The Simple Wild

by K. A. Tucker

  “We couldn’t be getting along better if we tried. Peas and carrots, Wren. Fucking peas and carrots.”

  I use my hands for leverage, digging fingers into his ribs, hunting for a sensitive divide. I find nothing but a thick layer of muscle and hard ridges. So I do the only thing I can think of: search the hard plane of his chest with my fingers until I find what I think is a nipple.

  And squeeze, then twist.

  He releases me with a grunt of pain.

  “More like vinegar and milk, I’d say,” Agnes says, still thoroughly amused.

  Soft footfalls pad down the hallway. “What’s going on out here? What’s so funny?” Mabel saunters into the kitchen, changed into black leggings and a plain but fitted white T-shirt that shows off narrow hips and the small buds of breasts. Long, poker-straight hair hangs halfway down her back, recently brushed. Her innocent eyes flitter quickly at our faces before settling on Jonah’s to linger.

  And I instantly see the truth behind Agnes’s claim.

  Mabel has a serious crush on Jonah.

  Oh, God. Why?

  “Hey, kiddo.” My dad ropes an arm around Mabel’s shoulders and pulls her to him. “How was the farm today?”

  My stomach clenches. That’s my nickname. He used to call me that.

  “Fine. Kinda boring. Why can’t I hang out at Wild?” Mabel fakes a pout.

  He chuckles. “Because that’s got to be even more boring. What twelve-year-old wants to spend their entire summer sitting in an airport?”

  She’s only twelve? She acts so much older. Granted, I haven’t hung around with any twelve-year-olds since I was twelve.

  Mabel rolls her eyes. “Twelve years plus almost one month. And I wouldn’t be sitting if you’d teach me how to fly.”

  “Oh, here we go . . .” Agnes murmurs.

  “What? He said he would!”

  “When you’re fourteen,” Agnes reminds her.

  “Yeah. And that’s only one year and eleven months away. Don’t forget.” Mabel pokes her finger into my dad’s stomach and his body buckles slightly.

  “How could I forget?” He ruffles her hair. “You’ve only been reminding me every week since you were six.”

  A distinct wave of jealousy bowls into me. My dad and I used to talk about how he’d teach me to fly a plane one day, so many years ago, back before I realized that I prefer my feet on the ground. And here he is now, his arm around Mabel, promising her the very same things he used to promise me. Acting every bit the father I imagined he could be for me.

  An uncomfortable suspicion begins to bloom in the back of my conscience.

  Agnes and my dad have what she calls a “complicated” relationship. She says they’ve known each other for almost sixteen years. And, just by the look of Mabel, I’d bet money that her father is not Yupik, or any other type of Alaska Native.

  Blood rushes to my ears.

  Twelve years plus almost a month. That would mean her birthday is at the end of June. My dad was supposed to fly to Toronto for my eighth-grade graduation twelve years ago, this past June.

  Is that merely a coincidence? Or . . .

  Is Mabel a defining part of Agnes’s cryptic “it’s complicated” comment?

  Do I have a half sister that no one has told me about?

  Back when Simon and my mom married, I desperately wanted a sibling. And when I hit high school, I remember wishing my mom would get pregnant accidentally, so she’d be occupied with someone else and stop breathing down my neck.

  But to have had a little sister all these years and not even know about her existence?

  That’s not something I was prepared to find out when I boarded the plane here.

  Is Mabel the reason my dad canceled on me?

  Did it not have anything to do with Alaska Wild after all? Is she the reason he ditched me?

  Did he choose her over me?

  “Calla?” My dad peers at me. “Are you okay? You’re looking a little bit pale.”

  “Yeah.” I clear my wobbly throat. “I mean, no, actually. I’m not feeling well.” The last thing I can do now is smile and pretend everything is fine. I need to gather my thoughts.

  Agnes and my dad share a worried look.

  “Why don’t you lie down?” Agnes says. “My room is to the left—”

  “No, I think I should go home.” Across the road.

