“Where’s everyone else?”
“Gone fishing.”
Greta scans the waiting area, looking pointedly at the many people in outdoor gear. “And we’re not?”
“No, we’re—” He stops, exasperated. “You didn’t read the itinerary I sent you?”
“I’m a little behind on my correspondence.”
“This is the day we’re supposed to—” He stops abruptly, a hand on his coat pocket, looking unsure how to proceed. Finally, he says, “We’re going on a wilderness safari.”
“What’s a wilderness safari?”
He sweeps an arm around as if this should be obvious. “It’s—a whole thing. We go out on a boat to this island and look at the wildlife, then canoe down a river and hike to a glacier.”
“So why aren’t the rest of them coming?”
“I told you,” he says. “They went fishing.”
“Right, but—”
“Because,” he says so loudly that a couple in matching red jackets look over. Conrad lowers his voice a bit. “Because your mom picked this one out. Just for the two of us.”
The memory has a force to it: Helen at the kitchen table back in Ohio, humming Christmas carols under her breath as she flipped through the pages of a brochure. “Do you think your dad would like to do a scenic railroad tour?” she’d asked Greta, who was sitting across from her, trying to catch up on the emails that had piled up while she was on the road. Outside, small flakes of snow were pinging against the windows, and the smell of sugar cookies—which Helen had spent the afternoon baking with the twins—made the room feel cozy and warm.
Greta looked up from her computer. “Is it a tour of a train or by a train?” she said. “Because…neither.”
“How about a zip line?”
“Seriously? Dad?”
Helen sighed. “I want to plan something for the two of us. I’m so glad the Fosters are coming, and I’m still working on the Blooms too, but it’s not very romantic if we’re with the group the whole time. How about a wilderness safari?”
She held up another brochure, this one with a picture of an orange canoe and a handsome young guide holding a paddle, and she looked so hopeful right then that Greta wanted to say, You know you’ll be on it with Dad, right? Not that guy? But in an impressive display of restraint, she simply said, “I think that’s the one.”
“I think so too,” Helen said, looking pleased. “There’s a hike and a glacier and a canoe trip. Also a picnic lunch in a field of wild strawberries. You know how much your dad loves strawberries.”
“I know,” Greta said. “It all sounds very romantic.”
Helen laughed. “You’d be surprised how romantic he can be.”
“The guy who gives you a new pair of mittens every Christmas?”
“Lucky for him,” she said with a grin, “I happen to find mittens extremely romantic.”
Now Greta stares at Conrad, her heart sinking. Because this was supposed to be their day. Instead she’s here, and Helen isn’t, and somehow—somehow—they have to find a way to get through this without her.
“Dad,” she begins, but before she can say anything more, a ruddy-cheeked man in knee-high fishing boots and a knit cap appears in the doorway, his arms spread wide.
“Hey there, I’m Captain Martinez,” he bellows, “and if you’re here for the wilderness safari, you’re in the right place. We’re gonna start by loading you guys onto the boat out there, but let me make sure we have everyone first.”
As he begins the roll call, Greta can feel Conrad tensing up. It’s rare to be feeling the same thing at the same time as him, but she knows they’re both silently pleading for the captain not to call out her mother’s name.
When he says, “James, party of two,” she relaxes a little. But beside her, Conrad’s face is still stony. Greta would like to think it’s because he’s wrestling with his own private grief over what the day could’ve been. What it should’ve been. But mostly, she suspects, it’s the same sinking realization she’s having right now: that they’re about to spend an entire day together. Just the two of them.
“Okay, team,” says Captain Martinez when he’s done checking off names. He surveys the ragtag crew and nods. “Let’s do this.”
Without looking at her, Conrad starts to follow the group toward the exit, a door at the side of the ship that opens to a metal ramp. Greta trails after him, already exhausted by the day, which has barely begun. But she feels better the moment she steps outside. The town of Haines is spread before them like a postcard, a scattered collection of boxy buildings, bright red and white beneath a dazzling blue sky, all of it tucked beneath a line of jagged mountains. It feels like walking off a ship in the 1800s, arriving in this hardscrabble, windswept town, half sleepy and half wild. Like something out of a story about the gold rush, she thinks. And then she realizes that the story is probably The Call of the Wild, and that Ben will love this place with such exuberant, openhearted enthusiasm that she almost wishes she could be there when he wakes up to see it.