Casper hadn’t exactly thought about the possibility of Owen staying.
Or that Raina might be glad Casper brought him home. A father for her daughter—Layla’s real father.
No, Casper hadn’t thought about that at all.
“What about Alaska and Scotty?” Casper said. He found the right input and the Blue Ox fight against the Denver Blades appeared in high def, without sound.
Owen sighed. “I don’t know. You saw her walk out of here. And I called Carpie, who hasn’t seen her since I have. Her father isn’t answering, and I’m not sure who else to call. My phone is probably back in my rack on the Willie, and hers might be at the bottom of the Bering Sea for all I know, so I’m at a loss. I hope she’s not back in Homer but . . .”
“Did you seriously propose?”
“Yeah, I proposed.” Owen made a face. “But you were right; I wasn’t really thinking about what would happen if she said yes. I was trying to get her to hope, to hang on until we were found.” He went quiet for a long time, just breathing, running his fingers over the top of the covers. “But . . . here’s the thing. I’ve really made a mess of things. Getting injured, ending my career, the scene at Eden and Jace’s wedding—”
“No, that was me. If you recall, I tackled you. You just hit me back.”
“Maybe you should have played football instead of hockey.”
“Maybe you should have learned how to throw a punch,” Casper said.
Owen looked up, sharp.
“Don’t get your shorts in a wad. I’m kidding.”
Owen glanced at the screen, not smiling. “I’ll never forget the look on Mom’s face. Or Dad’s. I felt twelve again. I thought they were going to separate us and make us say ten nice things to each other.”
“You aren’t completely ugly,” Casper said.
“You don’t smell like socks.” A grin appeared on Owen’s face, the first one Casper had seen since Scotty fled out the door. Then it fell away. “I miss them. I miss everyone. I didn’t want it to be that way. It’s just . . . I couldn’t face myself and the life I had lost. And now . . . Well, you try floating around for a day on the ocean and see how you feel. Everything starts to snap into place.”
Casper went back to fiddling with the TV connections, suddenly not wanting to think about his brother nearly frozen in the middle of the ocean.
“Yeah, I made mistakes—a lot of them. But I got a good look at the guy I didn’t want to be anymore, and I’ve been trying to put it back together. I’ve even been . . . reading my Bible. Praying. Trying to figure out if there is any reason why God might want to save my wretched hide.”
Casper glanced at him, not expecting that.
“I want to be someone who can go home and fix what I messed up. But I don’t know how. I have this sort of sick feeling when I think about starting over. Like I’m going to bomb, big. Again. Make a mess of everything. The family screwup.”
Casper stared at the screen again, not sure what to say.
“Truth is, I don’t know if Deep Haven is really home anymore.”
This made Casper look away from the game, at Owen. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t leave home when I was eighteen or even twenty. I left when I was sixteen, and before that I spent every weekend on the road. I barely know you guys. I knew Eden because she lived close by and hovered over me for years. But the fact is, I’m not really a part of the family. . . .”
“Of course you are.”
“Think about it. I barely know Amelia, and I haven’t been on one meaningful vacation with the family since I was thirteen. I’ve always been standing on the outside, looking in. And the last two years didn’t help. I’m not . . . I don’t really belong.”
Casper had nothing. Because while four days ago he might have agreed, seeing Owen hurt and defenseless had him feeling like the king of all jerks.
And Owen had pegged it. Casper didn’t want him to stick around Deep Haven, make a mess of the happy picture Casper had painted in his brain. One that gave him full legal custody of Layla and erased Owen’s biological claim on her. And yeah, relegated him to distant uncle.
Still, Casper’s mouth opened on its own. Again, running out ahead of his brain. “You belong, Owen. We all missed you. And I know I came off a little, well, hot, when I found you, but it’s just because I was so stupidly relieved that I didn’t have to go home and tell Mom you died at sea.”
“You’re going to make me cry.”
