AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And suddenly this doesn’t feel so much like a farewell party for the happy couple leaving Alaska as much as a final goodbye for the quiet man who stands in the corner.
His shoulders hunched inward.
His face sallow and drawn.
His tired eyes and stoic smile telling me what I’ve noticed but refused to accept.
Suddenly the air in this lobby is too thick, the buzz too loud, the gazes too many.
Slipping around the food tables, I wordlessly duck into the office and keep going, through the staff room, down a long, narrow hall. I push through the door and out into the warehouse. The garage-type doors are open, allowing in a cool breeze, damp from the mist. A few grounds crew look on curiously as they haul pallets of cargo across the floor, but no one says anything about me being in there.
I rush all the way through and beyond to the hangar, my arms curled around my chest for comfort and finding none.
Veronica sits alone in the corner. She must be inside for maintenance work. I dash for her now, climbing up with ease to curl into the pilot’s seat—my dad’s seat. I smooth my hands over the yoke for a moment.
And then I pull my legs to my chest, bury my face in my lap, and let myself cry as reality sinks in.
The door opens with a creak. Somehow I know it’s Jonah without having to look.
“He’s not going to last much longer, is he?” I ask through my sniffles.
After a long moment, a warm, comforting hand smooths over my shoulders. “He’s going downhill fast.”
Finally, I dare tip my head up to rest my chin on my knees. I can only imagine how red and blotchy my face is. For once, I’m glad to be makeup-free. “I should have called. All those years that I didn’t call, I wish I had. And now there’s no time left. You and Max and everyone else have all these great memories with him and the luaus and the winter barbecues and the stupid ducks, and I am never going to have that! I don’t have enough time!” I thought I was all cried out, but a fresh set of tears begins to trickle.
I’ve spent the last twelve years dwelling on all the things Wren Fletcher isn’t.
I should have had the guts to come and find out all the things he is.
Loaded silence lingers in the plane.
Jonah sighs. “You should have called him. He should have called you. Your mom should never have left. Wren should have left Alaska for you. Who the hell knows what’s right, and what it would have led to, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t change any of that.” His thumb draws a soothing circle over my spine, just below my neck. “My dad and I didn’t have a great relationship; I think you’ve probably figured that out. It always seemed to be a power struggle with him. He didn’t take too well to not having control over my life. Said a lot of shitty things and never once followed them up with an apology.
“Cutting him off and moving up here was the right thing to do; I knew that in my gut. Still, in those last few days, watching him go, listening to him tell me how much he regretted trying to force what he wanted on me, I kept playin’ conversations in my head, over and over again, finding things I should have said or done, times I should have reached out. You can spend an entire lifetime doing that and still get nowhere.” He lifts his baseball cap off his head and lets it settle onto his knee. “I found this a few days after the funeral, in his closet. There was a whole box of USAF stuff. Hat, sweatshirt, jacket . . . all still with tags on them, along with a card he wrote to me, telling me how much he loved me and how excited he was that I’d get to experience that life. I guess he had it all ready to give me after I was officially enlisted, and then he shoved it in the closet and tried to forget about it when it didn’t happen.” Jonah’s lips press together. “He’s been gone five years and I still feel guilty every time I look at this damn thing.”
I rub away my tears.
“You’re not alone. You’ve got me. And I’ve got you, and we’ll get through this together.” He slides a gentle hand up and down my arm.
“Even if I’m in Toronto?”
His chest swells with a deep breath. “There’s this thing called a phone.”
“You are actually mocking me about a phone.”
“Oh wait, that’s right. You don’t like calling your friends,” he mutters wryly.
I know he means to lighten the mood, and yet my stomach clenches. “Is that what we are? Friends?”
He curses under his breath, and then sighs again. “We’re complicated. That’s what we are.”
There’s that goddamn word again.
“Have you heard of a goose-wife?”
There’s a pause and then Jonah chuckles, sliding his hat back on. “Ethel and her tales.”
“She said you were the raven and I was your goose-wife. What did she mean?”
