Sybilla laughed delightedly. “How very flattering!”
“Not flattering at all. Golda Meir would have looked good to those guys.”
“Oh my dear, the adventures you have had! How perfectly marvelous! Alaska has always been good at that, you know, at giving women an equal shot at whatever job was going. Mostly I think because there were so few people here to begin with, businesses were happy to hire anyone with a pulse. I had no trouble raising a loan to build my club.” She winked at Wy. “Of course, it didn’t hurt that the bank president had a reserved table down in front every Saturday night.”
No, indeed.
Wayne brought the check and Sybilla gained her feet with some effort but her steps were perfectly steady on the way back to the car, even down the stairs in too-big shoes. Wy could only marvel. Three martinis would have put her on the floor and the next morning would not have been pretty. Sybilla’s really was the Greatest Generation.
When they turned on Alder and drove past the trooper post, they saw a young woman unlocking the door. “Oh, there’s that nice young Petroff girl. Such a shame about her father. I wonder if she knew him?”
Evidently Sybilla’s cognitive issue had kicked back in. Wy made a noncommittal murmur.
“Such a handsome young man, once he lost his puppy fat. All the girls after him, one could easily understand how it happened. Still, people can be so unkind. They were both in my class, you know.”
Wy stopped at the stop sign. “What class?”
“Oh my dear, didn’t I mention? I taught music and voice at the high school after I moved down here.” She sighed. “So much tragedy for one family.”
They pulled up in front of Sunset Heights, and the attendant, whom Wy now knew as Liz, came out to assist Sybilla from the Forester. It was high enough that it was a little matter of her swinging her legs over the side and sliding. She smoothed down her skirt and beamed at Wy. “What a lovely afternoon! What was your name again, dear?”
“Wy,” Wy said. “Wyanet Chouinard.”
“Wyanet, of course, dear. You’ll come to tea one afternoon soon, won’t you?”
“It would be my pleasure, Sybilla, thank you.”
Liz made a signal for Wy to wait and ushered Sybilla inside. Wy was checking her phone when she emerged again to knock on the passenger side window. “Thank you,” she said when Wy rolled down the window.
“What for?”
“First for the rescue and repatriation and then for the lunch.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“Come again, won’t you? Most of our residents would be all the better for visits from friends and family.”
“She’s the first friend I’ve made in Blewestown,” Wy said.
Liz smiled. “And now you have two.”
“What’s wrong with her? I know she’s old, but—”
“Dementia,” Liz said. “It manifests in forgetfulness, mostly.”
Wy raised her eyebrows.
Liz sighed. “To the point that sometimes she goes walkabout before she gets dressed, yes, but so far she has always returned to the here and now. She’s generally fairly cognizant and she is wonderfully healthy otherwise. It’s easy for her to fool us into thinking she’s fine, and then we turn our back for one minute and—” She snapped her fingers. “Sometimes it’s worse than keeping track of a two-year-old.” She hesitated. “She’s better when she has something to focus on. Like a visitor.”
At least they weren’t chaining Sybilla to her bed. “I’ll be back often.”
“Good.” Liz stood back and waved her off.
Halfway to Sourdough her phone sounded the opening bars of “He’s So Fine” and she pulled to the side of the street. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. I need a ride.”
“Where to?”
“Across the Bay. Kapilat.”
Wy remembered the tiny community, half old, half new, perched on the edge of the fjord. “Usual rates?”
“Usual rates,” he said grimly.
She didn’t laugh. “Meet you at the tie-down.”
Seventeen
Thursday, September 5
HE WAS STANDING NEXT TO THE CESSNA when she pulled up. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” He looked glum.
“I fueled up when I got back from Anchorage. Let me do the walk-around and we should be good to go.”
He grunted. Monosyllabicy, if that was even a word, was his chosen means of communication when he was forced to fly.
She did the walk-around, noting that he’d already untied the lines and coiled them neatly next to their cleats. Poor Liam. He did what he could. “Okay, climb on in.”
In the left seat she moved the yoke and the rudder pedals with her chin on her shoulder to check that the control surfaces were still working per spec. Next to her Liam buckled on his seatbelt and with both hands took a firm grip on his seat, preparatory to him helping her get and keep the aircraft in the air. Because she loved him she pretended she didn’t notice.
Five minutes later they were in the air and following the Spit out into the Bay. He had yet to move a muscle.
“Hey,” she said.
He sounded tense even over the headset. “Hey yourself.”
“Did you feel like this when I took you up as my spotter during herring fishing?”
She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses when his head turned but the tension in his jawline said it all. “Every second.”
She was silenced for a moment. “God. I’m sorry, Liam.”
“I’m an Alaskan. Worse, I’m an Alaska state trooper. What am I gonna do?”
The three islands guarding the entrance to a pair of narrow fjords slid beneath them before she spoke again. “If I’d known…”
“Can’t be helped, Wy.”
What
