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I have no clue what overflow is, but Jonah’s tight brow of concentration convinces me I don’t want to be asking him questions right now. I stay quiet as he brings us down. I sense the plane’s skis slide across the lake’s surface for a moment, without slowing, before we’re lifting off again. We circle around and, with Jonah eying the tracks and grunting “we’re good,” we descend once again.
Within minutes, Veronica’s skis are gliding over the snow-covered lake. We ease to a stop some thirty feet from the cabin. With anyone else, I might have worried about crashing into it. According to my dad, Jonah is one of the best bush pilots out there and, if there’s anyone who would know, it would have been Wren Fletcher.
Jonah leans forward to peer out at the place through the windshield. “Nice, right?”
“It’s like a holiday postcard.” A steep roof caps the two stories of the stained-ash cabin, with a deep overhang to shelter the wooden door from the elements. A tall chimney juts out from the left side. The space beneath the platform deck is jam-packed with chopped wood for a fire that I can’t wait to curl up beside tonight.
It’s certainly giving off cozy Christmas vibes, with traditional evergreen-and-red-ribbon wreaths marking each of the five windows and the door. On the deck sit two poinsettia-red Adirondack chairs, peeking out from beneath a layer of undisturbed snow and angled to overlook the lake. Above them dangle strings of patio lights, stretching the width of the cabin.
I’m about to say it’s perfect until I spy a small wooden shed tucked into the thicket of trees behind, the telltale moon carving in the door. I groan at the unpleasant surprise.
“Come on … You’re tougher than that,” Jonah goads, which only irritates me more. He knows how much I despise outhouses.
“No, I’m not. Get used to it.” I throw his favorite line back at him. “It’s freezing out here! And dark for, what, fifteen hours?”
“More like nineteen to twenty right now.”
“Oh! Even better.”
He chuckles. “It’s no big deal.”
“Says the guy who gets to open the door and whip it out. Meanwhile I have to walk through ten feet of snow in the dark—probably with wolves and shit around—and freeze my bare ass every time I need to pee!”
“There’s a heat lamp in there.”
I shoot him a flat look, earning his laughter.
“What if I help thaw your ass after?”
“Yeah, you will,” I mutter.
“God, I missed your bad attitude.” His fingers curl around the back of my neck to give me a soft, playful squeeze. “Come on … Let’s get this place up and running.”
* * *
“You can lose the coat and boots. I think it’s finally warm enough.” Jonah shoves another log into the woodstove. The orange glow from within flares.
I test his claim by blowing into the air. When we first stepped inside this quaint cabin of knotty pine, our hot breath billowed in the cold. Now, though, with a roaring fire and a heater pumping out warmth, only a mild chill lingers.
I kick off my boots and shrug out of my parka, swapping it for my red-and-black-checkered flannel jacket and wool socks that I dug out of my suitcase. With the glass of red wine I poured after unloading our food—mostly snacks and premade meals from Agnes’s freezer, but also a turkey breast ready to go into the small propane stove—I settle onto the futon, careful not to knock the oil lamp that casts a dim but warm light. “How often do Bobbie and George come here?”
“A week or two in the summer, and a lot of weekends once the busy season dies down. They’re usually here from Christmas till after New Year’s.” He prods the burning logs with a poker one last time before shutting and latching the little door. “They’re gonna retire here. Get the place set up to live in comfortably year-round.”
“Year-round? I think I’d get bored.” My curious gaze drifts around the interior, with Bobbie’s cute little touches—an embroidered cushion, a pastel watercolor of a bush plane floating on a lake, a kitschy sign about hearth and home—that feel very much like the bubbly grocery store cashier with a faded Alabama accent.
Above us is a tiny loft, with just enough room for a double bed and two narrow side tables. I’m struggling to picture George, a sizeable man with a handlebar mustache, ambling up that ladder at night. “How’d they get all that furniture up there?”
“Painfully, on ropes. I was here for that.” Jonah sinks into the futon next to me with a groan. He hasn’t stopped since his boots hit the snowy ground hours ago: emptying and securing the plane, bringing in firewood, loading and mounting his gun on the wall, setting up the various propane, oil, battery, and solar-panel power sources that keep this cabin operational. He’s already talking about chopping more logs and taking the ATV to get water from the town well tomorrow.
I lean in to rest my jet-lagged head against his shoulder, inhaling the scent of burning wood as I absorb the silence, save for the sound of the crackling fire. I can’t recall the last time I was so content. “It’d be nice to have a place like this to escape to.”
His eyebrow arches. “Even with the outhouse?”
“I’d only come in summer.” I discovered the three-piece bathroom in the back of the cabin, operational in warmer months when the water can’t freeze in the pipes.
“There’s my little princess,” he teases, his hand sliding over my thigh affectionately. But then his voice turns softer, more serious. “We can have this, too, once we figure things out. Give us a few years to get settled somewhere and then we can look at buying a patch of land somewhere up here and building our own place.”
“Like this?”
