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.
Chapter Twenty-One
ARIS
Civilization is loud.It smells like exhaust fumes and fabric softener. Anxiety hums under everything. And, worst of all, the coffee is complicated.
I'm standing in line at The Frozen Bean, the upscale coffee shop on the edge of the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. It's a place I used to love, a temple of caffeine and academic gossip.
Today, it feels like a zoo where the animals are wearing North Face jackets they've never actually taken north of a heated parking lot.
"Can I help you?" the barista asks. He's about nineteen, wearing a beanie indoors, and looking at me with the glazed expression of someone whose biggest problem today is running out of oat milk.
"I just want coffee," I say. "Black. Hot. In a cup."
He blinks. "We have the darkly roasted Sumatra blend, the mild Ethiopian Yirgacheffe with notes of blueberry, or the seasonal Snickerdoodle Surprise."
I stare at him. Three days ago, I drank pond water boiled over a camp stove that tasted faintly of unleaded gasoline andspruce needles, and I was grateful for it. I climbed a scree slope to avoid being eaten.
"The dark one," I say slowly. "Large. Please."
"Room for cream?"
"No."
"Flavor shot?"
"No."
"It's a dollar extra for the single-origin bean."
"Take my money," I say, handing over a credit card that feels flimsy and plastic in my hand. "Just give me the caffeine."
I take the cup and thread through a maze of students glued to their laptops. I find a table in the corner and sit down, but the chair feels wrong. It's too soft. I feel like I'm sinking into a marshmallow.
I look at my reflection in the window. I'm wearing the "professional" clothes I packed three weeks ago—a blazer, a silk blouse, clean dark jeans, and boots that have never touched a dead animal. I showered at the lodge. I brushed my hair until it shone. I put on mascara.
But looking at myself, I still feel … feral.
The mascara can't hide the wildness in my eyes. I catch myself scanning the perimeter of the coffee shop for threats. Student with headphones: low threat. Professor with stack of papers: moderate threat of boredom. Barista with steam wand: potential noise hazard.
I'm profiling a coffee shop. I've officially lost my mind.
I check my watch. Ten o'clock. The meeting with Dean Reynolds is in an hour. I have time to kill. I decide to brave the faculty lounge to print my visuals.
When I used to haunt this biology department as Thaddeus's doctoral student, back before Seattle and the remote appointment, the faculty lounge ran on quiet intellectualism. Today, it sounds like a hen house.
Dr. Meade from Marine Biology is standing by the espresso machine, complaining loudly to Dr. Gupta from Botany.
