Torchlight (28 page)

“There she is,” Peter said from behind Bryn. “I’m always amazed
that I can’t see their place from the water until I’m nearly on top of it.”

Deep in the shadows, the cabin did blend wonderfully with the trees, hidden behind a copse of alder and white spruce.

Jedidiah stood up with his son, ax in hand, panting. They had been working on felling an old-growth, rotten spruce that threatened their roof in the next winter storm. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and took a step closer, grinning. “I knew that must be Peter Bailey who flew in,” he said. “And he’s got Bryn with him. Man, what a beauty!”

Eli met his father’s knowing eyes.

“She was always like catnip and you the tomcat,” Jed said in gentle warning. “Watch yourself.”

“I don’t think she’s interested, Dad. The girl couldn’t even manage to say hello last time I saw her.”

“She was a kid then. Now you’re adults. And that makes your dance a little more dangerous.”

“What’re you talking about?” Eli asked crossly.

“Can’t you see it? Trust a father’s intuition then. Just watch your step, Son. Listen to the Spirit’s lead,” he said, looking upward into the sunlight filtering through the dense alder and spruce boughs. He slammed his ax into the tree trunk and left Eli’s side to greet his old friend.

After a moment, Eli began to follow. As he walked down the path, he tried to get a covert look at Bryn. When he saw her grin up at his father on the bank, it made him pause and almost trip. The girl, who had been a fox at fifteen, had grown into a classic Greek goddess, with long, lithe limbs and dark, swinging hair—an uncommon grace in every movement. And when she smiled, sweet heaven,
it made his heart hurt and sail back to the year he was sixteen. The year she wouldn’t even speak to him. Too good for him, he had supposed. Their childhood friendship plainly dissolved.

Forcing himself to leave the cover of the trees, he approached his father, keeping his eyes on Peter Bailey, not risking a fall on his face in front of Bryn. Eli shook Peter’s hand firmly, noticed the look of admiration in the man’s eyes, his glance down to his daughter. And then Eli had to. Had to turn and look at her, greet her. Like an adult, just when he felt a keening teen shyness he hadn’t encountered in years.

Eli reached up for his grandfather’s airman’s cap and pulled it off his head, slipping it under one armpit. He forced himself to smile and look into her eyes—the color of a beaver’s tail in water. “Hi, Bryn,” he managed.

“Eli,” she said with another smile and a short nod. “Your dad roped you into a trip to Summit too, huh?”

“Every summer,” he said, wondering at her words.
Roped?
This place was heaven on earth. The kind magazine crews scouted for catalog shoots. Thoreau would have died a happy man after he’d seen a place like this. He glanced out at the honey glaze on the water, the deep forest green of the mountains, the snow at the peaks that was almost lavender. “What’s it been, four, five years?”

“Five years,” she said, confirming what he already knew. “Dad can only make it two years between visits here. Every five years is right on track for me. I mean, it’s pretty.
rustic … ”

“Ah, I get it,” Jedidiah said, giving her a warm hug. “Californian would rather be at the beach? You’re a sight, Bryn. Pretty as a statefair queen. You must be proud, Peter.”

“Couldn’t be prouder. And she’s smart as a whip too.”

“Dad—,” Bryn tried, obviously embarrassed.

“Straight A’s, at the University of California.”

“Dad—”

“So focused on her studies she won’t even look at the guys,” he said, punching Eli on the shoulder.

“Dad!”

“What?” Peter asked innocently.

Bryn sighed and passed her father, shaking her head. “Dad still thinks I’m a deaf teenager,” she said under her breath to Eli, “so that he has license to say anything that passes through his head. Sorry.”

“No problem,” he said, watching her go by, catching the scent of vanilla and green apples. Her shampoo? A lotion? She sat down on a chair on the porch and looked out at the lake.

“My boy has his pilot’s license,” Jedidiah said to Peter, clearly not wanting to be one-upped. “Has his sights set on his own operation out of Talkeetna.”

“Great,” Peter said in wistful admiration, as if he wished he were the one starting a company in Alaska. He clapped Eli on the shoulder. “That your de Havilland?”

Eli looked past him to the old, restored Beaver on shore, knowing full well that it was the only plane in sight. “She’s mine.”

“A beaut!” Peter said. “I would’ve had you fly us in had I known you were looking for work. Your operation will be all floatplanes?”

