All the Winters After (18 page)

FORTY

The boat motor chugged, and the bay flurried along the hull's waterline. A pink-nosed sea otter floated on its back, entertaining the tourists as if it were a paid employee. Downshifting into a purr, the captain steered the boat around a jut of land and there, as miraculous as the fact that she had finally made her way across the water—a passageway through the rock! Then the cove opened up to share its treasured secret. The water glistened and sparkled like the inside of Elizabeth's jewelry box, but nothing dazzled on the shore, which was pure and lovely in its simplicity: docked boats, small homes on pilings, tree-covered mountains plunging behind. All the years Nadia had lived on the other side of the vast bay, looking across and seeing none of this, seeing only impassable mountains.

She and Kache followed the others up the studded plank, along one dock to another dock that connected the artists' galleries. On the walls hung watercolors and oils—paintings of fishing boats and skiffs, of the otters and the puffins. One artist painted with octopus ink. Octopus ink! There was so much in this bay, not only to live on, but also to create with. And this was just one tiny piece of the whole world. What if she had stayed in the canoe and paddled across the bay and ended up here, in this cove, surrounded by artists instead of living all alone? There were no Old Believers over here. She would have been far enough away that she needn't have worried about them, except when she took the boat into Caboose. Which she eventually would have needed to do.

No. The homestead had pulled her to it; she believed that. And while she didn't believe in the way her family worshipped, she believed in something unseen, some kind of force, working, providing, demanding, providing again. Or perhaps shaping, chipping, letting her rest. Not unlike one of the beautiful bowls or vases in the galleries. How else would she end up in a home in the middle of nowhere that needed her as much as she needed it, a home stocked with everything she required—except human companionship, of course.

And then, finally, Kache.

So yes, the house had everything she'd ever need, but still. There was this cove, and beyond it there lay a world, and it was worth seeing, worth trying to capture. With nothing but octopus ink, paper, and a brush, the artist had done exactly that—captured the sweet simple buildings, docks, and boats.

“You like her work?”

“Very much.”

“Octopus ink. Cool, huh? Would you like to take it home? Can you think of a place to hang it?”

Nadia had never hung anything on the walls, never moved a picture or a painting. She hadn't felt like she had a right to. But here was Kache, inviting her to change something.

She turned her head to him, raised her eyebrows in a question. He said, “Let's do it.”

The galleries ran on an honor system, with a jar left out in each one in case you saw a painting you wanted to buy and the artist wasn't around. Kache put a thick wad of folded bills in the jar and lifted the small painting off the wall. “You have good taste,” he said and laughed. “Or maybe it's just because we grew up looking at the same paintings and flipping through the same art books from my mom's shelves. Maybe it's not that it's good, but that it's similar to mine. Maybe we both have lousy taste.”

“Never. Because your mother had excellent taste. She said so herself.”

This too made him laugh. It was good to see him laughing so much. They continued along the dock and approached a young couple, kissing. They kept kissing as if they weren't blocking Kache and Nadia, like the kissing couple was alone on the dock, alone in the cove. Kache cleared his throat, and the man looked up.

“Oh, sorry, dude,” the man said. The woman peeked up over his shoulder but then hid her face in his chest. “We're on our honeymoon.”

“Hey, congratulations,” Kache said. He let Nadia go in front of him so they passed the couple single file.

“Maybe they're Old Believers,” he whispered.

“Why do you say this?”

“He has a beard. I mean, they look young, but I guess they're still much too old to be newlywed Old Believers. Don't you all get married when you hit puberty?”

Nadia lifted her shoulders. “Some do.”

“Some do, including you?”

“I thought we are getting away today.”

“We are. From work but not from each other. I was hoping to get to know each other away from that house and all its memories.”

“Yet you are asking about my own memories. It is for me much harder work than gardening and canning to talk of these things, and much less pleasant.”

“Nadia.” He stopped walking and turned to her. They were at the end of a dock, where they would need to turn back or take wooden stairs down to the beach. She waited for what seemed to be working its way out of him. But he turned away from her suddenly. “Let's go this way.”

On the beach, big rocks appeared almost black because of the scores of mussels that had attached themselves. A dark-headed little boy of about four, wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt, held up a mussel in victory and ran to drop it into his father's bucket.

