Helen took her coat off, laid it over the hood of her Jeep. Started gathering the logs I’d split, stacked them on the sled till it was full then drug it over to the woodshed. When she come back, I swung the axe, then told her, Appreciate you bringing Scott home from school. I reckon I can drive him tomorrow morning.
You don’t have to worry about that, Trace, she said. I thought I’d stay the afternoon. I’ve got a night shift tonight at the clinic, but after that I thought I’d hang around for a couple days. I figure you could use the company. Besides, you’ve been sick—
I feel fine now.
She nodded. You’re still on the mend, though. I don’t imagine you’ll want to keep the house up and run Scott around while your dad and Jesse are away.
I appreciate it, I said again, but I can manage.
I really don’t mind—
I do.
She put her hands in her pockets. I kept my eyes on her, waiting for her to look away, but she didn’t.
I told your dad I’d look in on you, she said. I know you’re old enough to manage on your own, but you don’t have to, Tracy. I really think I ought to stay. I’d like to.
She was growing roots right in front of me, every second I let her talk they sunk deeper in the ground. Truth is, I wanted to let her stay. A wildness come over me, a recklessness sent the words battering at my lips, clamoring to get out and let Helen in on my secrets, all of them. Tom Hatch, Jesse, how both of them come to be here, and why. What I was, what I was capable of.
Instead, I thought of Tom Hatch. Conjured up the same images I’d worried over when I seen him at the Junior. A knife in his hand, a gun, his weapon pointed at Scott and Helen. I found a hardness inside myself, like a wall, and stood behind it.
It don’t matter what you like, I said. Fact is, you’re not my mother, Helen. I’m eighteen. I don’t need a mother. I don’t need you.
The smallest smile on her face as she watched me. I piled the rest of the logs on the sled and waited for her to move, prayed she would leave. An apology on my tongue that I couldn’t give voice to.
Finally she tugged her coat back on. Opened the door of the Jeep. Before she got in, she said, Fine. I’ll bring Bill’s truck in the morning, and you can give me a ride back to the village when you take Scott to school.
I took the axe in hand again.
Call me if you need anything, Tracy.
I didn’t look back, just listened as her tires shuffled over the soft snow.
The second day of the race, when Scott called after school to ask if he could spend the night with the Lester kid’s family, I told him it was fine. Then, trying not to sound too eager, I added, Do you think his mom would be okay with you staying a couple days, actually? I’m not feeling so hot again, and I don’t want you to catch nothing.
Sure, Scott said. Or I could just stay at Helen’s—
No! I snapped. If Helen got wind I was sick again, she would come back to the house, no matter how rude I had been to her before. I added, I just mean, Helen’s awful busy, and she’s done so much for us. Let’s give her a break, what do you say?
All right. Let me ask Chris’s mom if I can stay a couple days.
I watched Homer and Canyon, the only two dogs still at home with me, pace the kitchen while I waited for Scott to come back to the phone. Concentrating on the click of their toenails on the wood floor, counting their steps to keep myself calm. Finally, Scott was in my ear again, telling me Mrs. Lester said he was welcome for as long as we needed, and could she do anything for me?
No, thanks, I told him. Be good.
And just like that, I was alone. I would be, till Hatch showed up. All I had to do now was be ready.
17
A biting wind kicked up and whistled round the corners of the house. I hunted and checked traps, but with the wind so harsh and no dogs to pull my sled quickly down the trail, I stuck close to home Tuesday and didn’t bother to go out at all Wednesday. I tried to read, but my eyes wandered away from the page, my ears perked for the sound of another person nearby. I kept the radio on for race updates. If Hatch was smart, he was listening to the radio, too. He would know that Dad had dropped back a few spots but still blasted through the Finger Lake checkpoint and on to Rainy Pass. But the next stretch of the race, from Rainy Pass to Rohn, could be treacherous with glare ice. Then there was the Dalzell Gorge, a two-hundred-foot drop followed by a stretch of trail that crisscrosses over a half-froze creek. And if he got through that, he’d have to deal with the Farewell Burn next, all gravel and sandbars. Three hard stretches, three chances for Dad to run into bad luck, scratch the race, and come home early. Hatch couldn’t risk waiting much longer.
Thursday morning I wore paths in the snow all over the yard walking from the house to the barn to the shed to the dog yard. Anxious and desperate to be in the woods. I went down the trail as far as my first trap, but come back fast as I could, the yard still empty. I took Dad’s shotgun from the cabinet where he kept it, made sure it was loaded with the safety on, and propped it in the corner of the kitchen. I honed my knife.
That afternoon, Jesse called from the McGrath checkpoint to say he’d heard that Dad had left Nikolai round one a.m. just ahead of the start of a light snow. He was still running near the middle of the pack but he planned on taking his twenty-four-hour layover at McGrath, get some rest, and let the mushers ahead of him break the trail. He’d dropped Fly back in Rohn on account of fatigue, but the rest of the team was running strong.
What about you? Jesse said. Everything okay?
If you mean have I had any visitors, the answer’s no, I told him.
He was quiet a spell. Then, Maybe he won’t come.
Or maybe Hatch was in the woods right now, watching the house. Or prowling up the trail, a low rumble in his throat as he got closer. I thought it, but didn’t say it.
The wind kicked up even harder, moaning through the yard. Homer and Canyon, who usually barked themselves silly four or five times a day till we let them out, curled up on the couch and didn’t seem interested in moving any farther than their food bowls. I rolled from room to room like a tumbleweed. Built a fire in the woodstove, then another in the fireplace, just because I didn’t know what else to do. Sat down in front of the fire to sharpen my knife, then got back up after a few minutes to check a sound I thought I’d heard outside.
Scott called to see if it was okay to come back home. He wouldn’t say it, but he sounded tired of his friend, cranky and out of sorts, ready for his own bed and books and dogs.
Just give me one more night, I told him and hoped it was all I would need.
I tried to read.
I thawed some stew for dinner.
I whittled some, and thought about what I would do with Scott if Hatch didn’t show up tonight. Let the curls of wood fall to the floor.
Swept the floor.
Round eight thirty, I opened the door to let the retired dogs out, and the wind cut through me, fired bits of snow like embers at my cheeks. The dogs whined and hid just inside the mudroom, till I shoved them both toward the door. Just go! I hollered and my voice was lost in the gale.
I waited with the door closed, fed another log to the woodstove, then opened the door again and whistled. Canyon come sprinting back inside and dropped onto the floor like he’d run the whole Iditarod, but Homer didn’t follow.
Goddammit, I muttered and pulled on a coat.
The wind whipped across the snow and sent it swirling, it become a thick curtain impossible to see through. I slid my feet forward to feel for the first step on the back stoop, my hand out. In a brief moment when the wind died and the air cleared, I spotted Homer, standing at the end of the driveway.