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“Uh-huh,” I manage through a pant.
“You’re all out of breath.” She snorts. “I thought you were a runner!”
“This is different … from running.” Though I sounded about the same by the time I reached the end of my ten-mile run with Jodi and Emily—two quiet-mannered women who I learned speak little and smile even less. I’ve already politely declined their invitation to join them next weekend.
Preparing this soil is backbreaking work. And this woman, who has three or four decades on me, is out here by choice, her breathing even. The only sign she’s exerted herself is the damp gray curls stuck to her forehead.
She leans against the garden gate, settling a biceps over the top that would give most guys I’ve dated a run for their money in an arm-wrestling match. Beyond, Zeke grazes on a patch of newly sprouted weeds. Muriel insisted that he should be allowed to wander while we’re working out here. Meanwhile, Bandit took off into the woods, to climb a tree. “You’ve got yourself a good first garden, Calla,” she says with a satisfied nod. “We can start planting tomorrow.”
“The porch guy’s coming to install the screens tomorrow.” Thank God. The bugs haven’t risen from their winter nests, but I know they’re coming, each day growing a bit longer and warmer.
“And are you helpin’ him build?” Her wrinkled lips twist with a doubtful smirk.
“Well, no, but—”
“So, I’ll bring the seedlings in the morning. We should be able to get everything in by noon.”
There’s no point trying to explain that I don’t want to be all the way back here when a stranger is working on my house. What if he has questions? What if he needs my opinion? I’m sure she’d have an answer for that, too. Right now, though, I want her to leave so I can shower, eat, and rest my throbbing body until Jonah comes home.
“Have you seen the rest of your property yet?” Muriel asks suddenly.
“Uh, no. There’s, like, almost a hundred acres.” I haven’t ventured beyond the driveway and the pen. My guess is I’ll never see all of it.
She lifts her chin in that way she has sometimes when she talks. Like she’s about to tell me a secret, something she knows I don’t know—which is undoubtedly a lot. “I’ll bet Phil didn’t tell ya about the old cabin.”
I pick through my memory and come up blank. “What cabin?”
The broad smile that fills her face makes me instantly regret asking. “Come on. You and me are goin’ for a little ride.”
* * *
The back of Muriel’s jeans and coat are splattered with mud by the time she hops out of her seat in the middle of the thicket.
I check my own pant legs to confirm that my clothes are equally dirty. The narrow, wet path she led me on to get here was sinking and churning beneath the weight of our ATVs.
We’re surrounded by tall, leggy spruce and birch trees that are still mostly naked, though I see tiny buds on the ends of skinny branches. Fallen trunks lay in every direction, many rotted and coated with patches of bright green moss. A blanket of crumpled brown leaves from last fall’s shedding layers the forest floor in clumps, like soggy newsprint, waiting to decompose fully.
“Is this my property?” I feel like an idiot asking that, but it seemed like I trailed Muriel forever.
“Sure is.” She unfastens her helmet and hooks it on her handlebar, then reaches for the brown rifle strapped on her ATV’s rack. “I imagine we made enough noise comin’ in that there won’t be a sane critter within a mile of us, but I like to be prepared, just in case.”
What about insane critters? I want to ask. The predatory grizzly that dragged a man out of his tent in the middle of the night? The protective moose that trampled a dog because it got between her and her baby?
I haven’t seen our moose in weeks. Jonah thinks the noise from the plane taking off every day may have caused them to venture elsewhere.
Muriel checks something on the gun before throwing the strap over her shoulder. “Jonah’s taught you how to use one of these, right?”
Here we go … “I don’t like guns.”
“It has nothin’ to do with likin’ them. Though, plenty of people love their guns.” She picks through the
loose branches, her boots kicking away clumps of wet leaves. “It’s about feeling safe.”
“That’s just it. I don’t feel safe around them.” Even seeing this one in her grip unsettles me. “I didn’t grow up around guns.”
“What? Your dad never took you out huntin’ in the tundra when you came to visit?”
Toby and Teddy know I’m from Toronto and that my father owned Alaska Wild, so I have to assume they are Muriel’s source of information. “I never came to visit. My father and I … we weren’t on speaking terms until last summer. I hadn’t seen him in twenty-four years.”
