He didn’t show, I said.
Jesse shook his head. I was going to ask if you’re feeling better, he said.
Only because you don’t want me to think you’re more worried about Hatch than you are about me.
Whoa, Jesse said and grabbed my arm, firm but gentle. Why would you say that?
I stared at the ground, trying to wade out of the soup of him. He was too close.
Sure, I’m worried about Tom, Jesse said, quiet. But either he showed up and left, or he showed up and—you took care of it.
The unspoken question not just in his eyes and his inflection, but hovering in the air between us, a tangible thing.
Dad come over, guiding Marcey by her harness. She had long recovered from her chocolate treat, was back to wolfing down any food you put in front of her. She grinned with her tongue lolling, danced up on two feet, and I wished with everything inside of me that my mind could be as simple as hers. Eager to run, not thinking about much else.
I think two on the line will be enough, Dad said as he clipped Marcey onto the gangline. We’re not going too far.
I’m ready when you are, I told him.
What can I do? Jesse’s voice dropped to a whisper as Dad stepped onto his own sled.
I knew Jesse meant what could he do to help me. To mend things between us, since he sensed something was off. But even with that worry, hope shimmered round his edges like light creeping into a dark room round the edges of a door. With Tom out of his life and a new family of sorts, here, Jesse was finally starting to believe maybe he could have what he’d been searching for ever since he left Oklahoma. Since before that, even.
But at the center of him, still, a box with a lid shut tight. A part of him I still couldn’t reach.
I rubbed my forehead, squeezed my eyes shut for a brief moment. Dad whistled to his team, and they sprung forward, pulling him toward the trailhead.
Nothing, I told Jesse and tried to sound like myself. Everything’s okay. We can talk when I get back.
I hopped onto my sled’s runners and called out, Let’s go! to Marcey and Boomer before Jesse could say anything else. Followed Dad onto the trail, not needing to look back to know Jesse watched till I was gone.
The deeper we dove into the woods, the quieter my head grew. The woods closed round me and the runners of the sleds hushed against the snow and the dogs breathing, their feet churning, we traveled in a cloud of our own breath, under the bowed limbs of trees and sky growing lighter with the burgeoning day. Dad’s head was quiet, too, the fullness and emptiness of the woods had the same effect on us both, our worries didn’t exactly vanish, instead they was like the land after a big snowfall, everything buried, the shapes of things still discernible but all their hard edges blunted.
I was warm in my coat and hat but when we hit the lake and crossed its icy surface, a spike of cold shot through me. I begun to shiver almost as hard as I had the day I pushed Helen into the water. I gripped my handlebar, thankful Dad was ahead of me and couldn’t see how badly I shook.
We made camp after dark. Dad was quiet as we ate next to our fire, preoccupied with thoughts of Helen now that we wasn’t moving over the trail. He didn’t know what to do, and he gnawed at his not-knowing, a bone he couldn’t chew through or leave alone.
Where’s the farthest you ever gone from here? I spoke up.
Hmm—? His face emerged from the shadows as he leaned forward into the circle of light cast by the fire.
Training out here, on your own, I said. How far out have you gone?
He sipped hot chocolate from his thermos, his mind mulling over the question now, distracted for the moment. Like I’d hoped. His cheeks was still windburned from the race, and his hair had got shaggy. I noticed for the first time it was starting to gray, the white in his beard wasn’t from frost.
Long time ago, Dad said, I took a small team all the way through the mountains. You know those two peaks, the ones that look almost like a pair of blunt teeth?
I nodded.
I followed a pass that took me right between them. Come out the other side. But the only descent I found was a chute that makes Dalzell Gorge look like a playground slide. So that’s the farthest north I ever went from here. This was, you must’ve been about four or five. Two babies at home, I didn’t fancy plunging headfirst down the side of a mountain.
The flames of the fire lapped at the night round us. Dark as pitch now but in the morning the sun would be up earlier than ever, we was gaining more and more light and in a couple more months the days would grow warmer and the snow would soften, the trees would bud and the grass green up and, for a time, making your way off the land would get easier. Then the snows and ice would come again. Collecting water, finding something to eat, staying warm would all get harder, unless you knew what you was doing.
Dad wedged his thermos in the soft snow and put his hands out toward the fire. You know, he said, before Scott come along, before you was even born, I always figured on having a couple sons who’d run the dogs with me. I had it all pictured. We’d have a big kennel, a couple hundred dogs. Three or four of us all racing together.
You sorry it didn’t turn out that way?
He shook his head.
Nope. You come along, and you was so good with the dogs from day one, like you could read their thoughts. You were a natural. In my wildest imagination, I couldn’t have conjured up a girl like you, Trace. It didn’t even matter when Scott got older and it turned out he wasn’t all that interesting in mushing. Don’t get me wrong, if he’d showed more of an interest, I would’ve taught him, too. But you learn pretty quick your kids are going to be drawn to their own thing. And it don’t really matter, long as they’re happy. I imagine Scott’ll go off to college once he’s done with school here. Maybe study photography, maybe writing. Maybe he’ll write for a newspaper or a magazine. I could see him coming home, covering the big race one of these days when you’re running it.
The dogs was bedded down in the straw we’d laid out for them. Now Zip stood up, stretched, then moseyed over to lay with her head in my lap. I stroked the fur above her eyes, the velvety softness of her ears.
What about me? I asked. What do you imagine about me?
Dad took a stick in his hand, poked at the fire till its embers flared.
I guess I always picture you on a sled, he said. Figure you’ll take over the property one day. Run a proper kennel like I thought about doing. Maybe you’ll be the one with sons and daughters racing along with you. A hundred dogs.
I nodded.
Who knows? he said.
I tilted my head back. The sky, endless, empty. Starless that night.
Who knows, I echoed.
We turned in when the fire begun to die. Dad’s brain chattering, the edges of his thoughts growing fuzzier the closer he drifted to sleep. Still, I knew what he was going to ask before he give voice to it.
Trace?
Yeah.
You sure Helen didn’t come check on you at all?
I could of told him then. About Tom Hatch, how stabbing him was a mistake I might of ended where it started, if only I hadn’t gone back into the woods and found the pack full of money. A pack I assumed belonged to Hatch, so it was easy to claim the money as mine. Except that wasn’t even the real reason I kept the money. I kept it because I thought I needed it, because the only thing that mattered to me was racing and the money would pay my racing fees. It also made me beholden to Jesse, though, so that when Hatch showed up again, it wasn’t just a matter of finishing what I’d started the day I stabbed him. It was also a matter of owing something to Jesse. I owed him protection. I didn’t just owe it, I wanted it, wanted to protect him and keep him nearby. Close. I couldn’t let anyone hurt him because he was mine.