You were in bright pink, tearing down the road.”
At least he didn’t say I was naked. “That was me. Getting eaten alive by mosquitoes,” I add, giving my arm a scratch where an itch suddenly springs.
Mabel’s sweet face scrunches up. “The mosquitoes and no-see-ums will get you good.”
“The no-see-ums?”
“Yeah. They’re bad this year. Make sure you wear jeans and a hoodie when you go out, and you’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.” When my hoodie gets here from Anchorage, that is.
“How was it at the farm today, anyway?” Agnes asks.
“Same ol’. Kinda boring.”
“Remember how lucky you are. There are plenty of people around here who’d collect eggs and vegetables in exchange for fresh produce and the occasional chicken.”
“I’ll bet they’d rather do it for cash,” Mabel mutters.
“When you’re older, I’m sure he’ll pay you with real money. Unless you keep showing up whenever you feel like it. In that case, he might not hire you at all,” Agnes scolds, in that gentle way of hers.
How old is Mabel exactly, that this farmer doesn’t feel comfortable paying her in cash?
Mabel waves her mother’s worries off with an annoyed frown. “Barry doesn’t care what time I come in. And besides, the hens lay twice as many eggs when I’m around. I’m his chicken whisperer.” She gives me a toothy grin and then stretches to her tiptoes to pull out a bag of chips from the cupboard.
Agnes promptly plucks the bag from her grasp and tosses it back into the cupboard. “We’re eating dinner soon, Chicken Whisperer. Go on and get washed up.”
With a groan, Mabel retreats down the hall, leaving me staring after her.
“She does have a lot of energy.”
“It’s something, trying to keep her busy enough to burn it all off, especially during the summer break. I’m so thankful to Barry for giving her something to do.” Agnes pauses and then says more quietly, “She doesn’t know about Wren yet. I’m going to tell her soon. I just . . . He asked me to wait.”
He also asked her not to tell me or Jonah, but she didn’t stick to that request, I note.
Two more sets of boots clomp up the six wooden steps of the porch then, these ones heavier, and moving more slowly.
I peer over and find unreadable glacier-blue eyes watching me intently from the other side of the window. I can’t help but glare back at him, even as my chest tightens with anxiety.
A single knock sounds, followed immediately by the creak of the door opening.
“Doesn’t smell like muktuk,” my dad says, bending over to unlace his boots. His voice instantly stirs something familiar inside me.
“Thought we’d ease Calla into Alaska before I start feeding her whale blubber.”
I struggle to keep the disgust off my face, earning Agnes’s chuckle.
“Did she catch a fat one this time?”
“Fat and slow, apparently. Not as slow as you two, though. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” Agnes smiles, even as she softly reprimands him for being late.
“You know how it is.” He saunters in farther to study the platter of chicken, my eyes on him the whole time as my hand moves mechanically, crushing the white potato flesh as I’m absorbed in a surreal fog.
I’m actually here, in Alaska. With my father. I’m a spectator, watching his daily life as it happens, surrounded by his people, inhaling the faint waft of cigarette smoke that trails him.
“Mabel home yet?” he asks.
“Washing up. She’ll be out in a minute.” A bit lower, but loud enough for me to catch, “As soon as she hears Jonah’s voice.”