It’s been more than five hours.

My vacant stare is searching the dark when the porch door creaks open and Roy slips in, wearing the same outfit he wore that night to the Ale House. Our eyes glance off each other and for a moment, I fear the insensitive comment that will fall from his mouth, that will somehow make this worse.

But then he slips off his cowboy hat and strolls over to settle into the wicker chair beside me, stretching his legs out in front of him, boots crossed, as if to get comfortable.

A loud clatter sounds inside.

“I take it Muriel’s inside, rearranging your house?” His Texan drawl is rough and grating as usual.

“Who knows what she’s into now?” I don’t have that many jars to wash, but I know she’ll find something to keep herself busy. She and Marie, who showed up about an hour ago, after Toby called her. By the hushed whispers and the fact that he had her number in the first place, I suspect they’ve taken my advice and gone on at least one date.

Another long moment passes and then Roy’s exhale cuts into the silence. “Any news yet?”

I shake my head.

“Well … No news is good news.”

No news just means they haven’t found Jonah’s body yet.

It means he could be lying somewhere, alone, suffering.

There are multiple scenarios running through my head, and none of them look good.

A fresh wave of tears prick my eyes. “How did you know?”

“Toby came by on his way here.”

Why would Toby … I dismiss the question before it fully forms. That doesn’t matter, either. “He wanted me to go with him. I should have gone.”

“Then you’d be wherever he is right now.”

“It’s where I belong.” Beside Jonah, in the sky or in the ground. But always by his side.

I feel Roy studying my profile as I huddle in my blanket.

“You’ll survive this. You’re tough.”

I laugh, the sound hollow. “No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re tough in your own way, Calla. You’ll survive this.”

“What if I don’t want to survive this?” I’ll never complain about Alaska again. I’ll live here until I’m old and gray, never thinking of a way out, never wishing I were somewhere else, as long as I can have Jonah. I feel idiotic now. I let such trivial worries consume me for so long.

“It’s never up to us, though, is it?”

Heavy footfalls sound from inside a moment before the door creaks open. The low hum of voices on the TV carries out. “Oh, you’re here.” Muriel nods to Roy as she plucks the cold mug from my hand, still mostly full. “I’m makin’ you more tea. Roy, you want tea? I’ll make you tea.” With that, she turns around and disappears inside.

“I don’t like tea,” I admit after she’s gone.

“Neither do I, but every once in a while, I let that battle-ax get her way.”

Despite everything, I feel a small smile curl my lips, imagining the two of them out in the woods for nine days and nights. The conversations those two must have had … “Muriel told me you helped her look for Deacon, way back when.”

He makes a sound but doesn’t respond.

I don’t care if he’s annoyed that I know. Let him yell at me for bringing it up; it’ll slide off me like water off a duck’s back. Or a goose’s back, perhaps. The goose wife who waits to find out if she has lost her raven. “Why’d you do it?”

Roy doesn’t answer for a long moment, his eyes roaming the dark, as if trying to make out the tree line from here. “Because I owed her. Because a long time ago, she was the one out there, searchin’ for my kin.”

I frown. “Muriel?”

“I don’t remember much, but I do remember bein’ hungry and cold and miserable, and listenin’ to my parents fight about food.” He picks at a button on his shirt. “My father went out to check the snares for rabbits. He couldn’t catch his own foot if he stepped in a trap, but the stubborn SOB was determined not to ask for help.” He smirks. “In case you were wondering where I get that from. My mother got tired of waitin’, so she bundled up and left our house in a blizzard with the last of our money. She was gonna go to the store and see what she could buy, so we wouldn’t starve. Told me to stay put. And that’s the last time I saw her. Alive, anyway.”

An odd sense of recognition tickles me as he tells this story, as if I’ve heard it before.

“When the locals caught wind, a bunch of ’em spent days combing the forest and the road, lookin’ for her. There was this one girl with ’em. She was older than me by a few years and had a gun slung over her shoulder. She seemed tough as nails. I told myself I needed to be tough like her if I had a hope in hell of survivin’ up here.” His lips quirk. “They finally found my mother. She was frozen solid. They figure she got lost ’cause she was way off course. Probably died that first night.”

Cold realization washes over me. “That cabin.” I point across the lake. “That was yours.” Roy may sound like a Texan, but there was a time that he and his family came to Alaska to try to make a life for themselves here.

And that tough-as-nails girl out there helping search for his mother was Muriel.

“Does Muriel know?” She didn’t sound like she did.

He shakes his head.

She doesn’t remember, and he’s never told her.

I struggle to piece the rest of the story together as I remember her tell it. “So, then … you and your father went back to Texas. No, wait.” I frown. “Muriel said you were from Montana?” The same place her own family was from. That much, she remembered.

“When we left Alaska, my dad didn’t want anythin’ to do with snow, so we headed south, all the way to a town outside Dallas. That’s where I grew up, buildin’ houses and barns with my pa. He was always real smart with wood. I learned from him.” His fingers trace the brim of his hat. “By the time I found my way back, the land was already sold to someone else. So, I took the closest lot available.”

“That cabin was built really well.” Steve the contractor was amazed at how well it has withstood the elements. Everything had been done right—the solid foundation, the right wood, the wide overhangs, the drainage slope. The fact that the area has overgrown has helped protect it from the sun. “You can go see it. I mean, if you want.”

His lips twist. “I’ve been by a few times over the years. To clean out the gutters. Phil woulda let it rot.”

I think Roy’s been doing more than cleaning out gutters. Steve said it looked like someone’s been treating the exterior wood—with linseed oil and turpentine, he guessed—and patching the roof.

Roy’s been preserving his family’s history in Alaska, however tragic it was.

“Why would you ever want to come back after all that?” He lost his mother and his brother to this wilderness.

And then he lost his wife and daughter to something else.

Wouldn’t be the first time a person ran here to escape somethin’.

That’s what Jonah had said, that night after I saw the picture of Roy’s family in his house, the day the wood came down on top of him.