Chapter Twenty
NASH
The problem with happiness is that it has no mass. You can't weigh it or strap it down to a sled. You can't calculate its drag coefficient. It's light, and it's volatile, and the moment you take your hands off it, it tends to float away.
Grief, on the other hand? Grief is heavy. It has density. It sits on your chest like a wet wool blanket, and it stays exactly where you left it.
The sky is a bruised purple, the sun struggling to drag itself over the eastern peaks. The air is cold enough to freeze the moisture in your nose instantly. It's a perfect flying day—unlimited visibility, calm winds.
I hate it.
I wish for a blizzard. I wish for a whiteout. An engine failure would do nothing serious, just a fouled spark plug that would ground the plane for another twenty-four hours.
"You're glaring at the plane, Nash," Finn says, walking up behind me with a clipboard. "Stop it. You're going to spook the aerodynamics."
"I'm checking the fuel load," I lie.
"You're wishing for ice in the carburetor," Finn corrects. He stands next to me, his breath puffing out in white clouds. "She has to go, man. You know that. Reynolds is waiting to swing the axe."
"I know." I shove my hands into my pockets. "I'm not going to stop her."
"Good. Because if you do, Mags will kill you. She's very invested in Aris's career. Which, given that she's the one with the head for budgets around here and the half-ownership of this lodge, is not a thing you want to be on the wrong side of. I think she's already planning the tenure party."
I look up the ramp toward May's. The café door opens, and Aris steps out.
She's wearing her city coat, the wool trench that looks ridiculous against the snow.
But she's carrying her boots in one hand and her laptop bag in the other.
She looks tired. We didn't sleep much. We spent last night existing in a suspended reality, pretending the morning wasn't coming.
We backed up data, ate Mags's cooking, stayed wrapped around each other until the alarm went off.
But morning came anyway. It always does.
She walks down the ramp, the snow crunching under her feet. When she reaches the dock, she stops in front of me. Her eyes are dark green and serious.
"Hank's ready," I say, nodding toward the plane. "He'll get you to Fairbanks in fifty minutes. You'll be on campus before nine."
"Okay," she says. She grips the laptop bag tighter. "Nash, I—"
"Don't," I say softly. "If we start talking, you're going to miss the flight. And then Reynolds wins."
She bites her lip. "I left the base layers in the drawer. The thermal shirt. The socks."
"I know. I saw them."
"Keep them," she says. "I … I want to know they're here."
"They'll be here," I promise. I'll be here, I don't say.
Hank leans out of the cockpit window. "Clock's ticking, folks! I got mail to deliver up the coast after this. Let's get this show on the road."
Aris looks at the plane, then back at me. We have an audience: Finn and Mags up on the rise above the dock, and Hank already in the cockpit pretending he isn't watching. We can't do the movie goodbye. We can't do the tears.
So I do the only thing I can.
I step forward, grab her by the waist, and pull her in. I kiss her hard, a quick, desperate seal on everything we haven't said out loud. I taste coffee and mint and hesitation.
I pull back before I lose the resolve to let her go.
"Go save the world, Dr. Thorne," I say roughly.
"Keep the wolves away, Nash," she whispers.
She turns and steps up on the ski. She doesn't look back; she's too smart for that. She knows that looking back makes you stumble. She climbs into the cabin and pulls the door shut. The latch clicks.
It's a mechanical sound, and it's final.
"Clear prop!" Hank yells.
The engine coughs, catches, and roars to life. The prop blurs into a silver disc. The wash hits me, blowing snow into my face, stinging my eyes.
I don't move.
Hank taxis out to the packed strip at the center of the harbor ice. He turns into the wind. The engine note rises to a scream, and the plane begins its run. It skims across the ice, picking up speed, throwing a rooster tail of snow, until finally, physics takes over.
Lift.
The skis break free. The plane climbs, banking sharp to the south, climbing toward the pass.
I watch it until it's nothing but a speck against the granite, until the sound of the engine fades and the silence of the valley rushes back in to fill the hole she left.
"She'll be back," Finn says quietly. He hasn't left.
"Maybe," I say.
"No maybe about it," Finn says. "She left her boots, Nash. Nobody leaves their Sorels unless they plan on coming back to walk in the snow."
I look down at the dock. Sure enough, next to the pylon, sit her heavy winter boots. She had worn her city shoes onto the plane.
"Come on," Finn says, clapping me on the shoulder. "We have a generator to rebuild. And I think the septic tank is acting up again."
"You know how to romance a guy, Finn."
"I try. Come on. Work helps."
He turns and heads back to the lodge.
