I smile, silently thanking him for shifting off the topic of this house. “No. Jonah said he saw a fox running along the tree line, down by the hangar, but I’ve been too busy inside cleaning to do much of anything else.” I haven’t even pulled my camera out. Diana has been harassing me to share something online, but I haven’t wrapped my head around this disaster to decide how I want to frame it for spectators.
“Don’t get too close for the sake of a picture,” Mom warns. “Even a moose can turn on you.”
“I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about with Calla,” Simon says dryly.
We chatter for another five minutes before Mom signals an end to the conversation. “Well, I guess we should let you get back to it.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna tackle these valances next.” I stretch my arms over my head, wincing with the ache in my lower back and shoulders. I long for a long, hot soak in the bathtub.
“Ugh. Valances. I’ve never understood the point.”
“Right?”
“Say hi to Jonah for us.”
“I will. And figure out when you’re coming!”
We end the call as Jonah’s voice carries in.
“… refuses to go back there if he’s there. Bandit seems okay with him so far, at least.” The front door creaks open.
“I’ll ask around and see if anyone is interested,” comes a familiar female voice.
“Somethin’ tells me there aren’t many people looking for a useless old goat who hates men. Hey, Calla, Marie’s here!” Jonah calls out, as the tall, willowy woman steps into our house.
I peel off my rubber gloves and toss them aside before turning to meet Marie’s teal-blue eyes. It’s been two months since we last saw her, when she flew to Bangor to provide veterinarian services to the villagers.
And now she’s here, living only fifteen minutes away.
“Hi, Calla,” she offers, her hands fidgeting around a house plant and a gift bag in the shape of a liquor bottle. “I thought I’d stop by to see how you guys were doing.”
I drag my fingers back through my hair, smoothing my wayward topknot. “It’s good to see you.” And it genuinely is good to see a familiar face while we’re in the depths of house-purging hell, even if Marie and I have exchanged little more than polite conversation and I’m one hundred percent positive she’s in love with my boyfriend.
Marie tucks the gift bag under one arm, freeing a hand to brush a strand of long, golden-blonde hair off her face. She tucks it behind her ear. “So …” She edges around the mountain of trash bags. “How’s it going?”
“Well … I’m wearing a dead woman’s clothes while I go through her belongings. I just found a hemorrhoid cushion in the back of the hallway closet. I’ve broken every fingernail, and I’m seriously considering opening a bottle of wine at”—I glance at my watch—“noon.”
Marie presses her lips together to hide her smile, her gaze pausing on the bleach stains that I earned yesterday while on my hand and knees scrubbing the main-floor bath. “You look great. But you always do.”
“Thanks, but I look like a vagabond,” I counter, borrowing a favorite word of Simon’s.
Marie’s appearance is more polished than her usually casual, fresh-faced style. She’s still in jeans, but the sweater showing through her opened winter coat is pink and hugs her slender body. A light dusting of shadow coats her eyelids, a stroke of brown mascara makes her already thick fringe of lashes longer, and the beachy waves in her hair were likely created by an iron.
I wonder if this is how she looks when she’s not the crusader, flying around Western Alaska, or if she put extra effort in, coming here today?
Marie laughs and her focus drifts over the space. “There’s a lot of stuff here.”
“They were married for fifty years. Do you have any idea what this is?” I ask, tapping a round plastic appliance I found in the pantry closet.
Her nose crinkles in thought. “I think that’s a dehydrator. You know, to dehydrate fruits and vegetables and …” Her words drift as she takes in my grimace. “Some people like it.”
I swiftly carry it over to the donate pile.
“Anything else to burn today?” Jonah asks, shifting the empty cardboard box on the floor with his boot.
“That stuff.” I cast a wayward hand at the pile in the corner.
“You want me to burn our living room furniture?” Jonah looks at me, amusement in his tone.
“It’s not ours. It’s Phil’s. We’re getting all new stuff. And why not? It’s mostly wood.”
“How about we wait until we have something to replace it with, so we’re not sittin’ on the floor. And then I’ll take it all to the dump. Someone else can use it.”
“Someone’s going to pull that couch out of the dump and bring it home?”
“One man’s trash … Anything else for the fire before I put it out?”
“Those?” I nod toward the wall of animal trophies.
Jonah glares at me the same way he did when I tossed an old, tattered book into the burn box. “We’re not burning those.”
“Fine. Then, just me,” I grumble, reaching back to rub the painful knots in my neck, wincing with the ache. “End my suffering.” I’m desperate to have an empty, clean house to start with.
Jonah saunters over and drops his rough hands on my shoulders to kneads them with skilled fingers.
I let out a deep groan of appreciation.
“I take it that helps?” He dips his head to press a kiss against my jawline.
Marie averts her gaze, staring intently at a cheap, framed poster print of Denali National Park that I haven’t yet taken down. Is it to give us privacy? Or is it to avoid the inevitable sting that comes with watching someone you care about being intimate with someone else? Jonah may be oblivious, but I’m not. I’m also not naive. You can’t just turn off feelings for someone because they love someone else, as much as most people would like to.
What if our roles were reversed? What if Jonah and I were “just friends” and I had to stand idly by and watch him fall in love with another woman?
A sharp prick of sympathy stabs my chest at that thought.
“To be continued later,” I whisper, giving him a knowing look as I slip my hands over his, squeezing them until they stall.
Jonah steals one last kiss from my neck before stepping away. “You got big plans for today, Marie?”
She refocuses her attention on him. “I didn’t, but I just got called for an emergency as I was pulling in here. I have to head back to take care of a sick cat. Otherwise I would have offered to help you guys.”
“Run. Save yourself while you can!” I moan.
Jonah playfully swats my backside. “Got time for a quick tour?”
“A really quick one?”
“That works. I need to get this hellion out of here before she burns the entire place down.” He cups the back of my neck, giving it another rub. “What do you think? Drive into Wasilla to check out some new furniture?”
“A couch?” I ask, excitement stirring in my sore limbs.
He smirks. “Sure.”