Chapter Eleven
C al didn’t want to speed, but Mom’s text rattled him.
Some man had been poking around the homestead. His mind immediately went to the investor. This was not how things worked in Alaska, people just showing up on someone’s property and asking questions like this. Damn it.
While Mom and Pop were two of the most rugged and resourceful people Cal knew, he also understood they were vulnerable. His parents were both nearing seventy, still active, but definitely lived in a more isolated setting than Cal liked, out on the homestead. At least they had satellite internet, which meant they had phone service—an improvement from even a few years ago.
But Mom’s cell phone had no signal while out on the property. No towers were close enough to their location. She could only call or text over satellite internet if they were in or near the house.
Pop had the heart issue. Damn it. Many reasons why it was time for them to move to a safer environment and a larger town with services. He pressed on the accelerator, but not enough to lose control on the slushy road.
A light touch on his hand that rested on the gear shift startled him.
“You okay?” Deirdre said.
Her fingers on the back of his hand anchored him. Calmed him. Her mere presence soothed him in ways he wouldn’t fully acknowledge.
The space in this car had become way too small for both of them. He needed air. Distance. A clear head to think through this situation. He gripped the wheel and inhaled her light floral and crisp linen scent. Their stupid sham had been a mistake. He flexed his wrist, enjoying how her palm remained connected to the back of his hand.
Damn it. He should give up the fake relationship.
He had no time for this kind of situation. They had too many other priorities, like dealing with threats to their families.
He squinted through the slush-spattered windshield.
Selfishly, he enjoyed spending time with Deirdre, although he appreciated that her free time was precious and rare. She didn’t need to waste it on him.
For what? He swallowed a hard lump.
Protection. Sure. Their pretend dating acted as a social heat shield for both of them. Giving even a small reprieve to the stressors in Deirdre’s life—that was motivation enough for Cal to continue the charade. Not that he was rationalizing.
He turned his hand halfway over and hooked his thumb over her hand, savoring the warm connection. “Not sure. Mom sounded worried.”
He turned off the state highway and traveled up a long gravel road into the hills outside of town. In the early April evening, at eight thirty, the sun had set. The snowstorm from yesterday had cleared out, revealing stars from horizon to horizon, popping up as twilight faded. This time of year, months of snow melted in the daytime and refroze again every night. Wet rocks and slushy crunches rattled under the vehicle.
Pulling up to the cabin, he scanned for anything out of place.
Nothing. No other vehicles.
He tried to see his family’s home like Deirdre would. The handmade two-story cabin had repairs and additions over the years, but it was a solid structure. Lights glowed from the front windows. Off to one side was another metal building that was dark—the garage-barn-shed.
He scanned the snow, gravel, and icy mud-covered parking pad, then studied the spruces protecting the north and west of the house—a necessary windbreak in this area. Opposite the windbreaks, hills covered in low pines and leafless deciduous trees rolled back down toward town and the river.
He got out and came around to Deirdre’s side of car, helping her out. He winced as her booties, more fashionable than functional, squelched in the messy mixture underfoot. Keeping a hand under her arm, they walked up a few porch steps to the front door, which opened right as he lifted his hand to knock. Doofus came crashing past Mom and Pop and almost barreled Deirdre and Cal over.
“What are you doing here, son?” Pop said, narrowing his eyes.
He looked fine. Healthy. Ornery.
“Mom said some guy was snooping around.” He gave Doofus one last scratch behind the ears before straightening.
The dog nosed at Deirdre’s hand for more attention.
“You have Deirdre Steen with you.”
Very observant. Cal moved his hand to cup her elbow lightly. “Yes, we came from dinner. And the ER. It’s been a strange evening.”
Mom poked her head out next to Pop, her gray hair curling over her shoulders. “Oh, hi, honey. How was your date?”
Cal and Deirdre glanced at each other. “Um,” he said.
Waving her hands, Mom looked past them and into the twilight with a quick frown that morphed into a big smile. “Oh, quit talking out there and come on in. Hi, Deirdre!”
“Hi, Aggie. Bruce,” Deirdre said on a laugh as she patted Pop on the arm and entered the house.
After avoiding the wet nose of Doofus while they took off their shoes in the entryway, Cal followed as Deirdre padded in socked feet into the warm living room. Dark brown tail wagging, his parents’ retired sled dog trotted over to the living room and curled up on the couch, apparently satisfied that he had completed his mission to greet and lick visitors.
