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He bites his bottom lip in thought. It’s a moment before he answers. “I’ve got no use for this place if we’re moving. Still … I guess I always saw another family living here.”
“Right. Same. And Agnes? What does she think?”
He snorts. “Well, of course she doesn’t like it. The damn woman is driving around in Wren’s shitty-ass, beaten-up truck with bald tires because she’s so nostalgic. But she doesn’t need two houses to look after. She told Barry he should rent the houses out and farm around them. He sounded open to it. And selling to Barry would be the smart move. Otherwise who knows how long we’ll be sittin’ on these listings. And who’s to say that whoever buys them doesn’t tear them down, anyway.”
“Right.” I wait for him to continue, sensing a “but.”
Jonah shrugs. “It seems wrong, you know? Wren’s gone, Alaska Wild is gone. And now even his house might disappear. It’s like he’s being erased.”
I feel what he’s saying. My dad said there’d always be a home for me in Alaska, and yet it won’t technically be true.
Silence lingers, and I study the struggle in Jonah’s features—his jaw tensing, his eyes tracing the lines of the ceiling tiles as if my dad set them there with his own bare hands. What is he really asking me?
Perhaps he’s looking for my permission to let someone possibly level my family’s history.
“What would my dad say if he were here?” I hate that I can’t confidently guess, that I didn’t know him that well.
But Jonah did. My father was more a father to him than he ever was to me.
Jonah thinks on it a moment and then a slow smile curls his lips. “He’d ask if this is some karmic twist for refusing to eat his broccoli and carrots. Somethin’ like that.”
I laugh, because I can almost picture my father standing at the living room threshold, scratching his chin, his weathered brow furrowed with consideration, saying those exact words.
Jonah’s smile turns wistful. “But then he’d tell us to sell. That it’s just a house. To not make the same mistakes he did by tying ourselves down at the expense of people we love.”
My head bobs in agreement. Jonah’s right. My father sold Alaska Wild—our family’s fifty-four-year-old
legacy—because it was time for everyone to move on. That house next to us is just a bunch of walls and a roof and two hundred forty-four mallards with hand-drawn nipples. The Fletcher family is gone. “Then there’s your answer. You guys should sell to Barry.”
He nods slowly. “I guess it’s time to do some serious house-hunting, then. What else you got here?” He flips through tabs on my laptop, pausing to frown. “You wanna live on a farm?”
“No. That’s an Instagrammer I’ve started following,” I admit, scrolling through the pretty array of pictures. Since deciding to move here, I’ve been branching out with different lifestyle bloggers for inspiration, specifically ones who live in rural settings. “She’s an interior designer, and she’s been renovating this old place in Nebraska with her husband, and chronicling it. I love her style. And the house has so much character. That’s what I want—a house with character.”
“It’s all white,” he scoffs.
“No, it’s not.”
“The walls are white, the floors are white, the curtains are off-white …” He smirks. “Even the couch is white! Where the hell do they sit?”
“It’s slipcovered.”
He shakes his head, chuckling. “For the love of God, please don’t make me live in an all-white house.”
“Her story is interesting! She’s all about upcycling and sustainable living. They’ve got animals and she grows all her own vegetables.”
Jonah’s eyebrow arches. “So you do wanna live on a farm.”
“No! I didn’t say that—”
“I can see it now.” He stretches out on his back, tucking his arms under his head in a mock-relaxed pose, the hem of his shirt creeping up, exposing his taut stomach muscles. “Calla Fletcher, farmer. I’ll get you some big, ugly rubber boots and a straw hat for your birthday. And a basket, for all the eggs. We have to have chickens.”
I scrunch my nose. “Chickens smell. And don’t they attract bears?”
“And a cute little goat or two,” he goes on, ignoring me.
“I hate goats.”
“What?”