“Float
plane
, in the singular form,” Eli said, following his father and Peter up the path to the cabin. “Maybe someday I’ll have one outfitted with skis, take the tourists to land on the glaciers, up around Denali, that sort of thing.”

“Talkeetna’s hopping. Must be twice as many people in town this summer as compared to ten years ago,” Peter said, as if hoping he was wrong.

“Yeah,” Jedidiah said. “Have a seat, everyone. I’ll get some coffee on.” Through the open doorway, over his shoulder he said, “Princess Cruises bring busloads of tourists into town now. You should see them, walking through, completely oblivious to the locals trying to keep on with everyday life. It’s as if they think they own the place. And the trash they leave behind!”

“You know what they say,” Eli interjected. All eyes turned to him. “An environmentalist is someone who already has their own cabin.”

Peter laughed. “That’s a good one. It’s true.” He looked back out to the lake. “I never want Summit to be discovered, changed. This is our place. Ours.” He almost whispered the last word, and Bryn studied her father as if confused. She clearly was not as enamored with the pristine Alaskan valley as were their fathers or Eli. But the way she leaned back against the Adirondack chair, her hair falling out of its knot like a curling oil slick along the Kenai peninsula … She looked as if she belonged there. At Summit Lake. In Alaska. Whether she knew it or not.

“Where’s Meryl?” Peter asked as Jedidiah came out, a tray of coffee mugs in hand.

“She’s taking this summer off. Said us boys needed some man time.” He smiled and offered the tray to each before setting it on the porch floor. “Truth be told, I kind of like our reunions after a little time apart.” There was a twinkle in his eyes. “So how long you stay-in’?” he asked, directing the question to Peter.

“A month, if I can keep her here that long,” Peter said, nodding at his daughter.

She paused for a telling couple of seconds. “I think I can last.” She paused, obviously thinking. “You know, Dad, a porch like this would help a lot.” Bryn looked around at the overhang that extended
from the roof. “Allow us to be outside more. Keep us from getting cabin fever.”

Peter nodded, looking around at it too, walking over to touch a post as if already doing measurements in his head. “Been a while since we’ve made any improvements to the old place.”

“I could bring you some supplies,” Eli offered. “Headin’ out tomorrow.”

“We could harvest the poles and crossbeams ourselves,” Peter said, throwing Bryn a cocked brow of challenge. “I think the boards for the roof would have to be flown in,” he allowed, gratefully accepting a refill from Jedidiah. “Not as young as I once was.”

“Not ready to hew your own lumber?” Jed teased. “Gettin’ soft there, city boy.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m not soft, just smarter. I’d rather spend my month building and hunting and hiking and canoeing, rather than harvesting wood. We’ll maintain the integrity of the cabin with a few native elements,” he said, looking at Bryn again to see if she was in on the idea, “and buy us some relaxation time by getting Eli to fly in the rest.”

“You can do that?” Bryn asked of Eli, forcing his eyes to hers. “Fly in a load of lumber?”

“Sure. I’ll strap it to the Beaver’s belly, compensate for the weight, and bring it right to your door.”

“Can I go with him?” Bryn asked suddenly, casting the question toward Eli as much as to her father. “To mail my letters, pick up some supplies I forgot?”

“Bryn, we just got here—”

“Please, Dad. I’ll just be gone a day. And you said yourself this would be a good project.”

Peter cast anxious, narrowing eyes from Bryn to Eli to Jedidiah. “He’s a good pilot, your son?” he asked of Jed.

“You know as well as I do that bush pilots are the best of the best. And he was trained by a couple of old-timers.”

Peter sighed. “All right.” He looked to Bryn and shook his finger at her. “But you ever tell your mother of this and there’ll be you-know-what to pay.”

“My lips are sealed,” Bryn agreed.

“It’s not you, my man,” Peter said to Eli. “My wife was very explicit about her desire to keep Bryn out of small planes as much as possible.”

“I understand,” Eli said. “Tomorrow then, Bryn. At eight?”

“I’ll be ready,” she said, and Eli wondered at the glint in her eye. Had she changed so much in five years?

A
t least you’re talkin’ to me this year,” Eli said, unable to hold it in any longer.

