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“Okay.” I didn’t move just yet. It seemed like he was going to say something more, but instead he shook his head. I walked back to the cabin. Bo started to follow until Dad whistled, and I walked the rest of the way alone. Step-drag, step-drag. I had worn myself out too much.
I sat on the bed and took out the picture of Mom. I wished I’d gotten a picture of Scott, too. He’d visited me in the hospital, and he’d called me once a week or so. He’d said he wished I could come stay with him, and I said I wished that, too, but I hadn’t meant it, exactly. I hadn’t wanted to live anywhere, then. I’d just wanted to sleep and wake up with my mom still there and everything just a dream.
•••
DINNER WAS SMOKED fish and bread slathered in butter and honey. We ate in silence, but when I was licking crumbs and honey off my fingers, Dad finally spoke.
“I loved your mother very much,” he said.
I looked at him blankly. It might sound weird, but I’d never really thought about the two of them being together. Mom never once said she loved him that I could remember. It was always, “I thought your father was so exciting,” or “Your father wasn’t quite like anyone I’d ever met.”
“Do you know how we met?” Dad asked.
“You were in an airport,” I said.
“She was heading back to Seattle from her cousin’s wedding,” he said. “And I was heading to Anchorage. I was going to drive tour buses around a glacier. She thought I was funny. We sat in the bar together because her flight was delayed and my connection wasn’t for a couple of hours, and I liked her so much that I walked up to the counter and asked for a ticket on her flight instead.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I knew you met in an airport, but I didn’t know that.” I sounded stupid to my own ears.
“If you know what you want, don’t let anything stand in your way,” he said. “If you want something, you make it happen.”
“I want to go home,” I said.
His face fell. “You are home,” he said, but it sounded hollow.
“I want to go back with Griff. It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “I won’t tell them you’re here. I’ll tell them... I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, baby bear, but that’s not possible.”
“I’m supposed to be in school,” I said.
“You’ll learn plenty here,” he countered. “Things that are a lot more useful than the names of a bunch of dead old white guys.”
I pulled my foot up on the chair and curled my arms around my knee. I had to keep my bad leg on the ground. It didn’t like to bend like that anymore. “I can’t hunt. I can’t fish. I can’t even walk very well,” I said. “How am I supposed to live out here?”
“I’ll teach you all of that,” he said. Then his face lit up. “Hey, now. What do you mean you don’t hunt? Didn’t your mom tell me you won some kind of medal?”
“For archery,” I said. “When I was thirteen. And that’s not hunting. It’s shooting a target.” My ears burned. I’d taken up archery because my mom told me that my dad was really into it. I’d stopped when she’d let slip that he was into bow hunting, and my vegetarian, animal-loving sensibilities had been wounded.
“It’s not so different. The target just happens to be a deer or a rabbit. If you scare them into moving, you’ve lost half the battle. It’s all about getting up close. Which means moving slow and steady, just like you’ve got to with your leg,” he said.
“Too bad we don’t have a bow.”
He slapped his thigh, suddenly excited. “Come over here.” He walked to the bench under the window. He lifted up the seat, revealing a storage area underneath. There were two rifles inside, both of them with gleaming wood stocks. And something wrapped in cloth.
Dad unwrapped it and held it out. It was a bow: compound, with pulleys and a sight. Not as fancy as some I’d seen in competitions but still much higher tech than the stick-and-string basics. It was dark green, mottled like camouflage. A hunting bow.
I turned it over in my hands. It wasn’t the kind I was used to. Our bows were modern, but they were simple. This looked like complicated machinery compared to those, but really it was all the same concept. This would just be easier to pull and hold steady, and the sight would certainly make it easier to aim, once I got used to it.
“I don’t want to shoot animals,” I said. But I did really want to shoot that bow.
“You don’t have to just yet,” he said. “So long as you eat what I shoot. I should be able to bring in plenty for the two of us. Especially the way you eat.”
“Are there arrows?” I asked, trying to sound disinterested and failing.
“Wouldn’t be a very good bow without them,” Dad said with a laugh. He rummaged in the storage space and came up with a quiver filled with about forty arrows. “That’s all we’ve got, but if you want to keep using it, I can always have Griff buy you some more.”
“Maybe... maybe I could go practice, tomorrow,” I said.