Cal smiled and looked around.
Always the ghosts of his past lived here. This was where he and Elijah had hung out after school. Sometimes Deirdre joined them. Classmates had come over for bonfires on Saturday nights in an open area of hillside below the house. Memories surfaced of laughing with Elijah and Deirdre and their friends, while Pop pretended to have chores nearby so he could keep an eye on everyone. All while Mom made unending batches of cookies for Cal and his ravenous teen friends. He inhaled, catching the familiar vanilla and warm chocolate scent.
“What’s going on, Mom?” he said.
“Want dinner? If you don’t mind low-cholesterol cooking,” she said too brightly, with a quick glance at Pop, who all but bared his teeth.
Cal paused, uneasy. Mom rarely pulled punches. She would eventually share with him about the person who had come by the house. For now, a whiff of savory venison stew hit him, making his mouth water. “Sure. We had to cut our meal short due to an emergency.”
Deirdre nodded with a wry expression.
“You were in the ED? Everything okay?” Mom said.
Cal shook his head. “Can’t talk about it. Privacy and all.”
“Deirdre, maybe you’ll give me the news.”
Her blue eyes sparkled. “You know the rules, Aggie. I can’t say.”
Pop walked over, his gait slightly bow-legged and stiff, like his knees bothered him. It was tough to see him slowing down. Pop settled at the head of the table with a groan and closed one eye to stare at Cal and Deirdre. “No such thing as privacy in this area. Remember how my personal business and all the stuff in the ED went plumb through town and back.”
“That’s because you told everyone who would listen, Bruce!” Deirdre said, making Pop sit up straight. “You couldn’t stop grumping about the adhesive stuck on your chest from our EKG monitors!”
He pulled a face. “They really should make something that doesn’t pull out hair.”
“Then we can’t monitor your heart.” Batting her eyes, she said sweetly, “And all the stuff was your heart giving you trouble. Which we fixed. With those EKG monitors that stuck to your chest. Which saved your life.”
A master class, Deirdre’s handling of Pop.
“ Hmmph. Still.” He rubbed the front of his flannel shirt.
Mom brought over steaming bowls of stew and set them down with a roll of her eyes at Pop. They all ate in contented silence for a minute. The lamp glow and oven-warmed room wrapped around him like a blanket.
Cal set down his spoon. “Mom, your stew is better than I remember. I want this recipe.”
Gesturing at him with a piece of bread, she said, “Yes, but it’s not the same if it’s not made out in the bush in Alaska.”
“You guys aren’t in the bush.” He pointed toward the trees outside the living room windows. “The bush is that way, somewhere between ten miles and five hundred miles away.”
“Well, we’re not in the town. Or a city. So, we’re in the bush,” Pop said. “Anyways, I prefer the old recipe.”
“The old recipe isn’t healthy.” Mom’s grin bordered on a grimace. It was clear this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. “You’re welcome that I’m feeding you. Left to your own devices, you’d live on canned franks and beans.”
“Well, some of us like franks and beans.” Nevertheless, Pop shoveled another spoonful of stew.
Cal knew when the argument wasn’t going to go his way. “Hmm.”
Pop took a drink of water. “Deirdre, how’s your brother and your business?”
“Seems to be going great. The lodge has gotten more reservations as a result of Tuli Sampson’s internet posts. Busy is better than the alternative.” She paused. “Or did you mean the hospital business? Because that’s going well, too. Someone’s always getting sick or getting in an accident, it seems.”
Pop grunted. Little did he know how outmatched he was verbally sparring with Deirdre. “Seems like everything’s coming up roses for you. Thought about settling down?”
Cal whipped his head up.
Deirdre choked on her bite of stew and coughed for a full minute, her face beet red.
Wiping her mouth with the napkin, she said, “That’s not… I’m not… I don’t have time for that right now.”
“What’s all this… galivanting with Calvin, then?” Pop pinned her with a steely gaze beneath his bushy brows.
“Galivanting? Pop, come on now,” Cal said.
“Bruce, leave the kids alone,” Mom interjected at the same time.
Kids? Cal was thirty-six, same as Deirdre.
Drumming her fingers on the table, Deirdre said in a measured tone, “Bruce, we’re old friends going out to dinner. Like the most casual of outings.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Pop grunted and dunked his bread into the stew.
