Chapter 16
16
Even though Lachlan offered to release her from her meatball offer, Maura was so grateful for his coolheaded response to nearly getting trampled by a moose that she insisted on following through.
Truth to tell, she didn’t want to be alone.
No, she didn’t want to be separated from him .
An unusual feeling, to say the least, especially recently. But she was too shaken up to question it. The sight of that enormous mass of hairy flesh and hooves galloping toward them, head lowered, aimed at them like a weapon, was going to haunt her nightmares.
And Lachlan…how on earth had he kept his cool like that?
She kept shooting him little glances as she chopped onions and parsley, which Pinky grew in a little clay pot in a southern-facing window. Lachlan seemed unbothered as he played with Pinky’s cats, allowing them to snuggle into his lap and bat at the zipper pull on his sweater.
She filled a pot with water and set it on a burner. The stove had come from an RV and only three of the burners still worked. The oven door liked to drop open at random moments, so he used a broken chopstick to wedge it closed.
In fact, she couldn’t name one thing in Pinky’s kitchen that wasn’t jury-rigged somehow. The refrigerator was held shut with a bungee cord because the door springs were broken. The electric pump that usually brought water into the kitchen sink faucet had a blown fuse, so Pinky had set up a temporary foot pedal. The fuse was coming—Gunnar had ordered it—but apparently it was on a dog sled somewhere between Blackbear and Firelight Ridge.
Literally, a dog sled. Pinky’s closest neighbor, Lasse Ulstrom, had picked up the latest order and used it as an excuse to give his dog team a good run in preparation for the Yukon Quest.
In the meantime, every time she wanted to wash her hands or fill the tea kettle, she had to pump with her foot to keep the water flowing.
More fodder for her journal. Maybe she should publish it, she mused as she rolled the meatballs between her palms. The only problem was that people might think it was fiction. Who would believe that people chose to live this way of their own free will? And even… like it? Pinky wouldn’t have it any other way, she knew. His only regret was his lost wife, of whom he spoke wistfully, sometimes between tears.
That regret was not reciprocated. Every time she’d asked Granny to talk about her life in Alaska, she’d shuddered and muttered something about outhouses or frostbite or oddballs. The Granny she knew loved malls and Grey’s Anatomy and microwaved casseroles and hair salons and block parties and drinks on the patio with her poker buddies. It was hard to picture her in Alaska. The same went for her mother and aunt, who’d both been small when Granny had left.
Was it possible that the adventurous spirit skipped a generation? So far, Maura hadn’t found the discomforts of Pinky’s lifestyle too difficult. And so many other things made up for the inconveniences. The vast quiet. The stoic reassurance of the mountains. Moments like little gems of beauty—a squirrel knocking snow off a branch as a low-angle ray of sun transformed it into a cloud of sparkles. A grass seed head frozen into its perfect crystallized form. The vivid personalities who made their home here. The way people helped each other to survive above all—other conflicts taking a backseat to the primary one against the relentless wilderness.
“Smells delicious.” She jumped as Lachlan ambled into the kitchen. He’d been building up the fire and somehow had gotten a bit of bark in his hair. Her fingers itched to pluck it out, but she hadn’t yet washed her hands since forming the meatballs.
And she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.
“They’ll be ready soon. Glass of wine while we wait?”
“Sure. If you point me toward the corkscrew, I can open it.” There was an awkwardness between them now. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she’d held his hand in the truck? That could have been a mistake, but on the other hand, who could blame her? They’d gone High Noon with a moose.
She gestured toward the Crock-Pot container that held the wooden spoons and other utensils, including the corkscrew. He went to work on the bottle that she’d already plucked from Pinky’s wine cellar—aka the cardboard box under the counter.
“I read something else in that newsletter,” Lachlan said after filling two mugs with wine. Pinky didn’t believe in wine glasses, though she knew that was because they inevitably wound up in shards of glass on the floor. “Have you heard anything about new cell service coming to the area?”
“No!” Surprised, she turned away from the pot of spaghetti water, to which she’d just added salt. “That’s huge news.”
“Yes. And get this, it’s going to be free.”
“Free cell service? Is it some kind of grant or maybe a consolation prize for living off the grid?”
