“I know! Oh my God, Aaron hasn’t shut up about Alaska since I brought it up. I regret ever mentioning it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” Diana agrees, and I can hear her smile. “Our own personal pilot and our own airstrip! Jonah will fly me wherever I want to go, right?”

I laugh, picturing the flat look on Jonah’s face when he finds out he gets to play chauffeur to my high-spirited friend. If he thought I didn’t fit into Alaska, just wait.

“Calla! You ready?” Jonah’s deep voice booms from my father’s kitchen.

“Almost!” I holler back, tracing the faint pink edge of my mother’s hand-painted calla lilies with a fingertip. Agnes will be effectively erasing them with a coat of warm white next week, in preparation for the renter. She sold the house to Barry on condition that he rent the house for the next few years. While I don’t know if that stipulation would ever hold up in court, a handshake and neighborly goodwill seems to be enough for Agnes.

There’s more than enough land around it to cultivate. She even found Barry his renter—a new pilot working for Aro—and agreed to do the painting and cleaning up. Jonah and I offered to help, but she smiled and shook her head, and said we have enough on our plates, that this is something she needs to do on her own.

We’ve spent the last month sorting, cleaning, and packing up Jonah’s house. Most of the furniture is staying behind. It’s not worth the cost of flying to Trapper’s Crossing. All that’s left to take are clothes and personal effects, and a few sentimental things—namely my father’s impressive collection of Julia Roberts movies. Some of it will remain here, boxed up, to come when George flies Archie, Jonah’s second plane, to Trapper’s Crossing in a few weeks.

“Listen, Di, I’ve gotta go, but I’ll text you when we’re all settled. It’ll be a few days before we have internet and cable and all that set up.”

“Okay, but don’t wait too long to post something.”

“I’m on hiatus, remember?”

“I know! But everyone wants to know when your hot Alaskan pilot proposes.”

I roll my eyes. Diana has created an entire section on our website dedicated to my new life in Alaska, lovingly coined “The Beauty and the Yeti.” It has become fodder for the romantics among our followers. While neither of us are as active as we once were with Calla & Dee—absorbed by moves and our future careers—we made a tearful pact the night before I left that we’d make the effort to keep our site going in one form or another.

For me, that has become chronicling my new life in Alaska.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me!” she exclaims, as if she can see through the phone. “I’ll bet he proposes by the end of the year.”

“Oh my God. Don’t start with that.” I laugh, even as a rash of nervous butterflies erupts in my stomach. It’s not that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. It has, more than once. But I’ve promptly pushed it out, telling myself that it’s far too soon. “We have enough on our plate with this house and the company.”

“Calla!” Jonah hollers.

“I’ve gotta go. The yeti is getting impatient.”

“’Kay. Enjoy your first day in your log cabin in the wilderness. You’re crazy! Love you! Bye!”

She hangs up before I get a chance to respond.

Yes, maybe I am crazy for agreeing to this.

But I’m also crazy in love with Jonah.

I slide open the empty dresser drawers in one last perfunctory check to make sure we haven’t missed something important of my father’s, and then I make my way down the hall, stealing a glance at the vacant living room, my focus instinctively darting to the corner where my father’s hospital bed once sat. The old, shabby furniture is gone and the scent of fresh paint permeates the air.

It’s no longer Wren Fletcher’s home, I remind myself.

I walk into the kitchen to the sound of tearing. Jonah is ever so slowly peeling a strip of the atrocious mallard paper off the wall. “Figured I’d help Aggie out.”

“Did that feel good?”

He studies the letter-sized piece he managed to pry off. “Yeah, actually. Fuck, yeah.”

He holds it up for me, the nipples that he and Max, another Wild pilot, drew on each duck as a joke visible. “What do you think about framing this and puttin’ it up on the wall at our place?”

“It’s a great idea.” I grin as warmth blooms in my chest. “And I think you need to stop giving Agnes grief about driving my dad’s truck and come out of the closet, you big nostalgic baby.”

He smirks, tucking the scrap between the pages of a hardcover book to protect it.

A rattling metal pulls my attention to the far corner of the kitchen where Bandit sits in a small pet carrier, his plump body twisting against the gated door, his dexterous paws stretching and fumbling with the latch in a frantic attempt to break free.

“He doesn’t look thrilled,” I note.

“He will be when he sees his new digs.” Phil arranged for a neighbor to take the last of his livestock—including the goat, thank God—which frees up the pen for our raccoon. And of course, we have no choice but to take him, according to Jonah. If we leave him here, he’ll get into Barry’s crops and Barry will shoot him.

I shake my head. “Remember when you said he wasn’t a pet?”

Jonah closes the distance. “Remember when you said I was an asshole?”

“Jury’s still out on that one,” I tease.

He leans over and captures my lips with a soft kiss. “Almost forgot this.” He pats the coffeemaker on the counter. “You want to carry that or him?”

“I’ll take the one that won’t claw my leg, thanks.” My hand smooths over the plastic, reminiscing. It’s a cheap appliance that was an integral part of my father’s simple daily routine. I made the worst pot of coffee known to mankind one morning, using this machine. Dad drank the entire cup without complaint.

“All right, all right … relax.” Jonah retrieves a chattering Bandit.

Both of our gazes roll over my father’s kitchen one last time, each caught in a moment’s reflection of our own memories here.

Jonah looks to me. “Ready?”

To leave what I know of Alaska, for something entirely unfamiliar and new?

I take a deep breath. “Yes.”

With a silent, firm-lipped smile, Jonah leads me out.

“I thought he was supposed to be gone,” I whisper. My eyes don’t know where to land first.

The front door was unlocked when we arrived. The long, narrow hallway is still lined with coats and shoes and scarves. The worn couch and side tables still fill the living room. Plates and glasses still sit in the dish drainer. The forlorn moose and pair of deer still stare morosely at me from their predicaments on the wall.

Jonah’s boots leave snowy tracks on the plank floor as he strolls over to the kitchen counter, to where the pile of keys sits, next to a piece of paper. His brow furrows as he scans the handwritten note. “Phil’s gone. Left on a flight this morning,” he confirms, dropping the page on the counter with a heavy hand. A grim smile touches his lips. “He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d leave everything.”