don’t worry. I have a feeling he’s a very good pilot. I’ll call you tomorrow night. Right now I have to get supper started. I promised I’d cook if he showed me how to tend the sled dogs.”
“Sled dogs?”
“Huskies. The real thing. Twenty of them.”
“Goodness. Senna, Tim called. He tried to reach you at your apartment and got worried when he couldn’t. I told him about your grandfather dying and that you had to go to Labrador. He sounds pretty down.”
“I’ll call him. Bye, Mom. Love you.” Senna sat for a moment after hanging up and then dialed Tim’s number, peering out the window once again while the call went through. Jack was doing something with the airplane. The door was open and he was inside. Good, twice over. She especially didn’t want him to hear this conversation.
Tim answered on the third ring. “I’m sorry I bothered your mother, but I was worried,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. My grandfather’s death was unexpected and he named me as his executor. I’ll probably be here for two weeks settling his estate. It’s very beautiful and remote country.”
“I can imagine,” he commented. “They probably still travel by dog team there.” After an awkward pause, he said, “How’s everything going?”
“As well as can be expected. My grandfather owned half shares in a business that includes a lake house, a fishing lodge and an airplane, which complicates things. Somehow I have to find a buyer for his shares. How are things with you?”
“Okay. I landed that big account I’ve been working on. Ameri-Dyne. You know, the huge dental practice off Forest Ave.”
“Wow, that’s great news, Tim,” she said. “Congratulations. I know how hard you’ve been working for that.” Senna caught a flash of movement outside the window and saw Jack and Chilkat walking toward the house. “Tim? I have to go. I have a meeting with my grandfather’s business partner.”
“I miss you, Senna. Let me know if you need anything at all,” he said, sounding forlorn.
“I will,” she promised.
Senna was sick with guilt as she attacked supper preparations in the kitchen. Sooner or later Tim would realize that their relationship was over. But that didn’t ease the pain he was feeling now, and she was the cause of it. He adored her. Was she wrong to break things off? Why couldn’t she love him the way he loved her? Senna gave herself a mental shake. This was no time to be dwelling on her relationship with Tim. She had a meal to prepare. Caribou steaks, russet potatoes scrounged from a musty sack of sprouting spuds she found in a lower cupboard, and canned corn. In the refrigerator she unearthed two sticks of butter, several fist-sized chunks of mold that might once have been vegetables, endless half-empty jars of condiments and a container of very sour milk. This wouldn’t pass for a gourmet meal by any standards, but Senna realized as she slipped the scrubbed potatoes into the oven that such standards no longer mattered. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and was ravenous.
By the time Jack wandered into the house, carrying what looked like a shapeless snarl of nylon webbing, things were reasonably under control. “It’ll be another forty-five minutes,” she called out as he dropped into a chair in the living room, the webbing in his lap, and began threading a large curved needle from a spool of dental floss. “I hope you can wait that long.”
“That’s just about right,” he replied, concentrating as he drew the floss through the needle. “Mending these harnesses will probably take that long or better.” He picked up a piece of webbing that had been chewed in half and lit a match to melt the ragged ends before beginning to stitch the harness back together. “So,” he said, jabbing the needle into the thick webbing. “Have you given any thought to keeping your share of the business?”
Senna moved toward the living room, crossed her arms in front of her and leaned against the door frame. “No. I mean, yes, I have, but no, I don’t want to own half of a fishing lodge, thank you very much. Don’t you have a friend or relative who might be interested in buying my grandfather’s share?”
“Nope.” He drew the floss through the harness, pulled the thread tight and cast a brief glance in her direction. “There aren’t that many people out there as crazy as the admiral and me. What about your brothers? You have two of them, don’t you?”
“Yes. Billy’s a computer programmer for a large engineering firm in Boston, and Bryce is a market analyst living in New York City.”
“Do they fish?”
“No, nor are they or their wives particularly outdoorsy.”
His shoulders slumped. “That explains it, then.”
“Explains what?”
“Why the admiral named you as his executor. You were his last great hope.”
Senna felt a flush of anger heat her blood. “Are you certain the banks won’t loan you the money?”
“I’ve already looked into it. Even if the bank appraisal came in high enough, there’s no surety there. I don’t have a steady job, and the fishing lodge hasn’t generated any income yet. I’d have to have a co-signor to get any sort of mortgage, and I can’t think of a soul on earth who’d be crazy enough to co-sign a loan for me.” He paused for a moment, needle poised in mid-air, eyes fixed on a point somewhere between Senna and Baffin Island, then shook his head in a gesture of defeat and returned his attention to mending the harness.
“Why did my grandfather keep sled dogs?” Senna asked, abruptly changing the subject to avoid further jabs from Hanson.
“He liked them. He met a trapper from a village near Mud Lake who was selling his team. The admiral bought the dogs, the komatik and a bunch of traps. He decided he was going to make some money on furs.”
Senna felt a twist of revulsion as she pictured the pained and frightened creatures caught in the steel leg-hold traps. “I think trapping’s cruel and awful and ought to be outlawed.”
Jack uttered a short laugh. “So did he, after about a month of it. It was brutal work. The snow here is so damn deep and unpackable that the dogs had to swim through it hauling that heavy sled. The admiral would try to break the trail on snowshoes, but he couldn’t keep ahead of the team. The leaders would run up on the tails of his shoes and he’d pitch head first into the snow. So he recruited me as his trail breaker, but my trapping career spanned less than a day. I tell you what, it’s not easy getting out of deep snow when you fall facefirst into it. A couple of times I was sure I was going to suffocate.”
“Did my grandfather ever catch anything?”
“Pneumonia, after one particularly grueling night out. Then he ran into some folks who were touring on snowmobiles. They asked if they could have a ride on the dogsled, so the admiral gave them a ride. They gave him a couple of hundred bucks for his efforts, and that was the end of his trapping adventures. He sold the traps, advertised dogsled rides at the airport and in some local stores at Goose Bay and pretty soon the phone began to ring. That’s why he kept the dogs.” Jack paused with a faint grin. “Well, that’s not the entire reason. He kept them because he came to love them, and believe it or not, that brutish pack felt the same way about him.”
Senna tried to picture the admiral mushing a team