“Then I was sitting on the mother of all land mines, and here you were, all happy and engaged and . . .”
“Stop before I reach for my hankie. Fine. I’ll go home already.”
Perfect. Casper wanted to bang his head against the wall.
The sounds of the game came over the screen. Casper stepped back, searching for Max on the ice.
“He’s in the penalty box,” Owen said quietly, his face changing. And in a moment, Casper saw the brother he’d known. Passionate, giving his all to his sport. He went after what he wanted with everything inside him. Like hockey. And saving the woman he loved—or thought he loved—from drowning. And living through a punctured lung.
Yeah, Owen had the uncanny ability to go after the goal and score. Every time.
Casper sank down in the chair, his stomach clenching. He noticed that Owen’s jaw had tensed and asked, “Should I turn it off?”
“No. Jace should tell them to defend against the spread and look out for a backdoor crease pass—ah! Like that one!”
The siren sounded the Denver goal.
“Maybe when I get home, I’ll give the Blue Ox a call, see if they need a trainer. That way I’ll have a job while I stick around and get to know my daughter. Maybe I can get some tickets—take her to a few games. Do you think Raina would let me?”
“She’s not even a year old yet, Owen. Give her a chance to walk, maybe talk, understand what she’s looking at.”
“I started skating when I was four. I once saw skates for two-year-olds.” Owen leaned back, pulled up the covers. “C’mon, Casper. Three hundred dollars for a pepperoni and mushroom. You know you want it.”
Shoot, but he did.
Less than a week since her life nearly ended, Scotty found herself saying good-bye again. This time it was on purpose.
“C’mon, Red, it’s getting late.” She stood in the door to the wheelhouse of the Willie, watching her old man take the helm one last time. He peered out over the dark, frothy waters of Dutch Harbor as if about to face his final gale.
“Did you clean the galley?” he asked without looking at her.
“Aye, Captain. Uncle Gil is outside in the truck. We have a low ceiling coming in and I need to get back to Anchorage.”
Shake off her past once again. Start over.
Forget.
She’d spent the last four days cleaning the nooks and crannies of the Wilhelmina, hosing down the crab tanks, repairing the sorting table, helping Juke weld the hoist back into place, and finishing the minor repairs that would make the old floater salable.
In fact, her father had already listed the 108-foot single screw, and she hoped offers would pour in. She’d tell him to accept the first one, take the money, and flee.
They just might break clear with twenty cold ones for his retirement, what little of it there would be if he didn’t hold off on the cheeseburgers.
“I can’t believe it’s over,” Red said now, quietly. He held one hand on the jog stick, the other on the engine throttle, as if he were about to ease her out of port into the icy crab fields.
It doesn’t have to be. The words tiptoed across Scotty’s lips, but she swallowed them. What choice did they have? With the less-than-quota crab haul this season and his mountainous medical bills . . . “You don’t have to shut her down. You could let me take over payments—”
“No.” He turned away from the helm, his gaze landing hard on her. “Crab fishing is no place for—”
“A girl, I know.”
He gav
e her that no-comment sound that might be agreement or could simply be his desire to kill the conversation.
A retort was forming on her lips when—
“I can’t spend every minute worrying about you getting yourself thrown overboard.” Then he brushed by her, down the stairs.
Huh.
Scotty scrambled after him, pausing to scoop up her duffel bag and her last meager possessions from her quarters.
She’d found Owen’s bunk and rolled up his sleeping bag with his toiletries kit and, oddly, a Bible she found under the prison-striped pillow. Maybe he’d meant his words about faith after all. She’d also found two pictures lodged in the springs of the bunk above his. She recognized Casper in one shot and guessed the rest of the crew in the picture might be the family Christiansen. The other picture was of a very young Owen on skates, arm around the neck of a barely older Casper.
No wonder they’d nearly come to blows. People who loved each other that much knew how to wound the deepest.
She planned on dropping the kit off, along with his pay, at the hospital later when she landed in Anchorage. Just a quick stop-in.