The waves stayed small, gently licking the shore. Kache looked out across the water as he spoke. “Nadia, I want to know you. You've helped me, and I want to help you. Somehow.”

“Your home, it shelters me all these years. I would say that is helping me.”

“There's a lot more I can do, if you'd just talk to me.”

“The computer. The Internet. These help me learn about the world. And you haven't made it that I must leave. This too helps me.”

“When I went back to Austin, everything was smooth and easy. The air, the way people talk—
so good to see y'all
. The way you can walk at night without wearing a jacket and take your pick of where to eat and what live music you want to listen to. A part of me was tempted to just sink back into it.”

“Why did you not?”

“Two reasons. I couldn't stop missing the homestead. I finally get it—it's where I belong.”

“There is another reason? You say two.”

He looked into her eyes, and she felt heat prickling up her throat. “Yeah. I couldn't stop missing you.” He shoved his hands in both pockets. “And I don't even know your last name.”

Now she was the one who laughed. “Is that all it will take to stop these questionings? Oleska. My name is Nadia Oleska.” But what she thought was:
He missed me too
.

• • •

They stayed for dinner. The light changed and changed again to a gold-infused pink. The waitress lit small candles in old tin cans with holes punched in them so that white glowed in pointed patterns on the surfaces of the room and reflected in the windows. Kache ordered wine. They ate, they talked, they whispered, they laughed. They sipped the wine. Kache kept his gaze steady, deep into Nadia's eyes, and she let herself stay there with him. She didn't look away or restart the conversation; she looked back. The waitress approached their table but then left without saying anything or taking their empty dessert plates. The voices around them dimmed to a low melodic hum, and still they kept their eyes on each other. They had spent months together, working together, eating together, sidestepping each other, but they had never spent time like this, only looking at each other.

His hand rested on the table, and Nadia's rested not far from his. They joked about their hands—how his were blistered then calloused from hoes and pitchforks and axes and shovels, and the tips from getting reacquainted with guitar strings, and how her wrists and fingertips were sore from tapping the computer keys for such long intervals. He put his long, blistered, calloused hand over hers and slipped his thumb under her wristband for a moment. She didn't flinch or pull away.

She swallowed and said, “I do not think I'll need these anymore.”

“No?”

“I am growing accustomed to motion.”

Somehow he managed to pay the bill without letting go of her hand, and except for brief partings, such as while he helped her with her jacket and slipped on his own, their hands stayed together, fingers interlaced now—on the walk back to the boat, on the last late-night boat ride, rushing through the darkened sea below the purple velvet sky, to the truck, on the quiet ride home. By then, their hands pulsed with electric currents that traveled up her arm and down to her feet. When they released to get out of the truck, she slipped off the wristbands and stuck them in the glove compartment.

They kept holding hands while Leo came to greet them and Kache opened the door and she set down the painting on the kitchen table. The fire was ready to be lit, and he did so with a flick of the lighter. Moonlight and firelight filled the house as they had the first night he'd come crouching in. But that time, he and Nadia stood straight in the light, tethered together by this ongoing hand-holding, as if they might break loose from each other and this place, rambling through the stars like wayward kites if either was to let go for more than a moment. He touched her hair, her short bits of hair, touched her cheek and tilted her chin up toward him.

“Nadia Oleska,” he whispered.

He kissed her. Noses, lips, tongues, lips, tongues. And she was not scared. He held her so close to him. Her solitude, her resolute oneness, slipped off her with her clothes, and she stood before him, feeling seen for the first time. His large hands held her face, ran down her arms, and pressed against her back, pressed her even closer. His jeans against the skin on her legs, his sweater soft against her breasts and stomach. He pulled her with him to the futon. “Come here.”

She did not flounder. She tugged off his sweater while he kicked off his jeans, both of them laughing when one leg got stuck. Lying with him, his skin touching hers in all its hidden places, tender and wild. For the rest of that night, she was fearless, falling down and in, into this love, falling out of her mind and through her body, through every one of her pulsing veins, unfolding, unbounded, unafraid.

