“Thank God. All my shoes are getting ruined.” I found an old scrub brush under the sink today and spent an hour gently brushing the mud from my wedge heels. I’m afraid it was in vain, though.
Footfalls stomp up the six wooden steps outside then, and a moment later the door flies open.
My stomach tightens automatically as I turn, preparing myself to greet one of two men, both of whom seem to cause me anxiety, for entirely different reasons.
Instead I find a teenaged girl facing me, long, glossy hair the color of espresso pulled into a messy, off-kilter ponytail, her inky black eyes sparkling with curiosity. “Calla! You’re here!” She kicks off her muddy boots.
“I am,” I say warily. She seems to know who I am, and yet I have no idea who she is.
“I was gonna come over last night but my mom said you were tired, and then I stopped by on my way to the farm and Jonah said you were still in town.”
Her mom . . . My gaze flickers to Agnes and then to the dining table, where the four chairs tricked me into not noticing five settings, and then past, to the wall of pictures, to the child’s face that graces more of them than I first realized, and it suddenly dawns on me. “This is your daughter?” Agnes has a child? Did she mention her last night and I missed it, too wrapped up in my own worries?
Agnes smiles. “This is Mabel. She’s a fireball of energy, just to warn you now.”
Mabel’s face splits into a wide grin that rivals her mother’s. Her face is not as round as Agnes’s, I note. But she certainly has the same deeply set, hooded eyes, only larger.
“So, you’re from Toronto, right? That’s so cool! I want to visit Toronto so bad one day. George has been there and he said it’s amazing! I’ve creeped, like, your whole Instagram account. You should be a model. You’re so pretty!”
“Toronto’s great,” I agree, taking a moment to process all that just flew from Mabel’s mouth. She’s definitely not shy, and she talks a mile a minute, in an oddly husky voice for a girl, and with an inflection that’s slightly different from her mother’s.
But most importantly, how does this girl from Western Alaska know my Instagram handle?
“There was a link at the bottom of your email,” Agnes explains, likely able to read the confusion on my face. “I was curious, so I clicked on it and found your website. I swear, Mabel’s scoured every last corner of it.”
“Ah. Right.” My automated signature. I completely forgot about that. Now it makes sense.
“So, you took a cab to the river today?” Mabel asks.
“Uh . . . yeah.” It takes a moment to connect the dots. I posted a few pictures from earlier, and decided to ignore Diana’s captioning advice and talk about my day in Bangor, about the friendly cabbie whose name isn’t really Michael, with the six kids and one on the way, and how he uses the river to see them. It just seemed more interesting and way more honest.
I posted those maybe an hour ago, but I guess even all the way up here in the middle of nowhere, teenagers are linked to their phones.
“Mabel, why don’t you go wash up for dinner and then pull out that chair from my room.” Agnes begins carving the chicken with expert strokes of her knife, setting the freshly cut meat onto a small white platter.
Mabel wanders over and leans in to inspect the chicken as her mother just did. She’s taller than Agnes by at least three inches, and dressed in the same type of department-store-brand budget jeans. “So did I pick a good one?”
Agnes tugs at the left leg. The meat begins to separate, and clear juices dribble over the golden skin. “You did. Though I would have liked a bit more fat on its thighs.”
“He was the slowest one of them! I barely had to run to catch him!”
“You caught our dinner?” I blurt out.
Mabel grins at me. “Barry let me bring one home this week, for helping out on the farm.”
“Is that the farm down the road? I think I saw it when I went for a run today.”
“The Whittamores,” Agnes confirms. “It’s pretty famous. No one’s been as successful at farming around here as Barry and Dora. They grew over fifty thousand pounds of vegetables last year. And who knows how many eggs in that underground chicken coop of theirs. We fly their produce to a lot of the villages.”
“I was surprised to see it,” I admit. “My mom’s big into growing things and she wasn’t ever able to do it.”
“The season’s longer and warmer now than it was twenty-four years ago. But, still, it’s a lot of work to grow anything around here. Like the Whittamores do, anyway,” Agnes murmurs. “Barry’s out there thawing and tilling and prepping the soil for two years before he can plant anything in the ground.”
“Yeah, he puts up these huge tunnels so we can start seeding things in February. There’s no wind or snow, and it’s way warmer in there.”
Agnes chuckles. “That’s where I find her most days after school, in the winter. That or in their root cellar.”
“Oh. That’s right!” Mabel exclaims, as if she’s just remembered something important. “Barry said he saw you this morning.