He snorted. “It doesn’t say that.” He read aloud from the newsletter. “‘All of you internet junkies might finally get a break. (Sorry, Kathy, you might have to look for a new source of revenue.) A friendly but anonymous offer has come to the town’s attention. Free cellular service to all residents! This is a no-strings-attached offer.’ I’m not sure I believe that part,” Lachlan added. “There are always strings, but sometimes they’re invisible.”
“Agreed,” said Maura. The water was boiling so she ripped open the package of spaghetti and dumped it in, like a handful of pickup sticks. “But they might just be offering it for free to start with. They’ll get everyone hooked, then charge a fortune after that.”
“No, it says it’s a lifetime offer.”
“Wow. Do you think you’ll take them up on it? I know Pinky won’t. He doesn’t even have a phone.”
“It could be helpful for me,” Lachlan said thoughtfully. “It’s inconvenient having to run to Kathy’s just to research things on the Internet. My other option is to jog to the top of a hill near my house. Sometimes I get a signal there.”
“It’s exercise,” she pointed out. She found she didn’t really like the idea of change coming to Firelight Ridge. If real cell service was available, more people might try to live here. They’d be different people, younger, more online, more part of the outside world. Would they appreciate the older eccentric folks like Pinky?
Lachlan was watching her with his head cocked. “What’s going through your mind?”
“Nothing. Why do you think something is?”
“Your eyebrows.”
She felt them lift. “Excuse me?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that your eyebrows are very expressive? They move around while you think.”
“No, they don’t.” She put a hand to her forehead and smoothed out her eyebrows. Did they really move around? Why had no one ever pointed this out to her before? “Do they?”
“They do. But don’t worry, they don’t spell out what you’re thinking,” he assured her. “You looked concerned about something, that’s all. Your eyebrows don’t seem to like the idea of free cell service.”
She opened the oven to check the meatballs. Propping the door on one knee, she pulled out the pan, then wedged the broken chopstick back in the door and turned it off. She added the meatballs to the marinara sauce—a Costco purchase—then turned to see Lachlan watching her with amusement.
“Impressive,” he said. “No one would ever peg you for a city girl.”
“It’s funny, because I was about to say I don’t like the idea of change coming to Firelight Ridge, but I wouldn’t mind changing out that stove.” She made a face at it.
“Let me guess, Pinky’s attached to it?”
“Yes, because he found it in an old RV that someone abandoned near Goldpan Creek. He says it’s good luck because that very same day he scored a gold nugget the size of a fist. I think he still might be living off that.”
“Is that what he does for money? I’ve wondered.”
She drained the spaghetti in the ancient chipped enameled colander. “I don’t think that’s his only source of income. I’ve tried to figure that out too, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. Mostly he barters, like a lot of people out here. Too bad you can’t barter with Costco.”
He chuckled.
With their plates filled with steaming spaghetti and meatball sauce, they made their way to the folding table set up close to the woodstove.
“To surviving that moose,” she said, lifting her mug of wine to clink against his.
They clicked their mugs together and toasted.
After tasting the meatballs and raving about them in a very satisfactory way, Lachlan said, “Maybe we should add ‘free cell service for life’ to our investigation. Seems pretty sketchy to me.”
“We have an investigation?”
“What would you call it?” He devoured another meatball. Thank you, Granny Jeanine.
She thought about it, then said, “An adventure?” The word filled her with excitement, like life welling inside her. A green shoot of curiosity rising from the scorched earth of her post-SS emotional shutdown.
Lachlan’s face lit up. “That’s one of my favorite words, adventure.”
“Really? Scientists like adventure?”
“I can only speak for myself, but of course I like adventure. Scientists are always venturing into the unknown. I could have chosen other fields of research, but to study jokulhlaup, you have to be where jokulhlaups happen.”
“Near glaciers?”
“Near glaciers. Which are usually hard to get to.”
“To adventures,” she said. They clicked their mugs together again. “And also to surviving them.”
The burning logs in the woodstove chose that moment to collapse, sending sparks soaring into the smokestack. Maura shivered, paralyzed by a sudden sense of ominous dread.
Lachlan set down his mug and crouched next to the woodstove, poker in hand, and adjusted the fire until it was burning steadily again. In the process, a bit of ash floated from the stove and landed lightly on his hair.
This time, she didn’t stop herself from flicking it off once he’d returned to the table.