No trouble, no emotion. All business.
She caught up with Red just as he reached the truck and stopped him before he wrangled his girth into the backseat of the extended cab. “Sorry, but not this time. You have shotgun.” She dumped both duffels into the back. “Hey, Uncle Gil.”
“Elise,” the police chief said.
She let the use of her real name pass—his way of trying to turn her into the daughter he’d never had. Her father’s best friend, “Uncle” Gil was everything Old Red wasn’t—warm, bighearted, loud, tall, and strong, with hands that could tear an apple in half, and more of a father than Old Red had ever attempted to be. But that’s what happened when you had a wife, two sons—a real family.
Gil put the truck in gear and pulled away from the dock, leaving the Wilhelmina tied up, the deck empty, the crane looming and rusty against the steel-gray sky. They’d unloaded the two hundred pots into their storage area, ready for new ownership.
Scotty didn’t look back but noticed with a twinge in her chest the way her father’s hand tightened on the door handle, fighting a final look at the boat he’d named after his wife.
“You sure you don’t want to stop in and see Rosie? She’ll make dinner,” Gil said. “There’s no real rush, is there?”
“I’m meeting someone for dinner.” Not exactly a lie. She would meet up with Angie after she picked up some takeout. Probably. After all, that’s what happened when you bunked with an old friend.
Gil glanced at Red. “Does he have a name?”
“Angie and I went to police academy together; don’t get excited.”
She hid a smile when his fell.
“She has a fella,” Red offered, pulling out his Winstons. “The guy she went overboard with.”
“Red! He is not my fella.”
He lit the cigarette, smoke tunneling from his nose. “According to Carpie, he proposed.”
“Really?” This from Uncle Gil, who glanced at her. “Marriage?”
“No. He proposed we go skydiving. Yeah, marriage.”
From the silence, apparently all the men in her life agreed with Carpie. Not marriage material. Perfect.
“He wasn’t serious. And neither was I. It was . . . something we did to stay alive.”
More silence.
“Really. It’s over.”
Except it didn’t feel over. Not with the news that Owen had been trying to track her down. First through Carpie, then her father’s missed calls—four of them on his cell phone that she discovered while cleaning up the wheelhouse.
As if Owen might still be thinking of her too. . . .
She shook her head as her uncle drove them along the bay to the tiny one-runway Dutch Harbor FBO. A snowstorm simmered along the western horizon, just above the mountains that edged the bay. They needed to get in the air soon if they wanted to beat the descending ceiling.
Uncle Gil pulled up to the hangar, and Scotty climbed out after her father, dragging her duffel over her shoulder.
Gil’s pretty Cessna 172, a white albatross with a red racing stripe, sat gassed up, preflight checked, and ready for the trip back to Homer, then on to Anchorage.
Taxi service, Alaska style.
Scotty retrieved Owen’s duffel, cast it over her other shoulder, then loaded them both onto the plane. Her father buckled in behind the pilot as she hopped into the cockpit.
Uncle Gil finished his walk-around, then climbed in and started his preflight rundown. She helped him, and in a moment they were ready for taxi.
“Last chance for a homemade meal.”
Giving no response, Scotty slipped on her headphones.
Something about drifting above the ocean, as opposed to in it, gave new resonance to the fact that she and Owen had survived. Up here, the Bering Sea appeared dark and vast. How the Coast Guard had managed to spot one tiny flare . . .
Have a little faith.
She banished Owen from her head and instead listened to the radio chatter, settling herself into her decision.
The Anchorage police seemed eager to have her, especially with Gil’s recommendation. One chief to another. And though she’d have to start out on patrol, Chief Elmore assured her of a detective job within six months.
She’d be solving cases by this time next year.
They touched down in Homer and her father got out, headed toward his truck. “Water my Christmas cactus!” she yelled after him, and he raised a hand. “And take your shoes off when you walk on the carpet—”
“He’s a crusty old sea dog. Do you really think he’s going to tiptoe around your cute little house in stocking feet?” Uncle Gil shook his head as she shut the door.