I stay for one more minute. I look at the boots, then at the empty sky. Then I pick them up. They're heavy, caked with mud and dried pine needles. They smell like wet leather and the forest floor.
"See you soon, Doc," I whisper.
I strap the boots behind me on the snowmobile rack. The ride to Misty Meadows takes forty minutes I don't remember. When I get to the house, I flip on the shed lights and head straight for the workbench.
The shed is exactly as I left it.
It smells of diesel, solvent, and cold metal. It's a place where things make sense. Engines run or they don't. Circuits are closed or open. If something is broken, you can diagnose it, strip it down, and replace the faulty part.
I set Aris's boots on the workbench, right next to my vice grip. They look out of place among the wrenches and the oily rags. They're evidence of a variable I didn't account for.
"Right," I say to the empty room. "Work."
I pull the spare carburetor for the backup generator off the shelf. It's been acting up, running rich, stalling under load. It needs a rebuild, a simple job. I've done it a hundred times.
I clamp the unit into the vice. I grab a screwdriver.
Step one: Remove the float bowl.
I turn the screw. It's tight. I apply pressure.
My hand slips. The screwdriver gouges across the soft aluminum casing, leaving a bright, jagged scratch.
"Dammit," I mutter, dropping the tool.
I stare at the scratch. It's sloppy, amateur work.
I take a breath. Focus, Nash. It's just a carburetor. It's a machine.
I pick up the screwdriver again. I get the screws out. I pop the bowl off. The smell of old gasoline wafts up, sharp and acrid.
Inside, the float is stuck. The needle valve is gummed up with varnish.
"There you are," I whisper. "Simple."
I reach for the can of solvent to clean it. But as I spray the jet, the hiss of the aerosol can sounds exactly like the static of a radio.
I lost the sled in the river. We climbed our way out. Evolve with me.
Her voice is in my head, louder than the fan heater buzzing in the corner. I look at the workbench. Specifically, I look at the empty spot to my left.
A week ago she was holding the antenna wire for me while I soldered, her fingers shaking, her focus absolute. She'd smelled like woodsmoke and the tent. Now there's just dust.
Now there's just dust.
I drop the carburetor part onto the bench. It lands with a hollow clatter.
I can't do this.
I lean forward, bracing my hands on the edge of the workbench, hanging my head.
This is what Dad felt. When Mom died, I thought Dad was weak for falling apart, that he lacked discipline. I thought he just needed to find a task and stick to it. I thought sitting in the house with her ghost was the problem, not the staying.
But you can't fix a vacuum with a wrench. You can't torque-wrench your way out of silence.
I look at the boots again.
They're empty, just shells of leather and rubber. But they're a promise. Nobody leaves their Sorels.
I grab a rag and wipe the grease off my hands. I'm not going to rebuild the carburetor today. I'm not going to fix the generator. If I try, I'm going to break something expensive.
I walk over to the small, grimy window that looks out over the meadow. The sky is fully bright now, a hard, unforgiving blue. The plane is long gone. She's probably halfway to Fairbanks by now, staring out the window at the endless white, thinking about tenure and board meetings and beige walls.
I wonder if she's eating a salad. I wonder if she misses the steak.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. No signal reaches the shed. I'd have to go up to the house.
But I don't go. I just stand there, holding the phone like a talisman, waiting for the satellite to align, waiting for the world to spin, waiting for the digital ping that tells me she hasn't forgotten the coordinates of home.
Work helps, Finn had said.
Finn is an idiot. Work doesn't help. It just passes the time. And right now, time feels like the enemy.
I put the phone back in my pocket. I pick up the carburetor parts and organize them neatly on a shop towel. I might not be able to fix it today, but I won't leave a mess. That's the difference between me and Dad. I don't let the chaos win.
But then I think about the spare room at Misty Meadows. The one that's held Granddad's gear since he died—boxes of his tools, a busted feed scale, a plastic bin of hardware I keep meaning to sort.
She'll need a workspace. Somewhere to set up her monitors, her data drives, the research she's been rebuilding for three years. Somewhere with good light and room for two screens and quiet you can only get ninety miles from pavement.
I don't know if she's coming back. I genuinely don't know.
But the room will be ready if she does.
I leave the boots on the bench. I leave the light on.
I flip off the shed lights and cross the yard to the house.
By the time the sun drops, I have cleared the boxes, moved the table to face the east window, and hung the good lamp over the corner. It isn't much. It's an empty room with a cleared desk and a clean floor. It's a place for her work to live.
I check my phone from the porch. Still nothing.
I'm still a man waiting for a call. But the room is ready.