From his side view, he could see her lips moving and he motioned to his headset, reminding her that over the noise of the de Havilland’s engine, little could be heard without the headset. Her face turned red at having forgotten his instructions, and she pulled the microphone down and said, “I could say the same thing.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he had to concentrate on the plane as he ran through a quick flow check and eased the throttle forward, heading toward the north end of the lake. There was a slight chop to the water, perfect for taking off and landing. He turned the plane into the wind. The Beaver shot along the length of Summit, picking up speed, swaying a little, and then they were aloft, clearing the riverbed below by a couple hundred feet.

Eli chanced a look at Bryn and she was smiling, clearly enjoying the ride. He picked up his radio mike and pressed the button. “Talkeetna radio, this is Beaver-four-two-six-Alpha-Bravo. We’re leaving Summit Lake and headin’ home. ETA is 0930 hours.”

“Roger that, Beaver-four-two-six-Alpha-Bravo.” With Denali just twenty miles away, he knew they would encounter their fair share of air traffic, it being the height of tourist season.

Once they settled into the flight, circumventing the towering Mount Foraker and heading toward Gevanni Pass to the southwest,
he spoke into the headset microphone again, talking to Bryn. “What did you mean by saying you could say the same thing?”

She faced him briefly, her look incredulous. “You were the one who wouldn’t say more than two words to me five years ago.”

“Oh no.
You
were the one who blew
me
off.” They looked at each other for a long moment, and their smiles grew. Eli shook his head. “Guess we both assumed too much, huh?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And I guess I was in love with Chelsea that summer.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a good excuse. And we were kids.”

It was funny, hearing her say that. Eli still felt like little more than a kid, just on the brink of adulthood. He sometimes looked at himself from the outside, shaking hands and talking like an adult, and yet he felt as if he were playing a role, pretending to be grown up. Getting his pilot’s license, establishing a line of credit, and purchasing this old plane were all new territory for him. But there was something about Bryn that told him she was born old. Something exotic and knowing.

Like catnip to a tomcat
, his father had said. How had he known?

Eli Pierce was like a cougar cub in a cage, Bryn decided, covertly looking at him. One minute playfully showing off his floatplane, and the next minute holding back for some reason, as if he were pacing. The combination was charming, she decided. Intriguing. And his declaration that he thought
she
had blown him off five years ago had her at once confused and relieved. Confused that they had gotten so off track and relieved that he didn’t believe her to be beneath him, unworthy of his attention as an Outsider, a cheechako, as the Alaskans referred to those from the Lower 48. Her fears had been for nothing.

Because as much as she didn’t quite understand Alaska and its draw for her father, she knew she wanted to belong. She wanted at least to find acceptance here. She had always needed approval from others, she realized, regardless of their roles in her life, regardless of how much she didn’t
want
to need it, chafed against the need.

Bryn stared out the window at the miles of rolling forest passing by below them, mostly lime green birch and black, pointy spruce, if she remembered the names right. She admitted to herself that it was curious, her simultaneous need for acceptance and her solitary life. Was there something deep inside her that kept her from reaching out, joining the circle? Something that would incapacitate her for the rest of her life? She hoped it was just a phase, just this time of reaching for her goal of becoming one of the best physicians in the country. Once that was attained, surely she would make room in her life for deep friendships, soul connections.

She didn’t want to become her mother, distant and angry, constantly blaming her childhood for her miserable adulthood. Nor did she care to become her father, wandering and searching for something intangible, something that would lead him to happiness. Bryn chanced another look at Eli. He and Jedidiah had a way about them, a peaceful aura that calmed those around them. Maybe that was what drew Peter Bailey to Jedidiah. Her dad wanted a part of Jed’s secret, that sureness about his life. Could it be the place? Alaska? Summit Lake? Surely such certainty about himself had to come from more than a sojourn to the great outdoors. But what?

“Penny … your thoughts,” Eli’s tinny voice came through her headset, broken up.

“It would take many pennies for me to share,” she said. “How long until we reach Talkeetna?”

“Twenty, twenty-five minutes,” he said, glancing out as if able to pinpoint exactly where they were. There were few landmarks other than winding, silver ribbons of rivers among the miles of trees. Did he know this wild, seamless country so well that he could identify each tree? Perhaps it was such familiarity that made him seem so at ease. She wondered. As they got closer to town, they saw more dwellings—summer cabins and year-round homes. “Up ahead,” he said, suddenly. He dipped the nose of the plane and then pulled off some throttle to lose some altitude. “See? In … pond, two o’clock.”