“He might.”
“I’ll check in on him, make sure he’s behaving.”
“Just make sure he doesn’t have another heart attack. I’m not ready for him to die on me.”
Uncle Gil patted her hand.
They took off again and made the short hop to the Anchorage airport. The early afternoon sun hung low in the sky, waxing Lake Hood a brilliant umber.
Uncle Gil finished his postflight check and tied down the plane; then Scotty followed him to the terminal. As he stopped in at the office to file his return flight plan, she wandered into the north terminal. Her stomach growled as she stood peering out through the two stories of glass toward Lake Hood, the snow now falling lightly, like the finest dusting of ash as it hit the ground. A cadre of orange plows lined up along the far edge of the parking garage, ready to free travelers from the tangle of weather.
Alaska wasn’t for the weak. Which was why Scotty thrived here. And probably why she’d never make anyone a good wife. She simply wasn’t . . . well, girlie.
She was Alaskan. She thrived on the challenge, the brittle cold that could steal her breath from her chest, hold it in midair for her to consider. The endless layers of snow, determined to bury her. The millions of miles of wildland that could spin a person around, leave her wandering. Here, she meted out justice to any foolhardy criminal who escaped north to hide, only to be rooted out by those who knew their tricks.
So maybe she didn’t need the boat, her fishing life. She could make a place here, finally find her footing. Even set down roots.
“Your shield is still in my top drawer,” Uncle Gil said as he came out to stand next to her.
“I know. But I can’t . . . I thought I could go back to Homer after this season, but the memories are too fresh. Every time I drive by Cindy’s house, I’m going to see her with two shots to her head, dead in her living room. And I’m going to know it’s my fault.”
“Elise—”
“No. It’s Scotty, Uncle Gil. Here, it’s Scotty. I’ve never been Elise to anyone but you. It’s time for me to move on. I need to do this.”
He said nothing as they headed toward the transportation area. “I called ahead. Chief Elmore said he’d send a g
uy.” He gestured toward a cop headed in their direction, shorter, a thatch of light-brown hair, and young as if fresh out of the academy. “Dillon.”
“Sorry, Chief. I had to call for another ride for you,” he said, saluting Uncle Gil. “We got a call in from TSA. They have a couple of yahoos here trying to board a plane with BOLOs on them. I’m picking them up.”
“No problem; we can wait.”
“I have a ride just two minutes out.” He glanced at Scotty. “Ma’am.”
Sir. It was on her lips, but she bit it back and gave him a nod as he hustled away.
They walked outside to wait. She wore a down jacket and a pair of Sorel work boots, but she tasted the edge of winter in the snow pelleting her face.
Not fair. It shouldn’t be snowing on October 4.
The cruiser pulled up and Uncle Gil knew this recruit too. But that’s what came from his summer stint at the academy, probably. Gil took the front and she climbed in the backseat, pulling Owen’s duffel in beside her.
“I need to stop by the hospital,” she said as they left the airport. A light snow fell from the steel-gray sky. Anchorage always felt so different from the rest of Alaska, connected somehow to the Lower 48 with its shopping malls and Walmarts and sleek downtown.
She tried not to rethink her conversation with Uncle Gil. No. She needed a fresh start, especially now. Maybe she could find a cozy remote cabin in the woods, once she had her legs under her with the new job.
They cut over to Providence Drive. The officer pulled up to the front.
“I’ll just run in,” Scotty said quickly.
She caught her breath, hating how her heartbeat thundered in her neck as she strode down the hall, Owen’s duffel bag bouncing against her hip.
Oh, hey, Owen. Yeah, I was just . . . You left this on the boat and . . . What am I doing here?
She stood outside his room. Drew a breath.
Hello, Owen. How are you feeling? I was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop this off. Have a good life.
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