“It’s okay. I can’t drink milk anyway. I have a dairy allergy.” I was diagnosed with it when I was five. Something I’m sure my father doesn’t remember.

She pushes the fridge closed. “I’m sure he was waiting until he could see what you like.” She gives me a tight smile. “Meyer’s opens at eight thirty. He’ll take you there first thing.”

It’s a good thing I’m not hungry, then.

Yet again, I can’t help but wonder if my dad actually wants me here. Surely he could have grabbed a few basic food items to have in the house to feed his daughter when she arrived. If he cared enough to.

“When exactly did you tell him that I was coming?”

Agnes hesitates, reaching for the stack of mail that sits on the counter, slowly rifling through it, her eyes stuck on the labels. “Last night.”

I think back to our email exchange from Friday, when I wrote to tell her that I had booked the plane ticket—thank you, Simon, for footing the bill. She wrote back saying that my dad was so happy that I was coming.

That was obviously a lie.

Why didn’t she tell him on Friday, right after receiving my email? Why did she wait another day? Was she expecting him to be something other than “so happy”? What did he say when she told him? What words were exchanged within these walls about my arrival, and with what tone?

Abandoning the unopened mail, Agnes sets to picking dried leaves off a basil plant that sits on the top shelf of a tiered stand by the door, her face pulled into a frown of concentration. “Make yourself comfortable, Calla. Your dad should be back soon.”

“Sure.” My gaze flutters about. I feel anything but comfortable right now. The kitchen certainly has all the necessities—the basic white stove and fridge, a simple round wooden dining table set that wears plenty of dents and scratches from years of use, a worn stainless steel sink with a window above it that overlooks the sprawling, flat landscape. And yet, nothing about the space is particularly welcoming. It’s not like our spacious and bright kitchen in Toronto, with the dreamy bay window and the cushioned window seat that runs alongside it, an inviting corner to curl up in with a book and a hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.

But maybe my discomfort has nothing to do with the décor and everything to do with the fact that whatever excitement I was feeling over seeing my father has quickly been squashed by the mounting dread that I am unwelcome here.

I inhale. The air is ever so faintly tinged with the acrid smell of burnt wood and ash, like that from a woodstove. Not cigarettes, I note. “He quit smoking, right?”

“He’s working on it. Come on. I’ll show you to your room.” Agnes leads me out of the kitchen and into a long, narrow living room. At least this side of the house is free of mallard ducks, but it’s also void of any personality. Equally dim, even with a light shining from overhead. The walls are white, with a few pieces of unremarkable snowy landscape artwork; the carpet is a shabby oatmeal color, a worn path from the threshold to the simple black woodstove atop beige tile in the far corner visible.

“When your dad’s not working, this is where you’ll find him. Here, or out there.” She casts a hand toward a screened-in porch on the other side of a window that’s larger than the one in the kitchen but still much too small for this size of room.

Aside from a few folded newspapers sitting in a heap on a wooden coffee table, it doesn’t look like the room is used much. As ever, Alaska Wild is clearly his priority.

But there, sitting on a side table on the far end of the gold-black-and-green woven couch, is the infamous checkers board. I wonder if it’s the same one from oh so long ago.

I feel Agnes’s eyes on me. “It’s . . . cozy,” I offer.

“You’re as bad a liar as Wren.” She smiles. “I keep tellin’ him the place needs freshening up. I’ve even left a few of those home renovation shows playin’ on the television for him,” she waves a hand at the small flat-screen that sits in the corner, opposite the woodstove and across from a tan-colored La-Z-Boy, “but he keeps saying he’s not around enough to bother.” Her voice drifts, her gaze settled on that chair, her seemingly permanent smile slipping.

Why doesn’t she do it herself, then? Won’t he allow her?

“He’ll be home more in the coming weeks, though, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

There’s no point dancing around the topic of my dad’s cancer diagnosis anymore. “How bad is it, Agnes?”

She shakes her head. “That slip of paper was full of medical babble that I couldn’t understand.”

“But he told you what the doctors said, right?”

“Who, Wren?” She snorts softly. “He was sick for weeks with a terrible chest cold before I finally convinced him to go see someone. The doctor decided to run an X-ray and that’s how they found the tumor. He didn’t tell anyone, though. He just took his antibiotics, and I assumed he was getting better. Then the bugger flew to Anchorage for a secret biopsy and more testing.” I can hear the frustration in her voice. “All I’ve been able to get out of him is that he has lung cancer and the doctors have suggested chemo and radiation.”

“It sounds like they have a plan, then.” I’d spent a bit of time on the Canadian Cancer Society website while waiting for my connecting flights today, reading up on types and stages and treatment options for lung cancer. It was a lot to sift through, and difficult to understand. All I managed to take away is that treatment is crucial and survival rates are among the lowest of all cancers.