  And then, if I’m right about this . . . get on a plane, back to Toronto.

  I sense Jonah’s gaze boring into me as I sweep past him, shoving my feet into my muddy sneakers, stumbling as I hurry out the door.

  “Calla!”

  I turn back to see Jonah charging down the driveway toward me, his boots unlaced and splayed open. He is the last person I want to deal with right now. I rush on, tripping through a pothole, my eyes stinging from threatening tears as a foggy truth swirls around me.

  Jonah’s faster than I expected him to be, and he catches my arm as I’m climbing the steps to get inside my dad’s house. His tight grip keeps me from escaping.

  “What was that all about, back there?”

  “I’m not feeling well—”

  “Bullshit, you were feeling fine and then Wren put his arm around Mabel, and you freaked out. Don’t tell me you’re jealous of a twelve-year-old kid?”

  Agnes was right. Jonah is too aware. And I guess that’s what it would look like, to anyone on the outside.

  I take a deep breath and then turn around. The second porch step puts me at eye level with him, and I find myself peering into an unreadable cold blue sea. “She’s my half sister, isn’t she?” My voice is shaky.

  Did they not think I’d figure it out?

  Did they honestly think it was okay to hide that from me?

  Mixed in with my shock and hurt is a growing anger.

  Jonah opens his mouth to speak, but pauses, frowning in thought. “What have they told you about Mabel?”

  “You mean that girl in there that I’d never even heard of until ten minutes ago?” His question feels like the confirmation I needed. A single tear trickles down my cheek and I quickly brush it away with my free hand. I hate that I cry so easily when I’m upset.

  “Wren never told you about her?”

  How much does Jonah know about our estranged relationship?

  “Not a word. Not since he bailed on being my father.” But not hers, apparently. Another tear slips out. I don’t bother brushing it away this time. “I’ve had twelve years to come to terms with the idea that he cared more about his planes and Alaska than about me,” I let out a derisive snort, “and now I find out it’s actually because he had another kid.”

  Jonah releases his grip of my arm. “God dammit, Wren,” he mutters, along with something else I don’t catch, but there’s definitely a string of curse words mixed in.

  I move to climb the rest of the steps, to duck inside so I can be alone with my thoughts.

  “Mabel’s father worked for Wren. He was a pilot for Wild,” Jonah calls out, stalling my feet.

  “Wait. So . . . my dad’s not her father?”

  “No, he is not,” Jonah says slowly and clearly.

  My shoulders sink with an odd sense of relief. “So where is Mabel’s father now, then?”

  “He died in a plane crash, a few months before Mabel was born.”

  “Oh. That’s . . . shitty.”

  Jonah pauses a beat, seemingly in thought. “Why’d you come to Alaska, Calla?”

  I frown. “What do you mean? So I could get to know my father before, you know . . . Just in case.” I shouldn’t have to spell it out further.

  “Maybe you should get to know Wren, just because. And stop looking for reasons to keep hating him.”

  “I don’t hate him. And I’m not looking for anything. It’s . . . You don’t understand.”

 
He sighs heavily. “Look, it’s none of my business what happened between you two. You’ve gotta sort your own drama out. But I do know what it’s like to decide you want to try to forgive someone, only to realize that you waited too long.” His gaze flickers to the ground before settling back on my face. “Trust me, you don’t want that hanging over your head.” Even through that scruffy beard, I can somehow sense the tension in his jaw.

  Is he talking about his father? What happened between them? I hold that steely stare of his for one . . . two . . . three long seconds.

  He’s the first to break away, his eyes drifting to Agnes’s house, to where my dad leans against the rail, his hand lifting to his mouth for a moment before pulling away. He’s smoking.

  Stomach-churning embarrassment washes over me. I got jealous for no good reason and stormed out, basically ruining dinner and making things exponentially more awkward than they already were.

  So much for not letting my resentment get the better of me. So much for controlling my own actions.

  “You know, you’re definitely Wren’s daughter,” Jonah mutters.