FORTY-ONE

Ever since Kache took Snag's truck those first days and she'd had to walk, she'd discovered that she liked it and had been walking every chance she got. Who knew? Caboose was not a town designed for pedestrians. It was a quirky place with a certain charm and a boastful view—a view that melted your heart on a minus-fifteen-degree day. But like most Alaskan towns, it had been born and grown without any plan whatsoever. Buildings went up, an eyesore business next to the house of the business owner without anyone complaining. There were no zoning laws and certainly no homeowners' associations telling you what color you could or could not paint your garage door. Snag had heard about those kinds of places down in the Lower 48. Houses built so close together that whenever your neighbor farted, you felt your own walls shake. She couldn't imagine. Although one of the downsides of the do-as-you-like Alaskan mind-set was that you might have to look at your neighbors' eight nonrunning vehicles and a plethora of parts spread over the lawn for six years and counting, Snag wouldn't trade that for someone telling her she needed to trim her hedges to the standard three feet, two inches.

All this walking—past junkyards and abundant summer gardens, along busy streets packed with motor homes, and up dirt roads in desperate need of grading—created a pleasant side effect, which for the first time in her life was simply a side effect and not a long-sought-after but elusive goal: Snag was beginning to lose weight. For the first time that she could remember, her pants were baggy. Her shirts were loose. Even her bras had room to spare. And people were beginning to notice, paying her compliments, telling her how great she looked when she dropped off their latest order of laundry detergent or vitamins.

She did not look
great
, exactly. But she did look better, and she was happy about that. She felt lighter physically, and she also felt lighter in her soul since she'd talked first to Gilly and then her mom. She was explaining this to Gilly on Gilly's front porch when she dropped off her Skin So Soft and Jafra peppermint foot balm.

“Eleanor,” Gilly said. She had been calling Snag Eleanor. Gilly agreed with Lettie that it suited her better. “I'm hiking the Clammit Dymit trail tomorrow. Want to join me?”

“That's a steep one. I don't know if I'm ready for that.”

“We can take it slow. My friend Jackie had to cancel because she's going in for a root canal, and I don't want to go alone. Come with me.”

Snag hadn't been on a hike in several decades. She used to go with Bets and Glenn and the boys, and with Lettie and A. R. and Glenn when she was a kid. She'd been walking the roads up and down with her red Radio Flyer wagon loaded with orders, and though she'd been winded and sweaty at first, lately, it had been easier and easier. Why not give an honest to goodness hike a try? When she said she would, Gilly high-fived her. “I'll pick you up at nine. Bring a sandwich, but nothing too smelly. There've been a lot of bear sightings lately.”

“What would be classified as a not-too-smelly sandwich?”

“I don't know. Chicken instead of tuna, I suppose. Turkey would be okay. No fish. No liverwurst.”

“You are such a cheechako, Gilly. How long've you lived here? You think a bear isn't going to smell chicken or turkey?”

“But they might be willing to overlook it, maybe wait to see what the next hiker packed.”

“If a bear is hungry enough, it will smell toothpaste and break into a locked car in order to eat it. You know
that
.”

“Okay, okay. Maybe just eat a big breakfast and we'll get dinner afterward?”

“Just how long is this hike?”

“Long enough.”

Snag didn't sleep well that night. At about midnight, she realized she didn't have any respectable hiking boots except for Lettie's old ones, and those were at least a size too small. Snag had lost weight, but would that affect a person's shoe size? At about two in the morning, she realized Kache hadn't come home, so she worried about him. She thought about calling his cell phone, but she resisted butting in. The odds were that he was sleeping at the house and not in a ditch somewhere, and she really didn't want to wake him up, but damn it, she wished he would call.

At around four, she had visions of Gilly running up the trail with Snag hoisting herself up behind her, reaching for birch trunks and clutching at salmonberry bushes before sliding back to the bottom of the hill. Why, oh why had she said she would go on a stupid hike?

At eight, she was exhausted, hungry, wondering why Kache hadn't called and hoping he didn't do something stupid like get himself wrapped up in bed with the Old Believer hermit woman. No, Kache was too levelheaded to do something so mindless. But wait. He was a man, and the Old Believer was a woman, and a pretty and smart one, according to Lettie. Snag called and left a message and told him she was hiking the Clammit Dymit trail. She ate breakfast, stuck her feet into Lettie's ancient hiking boots, packed some water and a canister of mace the size of a large can of hair spray to ward off the bears, and tried to look cheerful when she heard Gilly's honk.