“Just to visit my sister when she lived in Boston. And I went to college in Oregon for a year,” I say, trying to focus on anything else but my head.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I thought I might be a teacher, but it didn’t work out.” I spread a palm on the table and force myself to open my eyes. David’s alternating between watching me and watching ahead of us like he’s afraid if he looks away for too long, I might keel over. “My dad got sick, and I had to come back up here to help out.”
“Is he okay?” David asks.
“Yeah. He had prostate cancer and needed about a year of treatment, but he got better. It took a lot out of him, and he’s retired now. He’ll go out with his buddies, but he doesn’t fish commercially anymore.”
“And you didn’t go back to school?”
I shrug. I had plans. First Oregon, then the rest of the lower forty-eight. Maybe California, maybe Texas. Stef pushes me to go back, but school costs money and time, and I always feel like it’ll end in another crisis that drags me back home. “I like fishing. Like being close to my family. My sister started having some problems with her marriage. She left her husband and moved back up here. It seemed easier to stay and work on the boats. I get to spend a lot of time with my nephew. He’s great.”
I wait for David to argue. Stef’s pointed out more than once that I could get my teaching degree in Alaska. But it’s not the same. I had a vision. Going south, seeing more of the country. It didn’t work out... which was what I was trying to explain when I started telling David this whole story.
“So you’ve never been anywhere else?”
“Not really. I’d like to see Europe one day. Maybe Hawaii.” Though all of that assumes my brain stays safely between my ears, and right now it feels a bit touch and go. “What about you?”
“You know. Work keeps me moving all over.”
“What’s it like?”
He gives me a bleak smile. “I wish I could say, but I don’t get the chance to play tourist.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun. You don’t have one place you’d want to go back to?”
He doesn’t say anything to that. He just watches me worriedly as we bounce along the water.
Even with David pushing the engine as much as he’s comfortable, it takes a long time to get back. Closer to three hours instead of two. I take over the wheel as we come around the edge of the cove, and they must have known we had a problem, because there’s half a dozen staff standing at the end of the dock. I brush theHawkagainst the boards a little harder than I mean to, and David puts a hand on my shoulder. We stare at each other for a long time before I finally kill the engine.
“We made it,” he says.
“Thanks to you.”
For a minute, it feels like we’re back on the ocean with the bear in the distance and almost no space between us. I have to look like a mess, but I want to ask him if maybe, when I get myself together again, we could see if we can close this distance even more.
“Jack? Jack is everything okay?” Harper’s voice cuts through the closed cabin door, killing what might be left of the moment. I go to open the door and stagger halfway there, leaving David to push past me and do what I can’t.
“We could use some help,” he says.
What follows is a flurry of activity. Harper’s in my face asking me over and over if I’m okay and how many fingers she is holding up? I’m ferried into the lodge like I can’t get there on my own, no matter how many times I say I’m fine. And honestly, as soon as I’m on solid ground, things get immediately better. The spinning stops, and the pain in my head goes from being a pulsing thing to a steady ache. But Harper won’t hear any of it, instead herding me into the staff dining room and shouting orders. Somewhere along the way, David disappears.
It’s only after I’ve had a conversation with a virtual doctor in Anchorage that they leave me alone. The doctor says there’s a chance I have a concussion, but short of flying me off the property, she can’t confirm. Harper’s given instructions on how to monitor me, and even though I swear I’ll be okay, she sends me to my room and says she’ll be back in two hours to make sure I haven’t slipped into a coma.
“It’s the middle of the afternoon. I won’t be sleeping for hours.”
She jabs a finger at me. “You took off with a guest without telling anyone where you were going, and you came back with a head injury. You’re lucky I don’t ship you out of here.”
Hard to argue with that.
But once she’s gone, the only things I want to do involve sleeping or leaving this room. I need to go back down to the boat and clean things up. I should find David and make sure he’s okay—though why he wouldn’t be okay is unclear and maybe related to my nonconcussion. I could go back to the dining room because I’m starving. It’s midafternoon, and I haven’t had anything to eat since before David and I left this morning.
But there’s every chance Harper is standing outside my door waiting for me to sneak out.
I call Stef.
“Hey, what’s wrong with your screen?” she asks, instead of “Hi” or “How are you?”