  “Why do you say that?” I ask warily. Do I want to hear this answer?

  “Because neither of you have the guts to speak your mind when it matters most.”

  I watch him stroll away, gravel crunching under his boots.

  Chapter 10

  I’m scratching feverishly against a mosquito bite on the back of my calf when the patio door from the living room slides opens.

  My dad pokes his head out. “There you are.” His gaze drifts over the patchwork quilt I dragged from my bedroom and cocooned myself in, a ward against the evening chill as I sit curled up in the wobbly aluminum chair. “Hungry?”

  “A little,” I admit sheepishly, feeling my cheeks flush all over again from my embarrassment at the scene I caused.

  He appears with two dinner plates balanced in one hand. “Agnes fixed this for you. Said you don’t eat mashed potatoes, so she gave you extra of everything else.” He sets a plate down on the worn coffee table in front of me. It’s loaded with a heap of white and dark meat—more than I can possibly eat—and, funny enough, peas and carrots.

  He nods to the chair beside me, the orange-and-red woven strips torn in several places, looking ready to give way with the slightest weight on it. “You mind if I join you?”

  “No. Of course not. Go ahead.”

  He sinks into it with a groan, setting his own plate on the stack of plastic bins piled next to him. “Agnes makes a mean roasted chicken. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t go back for seconds.”

  I reach for my plate. “I’ll bring these back to her when we’re done so I can apologize for earlier.”

  He opens his mouth to say something, but then seems to change his mind and instead slides a can of beer from his vest pocket. “Thirsty?”

  Normally I’d decline, but something inside urges me to accept it.

  He pulls a second out of his other pocket. The sound of the can cracking open cuts into the silence of the calm evening.

  I watch him for a moment as he sips his beer, his thoughts lost in the acres of fields beyond us.

  Do I bring up that fiasco from earlier?

  Do I wait for him to bring it up? What if he doesn’t bring it up?

  Maybe I should avoid the entire topic of Mabel and keep the mood light, not make things more awkward?

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out before I can think too much more about it.

  “It’s okay, Calla,” he murmurs, holding a hand up. “Jonah explained where your head went.” He chuckles softly. “Right after he told me what he thought about me, and how I’ve handled myself with you. Man, that guy doesn’t hold back any punches. He can make you feel this small.” He holds up two fingers, an inch of air in between, to emphasize his point.

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” I mutter, frowning. Jonah said he wasn’t getting involved with our drama.

  “He’s right, though. I owe you an explanation. Even if it can’t fix anything. Even if it’s twelve years too late.” Dad’s eyes settle on a pile of old worn shoes, cast haphazardly into a corner, and sits there for so long that I wonder if I’m going to get one.

  “The January before I was supposed to come to Toronto to see you, one of my pilots, Derek, was flying through the Alaska Range when the cloud level came down fast. We think he got confused and took a wrong turn. Flew right into the mountainside.”

  “Was that Mabel’s father?”

  He nods. “It was supposed to be my run. But I was buried in problems here—a fuel shortage, two grounded planes, a bunch of paperwork that I couldn’t ignore. You know, taxes . . . that sort of stuff. So I asked Derek to come in on his day off and do the run for me.”

  Understanding hits me. “You would have crashed that day.”

  My father would have died that day.

  “I don’t know if I would have. Derek had only been flying maybe five years by that point, and not a lot of time in those mountains. Me? I couldn’t even guess how many times I’ve done that route. I know my way through there. I would never have made that mistake.” He takes a long sip of his beer. “I should never have sent him.”

  I search for words, but I don’t know what to say. “That must have been hard to deal with.”

  “It was. For everyone at Wild. But especially Agnes. Mabel was due that coming August, but there were complications and she ended up born in June, a few days before I was flying to Toronto to see you. She had a heart defect that needed surgery right away. They rushed them both to Anchorage by medevac and I flew myself over.” He sighs heavily. “After what happened to Derek, I couldn’t leave Agnes to deal with that on her own. Not if Mabel didn’t survive. That’s why I canceled my trip to see you.”

