.

I feel Agnes’s eyes on me. “It’s . . . cozy,” I offer.

“You’re as bad a liar as Wren.” She smiles. “I keep tellin’ him the place needs freshening up. I’ve even left a few of those home renovation shows playin’ on the television for him,” she waves a hand at the small flat-screen that sits in the corner, opposite the woodstove and across from a tan-colored La-Z-Boy, “but he keeps saying he’s not around enough to bother.” Her voice drifts, her gaze settled on that chair, her seemingly permanent smile slipping.

Why doesn’t she do it herself, then? Won’t he allow her?

“He’ll be home more in the coming weeks, though, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

There’s no point dancing around the topic of my dad’s cancer diagnosis anymore. “How bad is it, Agnes?”

She shakes her head. “That slip of paper was full of medical babble that I couldn’t understand.”

“But he told you what the doctors said, right?”

“Who, Wren?” She snorts softly. “He was sick for weeks with a terrible chest cold before I finally convinced him to go see someone. The doctor decided to run an X-ray and that’s how they found the tumor. He didn’t tell anyone, though. He just took his antibiotics, and I assumed he was getting better. Then the bugger flew to Anchorage for a secret biopsy and more testing.” I can hear the frustration in her voice. “All I’ve been able to get out of him is that he has lung cancer and the doctors have suggested chemo and radiation.”

“It sounds like they have a plan, then.” I’d spent a bit of time on the Canadian Cancer Society website while waiting for my connecting flights today, reading up on types and stages and treatment options for lung cancer. It was a lot to sift through, and difficult to understand. All I managed to take away is that treatment is crucial and survival rates are among the lowest of all cancers.

“If I could see that paperwork, maybe I could Google—”

“I don’t know where it is. He took it when I confronted him. Made me promise not to tell anyone.”

A promise she obviously broke by calling me.

My own frustration begins to build. “When do the doctors want to start it all?”

“Next week. He has to go to the cancer clinic in Anchorage for it; that’s the closest one. Jonah said he’d fly him back and forth, so he can be comfortable at home on the off days.”

It’s a good thing Jonah’s much more willing to fly to Anchorage for my father than for me, at least.

My gaze drifts over the inhospitable living room. “Why don’t you go ahead and redecorate, then, while he’s gone?” Some paint color, new artwork, a few lamps. Anything would be an improvement at this point.

Amusement flashes in her eyes now. “Just come over to Wren’s house and tear down that hideous wallpaper in the kitchen?”

Her words catch me off guard. “You mean you don’t live here?”

“Me? No. I live in the little white house across the road. We passed it on the way in.”

“Oh . . .” The puzzle pieces that I’d begun putting together—an understanding of my father’s life—suddenly don’t fit. “So you’re neighbors?”

“For thirteen years now. Your dad owns the house. I rent it from him.”

Neighbors. Coworkers. Friends.

And “it’s complicated.”

I trail her down the narrow hall, digesting this new information. “I still think you should do it. My mom painted Simon’s bookcases one weekend while he was out of town for a convention.” Simon had paid a small fortune for the golden oak custom units before he met my mother. She despises golden oak.

I remember watching the blood drain from his face when he walked through the door to see the new and improved soft white ones.