He nodded toward Kache’s feet. “Change eventually gets ahold of everyone I suppose.”
“Suppose so,” Kache said, his face heating up. Nothing like a lifelong Alaskan to put you in your place. He wanted to ask Duncan if Snag had sold the land, but he wasn’t about to let on he didn’t know—if it was even true. No need to get a rumor heading through town that would end up like one of the salmon on the conveyor belt down at the cannery, the head and tail of the story cut off and the middle butchered up until it became something unrecognizable.
“You’re gonna need to get some real boots before folks start mistaking you for a tourist from California. Thought you were at least in Texas, my man.” He shook his head and winked. “You tell your aunt and grandma I said hello, will you?”
Kache nodded. “Will do, Duncan. Same goes for Nancy and the kids.”
That opened up another ten minutes of conversation, with Duncan Clemsky filling Kache in on every one of his five kids and sixteen grandchildren, and seven seconds of Kache filling Duncan in on the little that Kache had been up to for the last twenty years. “Yeah, you know … working a lot.”
On the way back to Snag’s, Kache decided that if she didn’t bring up the homestead that evening, he would just come out and ask her if she’d sold it. Part of him hoped she had, the other part hoped to God she hadn’t.
Snag filled the sink with the hottest water she could stand while Kache cleared the dinner dishes. She’d decided on Shaklee dishwashing liquid, since she’d used Amway for lunch and breakfast, and now she was trying to decide how on earth to tell Kache about the homestead.
Staring at her reflection in the kitchen window, she saw a chickenshit, and a jealous sister, and there was no hiding it. Looking at it, organizing the story in her mind, lining it up behind her lips: This is how I let it happen. It started this way, with my good intentions but my weaknesses too, and then a day became a week became a year became a decade became another. I hadn’t meant for it to happen like this, I hadn’t meant to.
She squeezed more of the detergent; let the hot water cascade over her puffy hands. She laid her hands flat along the sink’s chipped enamel bottom, where she couldn’t see them beneath the suds. If only she were small enough to climb into the sink and hide her whole self, just lie quietly with the forks and knives and spoons until this moment passed and she no longer had to see herself for what she really was. Sometimes drowning didn’t seem so horrible when she thought of it in those terms. Better than dying the way Glenn and Bets and Denny had. She shivered even though her hands and arms were immersed in the liquid heat.
It would have brought them honor in some small way, if she’d done the simple thing everyone expected of her. Simply take care of the house and Kache. But she’d failed at both.
“Aunt Snag?” Next to her, he held the old Dutch oven with the moose pot roast drippings stuck on the bottom. There were never any leftovers with Kache, even now that he was a grown man. “Are you okay? Want me to finish up, you catch the end of the news?”
“No … Well … Okay.” She dried her hands on the towel and started to walk out, but turned back. “I’ve got to tell you something, hon, and it’s not going to be pretty. You’re going to be real upset with me, and I won’t blame you one bit.”
“You sold the homestead.” It was a statement, not a question.
“What?” she said, though she’d heard him perfectly.
“You sold it. You sold the homestead.”
“No, hon. I didn’t. I didn’t sell it.”
He smiled, sort of, a sad, tight turning up of his mouth, while his shoulders relaxed. “I guess I’ll need to go out. Check up on things. I’ve been meaning to ask. But it’s hard, thinking about driving up, seeing it for the first time, you know? Do you go out there a lot?” Still such youthfulness to his face. He didn’t seem like a grown man who’d seen a lot of life. Snag couldn’t tell what it was, exactly. Trust? Vulnerability?
She said, “Not a lot, no.”
“Just enough to take care of things.” His voice didn’t rise in a question.
“No, not that much even.’ She breathed in deep, searched in her pockets and up her sleeve for a tissue. “I haven’t been out there at all.”
“This spring?”
“No. I mean not once. Not at all.”
“All year?”
“No, Kache. Not all year. Not ever. Not once. I never went out like I told you I did. I planned to a million times, but I never closed it up, never got all your stuff, never put things in storage. I never …”
He stood with his mouth agape for what seemed to Snag like a good five minutes. “Wait a second. You said you’d been renting it out. No one has been out there since I left? Not even the Fosters? Or the Clemskys? Jack? Any of those people? They would have been glad to help. They would have insisted on it.”
Snag leaned against the counter for support, inhaled and exhaled. “Don’t you see? I insisted it was taken care of. I told them I’d hired someone … to scrape the snow off … patch the roof … run water in the pipes.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“Embarrassed by then. I hadn’t even been out since you left, to water the houseplants, or—I’d never planned to be so negligent—clean out the pantry.” She fell silent. The water dripped on and on into the sink. “I left it all. I tried, I drove part way dozens of times but then I’d chicken out and turn the car around.”
Kache didn’t scream and holler at her like she’d expected. He hugged her, a big old bear of a hug. In his arms, the sense that she might not be worn down to a nub by shame after all. But grace dragged another weight of its own. He said her name, tenderly, and sighed. “You know it’s the anniversary today, almost to the hour?” She nodded because she did know without thinking about it, the way a person knows they’re breathing. He told her it was okay, that he did understand, more than he wanted to admit, that he’d fought the same problem in trying to come back.
She was glad she didn’t use the line she’d been holding onto in case she needed it, the fact that at first, way back when, she’d waited for him to return so they might go together. And that’s what she’d pictured happening now, the two of them braving the drive out together. But forgiving or not, he’d already let go of her, grabbed the car keys, called out, “I’ll be back in a while. Don’t wait up,” and was tearing out of the driveway when she whispered, “Wait.” But she knew. Even though he’d reacted with kindness, she could see the shock pumping through him and that he needed to put some distance between them. It scared her to have him go off upset. The tires screeched like they did when Kache was still a teenager, as if they’d woken up the morning after the crash and no time had passed at all.
Kache couldn’t get to the house fast enough now. Now that too much time had passed and the place would most likely have rotted to ruins. The cabin Grandma