  I replay the bits and pieces of that devastating phone conversation from twelve years ago in my head. The call that severed any relationship with my father. All these years, I thought he bailed on me for something as seemingly trivial as his job. “Why didn’t you tell me that? I would have understood.”

  “You were fourteen, Calla. You’d been begging me to visit for years. I’d been disappointing you for just as many. I figured the reason didn’t matter. Especially not when it involved someone else’s little girl. I didn’t know how to explain that to you. It was easier to blame it on Wild. At least you were used to that excuse.”

  His words give me pause. I was fourteen and I was desperate to see him, to know that I mattered to him. No matter how solid his reasoning, would I have understood back then?

  Do I even truly understand now?

  “Did you tell my mother all this?” God, if she knew about this and didn’t tell me . . .

  My dad shakes his head. “Your mother was . . . Things were complicated between us. They’ve always been complicated between us.”

  Complicated. That seems to be the buzz word when it comes to my dad.

  “Because she was still in love with you?” I ask quietly.

  An awkward laugh escapes his lips. He gives the back of his shaggy-haired head a scratch, his gray eyes drifting to mine to linger for a moment, searching for something—what, I don’t know—­before returning to the pile of shoes. “What do you know about that?”

  “Just what Simon told me. That he thought she was still in love with you and would leave him if there was hope of you guys getting back together.” I hesitate. “Was he right?”

  He rubs at his furrowed brow. “Look, I don’t wanna be the cause of any rifts between you and your mom.”

  “How would you cause a rift between us?” I ask warily.

  He seems to struggle to gather his thoughts. “Your mother and I were never gonna fit. I knew that the moment I met her and yet she somehow convinced me otherwise. Hell, I wasn’t gonna argue with her. I knew she’d wake up one day and realize she was too good for me. Until then, I’d take
what I could get. A woman like that . . .” He shakes his head more to himself, a small, secretive smile touching his lips.

  “I wasn’t surprised when she packed you up and left. I was surprised she’d stayed that long to begin with. And I couldn’t beg her to stay, even though I wanted to. It wouldn’t have been fair to put her through that. I knew she’d never be happy here.”

  “It wasn’t you she left, though.” If he’d been willing to start a life where they’d both be content, I wouldn’t be sitting across from a complete stranger right now.

  “Alaska may be where I live, but it’s as much a part of me as anything. I can’t really explain it. This place, this life . . . it’s in my blood.” A frown touches my dad’s forehead. “Your mom called me after I told you I was coming to see you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I don’t remember her ever telling me that, but maybe she did and I’ve forgotten.

  “It was quick, that first call. You know, to find out where I was thinking of staying, and for how long.”

  Unease settles along my spine. He said that first call. “How many more times did she call you?”

  He hesitates. “A few times,” he admits, in a way that tells me “a few” is far more than three in this case. “God, it was good to hear her voice again after so many years.” He studies his hands intently. “Problem was, it also stirred up a lot of feelings. It got confusing for a bit there. On both sides.”

  “What do you mean?” I sink into my chair as my stomach clenches. What exactly is my dad telling me? “Were you and my mom having an over-the-phone affair?” Is that part of the reason why everything went to shit?

  “Hold up, Calla. Just . . . wait a minute. Don’t read too much into it.” He holds his hands in the air in a sign of surrender, and then takes a moment to continue. “You both seemed to have a good thing going for you there, in Toronto. I didn’t want to mess it up for you or Susan, not when in the end, nothing had changed. I wasn’t going to be able to give either of you what you really wanted. I knew that, and she knew that.” He heaves a sigh. “So, after I canceled on the trip because of Mabel, I decided it was probably also time to finally bow out and let you both move on. And maybe it was the wrong decision. Lord knows I’ve made enough of those in my life. Can’t change any of them, though.” After a moment, he turns to give me a sad smile. “But maybe not. You seem to have grown up well.”