Not exactly how Cal saw it, either. On the other hand, they were pretending to date so that they didn’t have to endure lines of questioning. Like this one.
He hated threading the needle of truth, but he didn’t want to get his parents’ hopes up. He’d deal with any confusion later. “What about your text, Mom? It worried me.”
“I know a subject change when I see one,” she said with a wink, then added, “This man drove up, said he was an assessor from Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Claimed he needed to set up a time to do a survey of the property. Something about documenting mineral rights for a possible claim request. Said a portion of what we think is our property might actually be BLM land, which would open an area for prospectors to seek an exploration and mining claim. I don’t understand why they need to resurvey.”
He gripped the soup spoon in a tight fist. “And?”
Pop grumbled, “He was real pushy, trying to pick a date to map the property with survey equipment.” He barked a laugh. “Our land was surveyed years ago. Pins were set at the boundaries when we purchased the property back then. But that guy didn’t want to take no for an answer. Not from your mom or from me.” He paused. “Doofus did not like him. That’s good enough for me.”
A cold chill skittered down his spine. Mom was sweet most of the time, but tough as nails when she needed to be. If she declined their request, that was that. It irritated him that her wishes hadn’t been respected immediately. The timing of the visit wasn’t right, either. “What did the guy look like?”
Pop glanced at the ceiling. “Younger fella, maybe thirty, tall and thin. Wore the olive green DNR gear. Flashed ID at us. Looked official.”
Damn it. Things were getting out of control. “What did you do?”
Mom gave a smile that came across as mildly aggressive. “After I told him we wouldn’t give permission for a survey, your father told him, quote, to ‘go to hell’ when the man kept on talking.”
Pop matched Mom’s tight grin. “Then I grabbed my rifle from inside the front door.”
Cal’s spine went ramrod straight. “That should have taken care of it,” he said. Having to defend their homestead by force. Not the situation he wanted them in. Not at all.
“That’s what I thought,” Mom said.
“I assume he eventually went away.”
“Yes, but he seemed pretty determined.” Worry creased Mom’s forehead as she reached for her shirt pocket. “He left a card.” She fished it out of her pants pocket and handed it to him.
Cal didn’t recognize the name. The information could be easily verified. Looked official enough. An icy finger of dread worked itself through his chest. “You mind if I hold onto this for a bit?”
“What are you going to do, son?”
“Some research. Does he truly represent DNR? Is the request even legitimate?” He would give the guy a stern warning to stay off his family’s homestead. At least at this time. But he held off sharing that part of the plan and instead stowed the card in his vest.
“Who else has property on the Ray Mountain range?” Deirdre asked. “Besides our family’s property, yours, and the Koyukon corporation’s land?”
Mom shook her head. “We have a lot of acres between the three of us. There are three more property owners with tracts on this range.”
Cal looked up. “We were talking about this issue earlier. Could the land speculators actually go around the properties?”
Mom looked at Pop. “That would require making miles of roads to get to the backside of the range. Building bridges strong enough to support large machinery. They’d need to create a work site for all of that equipment as well.”
Deirdre toyed with her glass of water. “We should set up a meeting with all of the involved property owners and the corporation elders. Make sure everyone’s got a unified front so that we’re protected against future incidents. Especially given the persistence of those people, trying to resurvey previously platted land. That’s worrisome. Involve town leadership if need be.”
“That’s a good idea, dear,” Mom said.
Pop grunted but nodded.
Pushing up from the table, Mom grabbed chocolate chip cookies from the countertop and passed them around.
Cal’s head whirled. He loved Yukon Valley and didn’t want outsiders exploiting it for their own gain. Part of him wanted to stand up to those prospectors. Dig in. Fight back.
But his parents couldn’t stay here and neither could Cal. Part of his reason for returning to Yukon Valley was his plans to get them moved and settled in a bigger town like Fairbanks, or better yet, Seattle, near Cal. Maybe if there was a sliver of access outside of his family’s property, that would resolve the fight with the prospector. Remove the conflict.
Make it easier to encourage his parents to move away.
He took in Deirdre’s concerned expression as she chatted with Mom and Pop. Her blue gaze flitted to him, and she shot him a tiny half-smile that warmed him more than the stew.
There might be more to leave in Yukon Valley than the homestead.