Just have hope.
Don’t stop hoping.
If you believe in it long and hard enough, it will happen.
What a foolish and dangerous notion for a person to cling to.
Hope is what broke my heart. Not Jonah, and not this city girl from Toronto who showed up in Alaska unannounced.
“Jesus, Marie. Why are you so damn stubborn? Here, give me some of that.” Jonah sounds annoyed as he yanks the bundles from under my arms, leaving me with nothing but my black veterinarian’s bag. “You get everything sorted over there?” he throws over his shoulder to Calla, already on his way to the plane.
“Yeah. All good.” Calla climbs off her snowmachine, her white bunny boots sinking into the snow. We fall into step with each other, trailing Jonah, our breaths billowing ahead of us. “I hear your first stop is the Rohn safety cabin?”
“Yeah. You know it?”
“We’ve been there a couple times. Stayed overnight once.” Her smile is secretive. “Are you sleeping in the cabin?”
I laugh. “God, no. They use that for meals and for the mushers.” There’ll be bodies everywhere, wherever someone can fit a sleep pad down to grab an hour of rest. “I’ll be in a tent.”
She grimaces.
“Don’t knock it. They’re way more private, and they have stoves in them. Ask Jonah. He’s stayed in one with—” I cut myself off before I make the mistake of saying Jonah stayed in a tent with me for a few nights the last time he volunteered with the IAF. We weren’t alone, and nothing happened, aside from me stuffing my ears with plugs to drown out his reprehensible snoring, but the prick of warning along my spine says that might not matter.
Calla and I seem to be on good terms now, but it’s taken time and several bumps along the way to get here. I think she saw through me that very first day we met at Alaska Wild. She’s always suspected my feelings for Jonah weren’t platonic, that I would gladly take her place. And while she’s never questioned or accused me to my face, there were some moments last year when I waited for a confrontation.
Jonah and I have a history and a close friendship, and I’ll be the first to admit I held—still hold—a possessiveness over it. But I wanted more, and she knew it. I saw it every time she looked at me, her pink lips pinched into a tight line. I heard it in her unspoken words when she tried setting me up with Toby. Find your own man, Marie. This one’s mine.
If the roles were reversed, I can’t say I would act any differently. Her wariness was understandable, just like my envy was for what she had with Jonah. Calla picked up her life and moved to another country for him, to a home that was so vastly different from everything she’d left. They faced a wave of growing pains in those first months, and here I was, that female “best friend” racing over every time Jonah needed an ear to vent to.
I can’t say whether my not-so-secret feelings for Jonah were the linchpin in her distrust, or if she would’ve felt that way about me regardless, since I had something with Jonah that she didn’t: a past.
I suspect they fought over me, but Jonah never revealed it.
I have no doubt he defended me; it’s just who he is.
But there was a stretch there where I held my breath, expecting her to give Jonah an ultimatum, and I was terrified of what his answer would be. I’m still afraid because I know who Jonah would choose.
But things have shifted since last summer, with Calla finding her own way in Alaska. The two of them are married, and she seems to have made peace with my existence in his life. Maybe one day we’ll consider each other friends. Until then, I’m not about to poke a charred log to see if it still smolders by bringing up memories of her husband and me sharing a tent.
“Hey, babe!” she hollers after Jonah. “Did you mention Bandit already?”
“He’s fine,” comes his gruff response while securing my luggage into the plane.
“Why? What’s wrong with him?” I ask.
“He’s been sleeping a lot more than usual and eating less.”
“It is winter still.” Not that raccoons hibernate, but they do tend to hide in their hovels during the colder temperatures. I’m no expert on raccoons. I know they don’t tend to live more than a few years in the wild, but Bandit leads a cushy life, complete with daily feedings and a well-insulated chicken coop that their neighbor recently built for them.
“Yeah, maybe. He just seems … I don’t know, depressed.”
Jonah snorts. “A depressed raccoon?”