Estelle eyed the crumpled blanket and pillow on the futon. “Are you finding things to do while I’m at work? There are some programs in the park. Or you could catch the bus to the library . . .”
Sera shut the suitcase and slid it out of the way. “It’s all good, Aunt Estelle. I’m fine, really.”
Merde. She wasn’t fine. Estelle could see it in Sera’s shadowed eyes, in the quick flashes of anger that erupted whenever Estelle became too solicitous. Since they’d returned from their road trip and started living together for real, Sera was prickly as a porcupine one minute, withdrawing like a turtle the next. Sera claimed she spent the days reading and taking walks, but Estelle suspected she hadn’t left the apartment. Evenings, while Estelle watched television or caught up on record-keeping, Sera spent the time in her room with only her phone for company. It was like living with a ghost.
According to Estelle’s parents, Sera had been the same with them: sticking to her room, stirring out only for meals, answering in monosyllables. When Estelle told them Sera would stay with her in Alaska, their relief was palpable.
Depression. It was an illness Estelle often saw among her patients. Especially in the long winter months, she was always alert to the anxiety, the sleeplessness, the loss of appetite, and the emotional distancing that came with clinical depression.
Signs she’d failed to see in her own sister. Signs she was terrified to see in Sera.
As schoolgirls, Estelle and her sister had competed in academics, in basketball, and in attracting handsome young men. But while Estelle had eagerly left home for an Illinois university, Marie had stayed in New Orleans. Had the claustrophobic closeness to their dysfunctional family contributed to Marie’s chronic depression? Or was Marie’s clinging to the familiar just another symptom Estelle had failed to understand until it was too late?
“I’m worried about leaving you here,” Estelle said. “I have to go to Rainbow tomorrow—there’s nobody else who can tend the clinic this week—but three days and two nights is too long for you to stay here alone. I think you should come with me.”
Sera hugged her arms as if she were cold. “Stop fussing. I’ll be fine by myself for a few days. It’s not like I’m going to kill myself.”
“Jesus, girl!” Estelle forced her voice to a calmer register. “I’m declaring this a mental health issue: you’re coming with me. Besides, if you’re going to live in Alaska, you really should learn something about life in the indigenous villages.”
Sera sighed theatrically. “And what am I supposed to do in a village while you’re seeing patients?”
“Help Annie. We’ll be staying at her house. She’ll fly back to Fairbanks with us on Thursday afternoon so she can have a heart procedure, and she might need some help around the house before leaving. Consider it part payment of your rent.”
Early the next morning, Estelle led the way onto the civil aviation tarmac, pushing a luggage cart loaded with her and Sera’s overnight bags, her red med bag, a carton of supplies to restock the clinic, and a box of food staples for Annie.
Sera stopped short at the sight of the four-seat single-engine Cessna emblazoned with the Alaska Eagle Med logo. “That’s the plane?”
“That’s it, chérie. And if you’re looking for the pilot, she’s walking beside you.”
The look Sera gave Estelle wasn’t the admiration Estelle might have hoped for. More like alarm. Get used to it, kid. You’re not down home anymore.
“That’s even smaller than the plane we took to Wrangell. When you said fly, I thought you meant a real plane. Like with a flight attendant and snacks. And a toilet.”
“Go before you board.” Estelle loaded the luggage into the cargo hatch.
Zeke the mechanic was fiddling with something in the engine. “She’s all gassed up and ready to go, Doc. I hope you’ve got your boots and rain gear—the forecast is for a blow tonight.”
“No worries, I got the briefing from Flight Service when I filed my flight plan. We’ll be on the ground in Rainbow before noon.”
While Estelle did her preflight inspection, Sera peeked into the cockpit. “I’m guessing there’s no in-flight entertainment.”
“Just the scenery. You’re my copilot today, chérie. Put your jacket on. It gets chilly in the air.”
A smooth take-off, and soon the little plane was speeding north into the blue. Estelle relaxed into the rhythm of powering through air—her jaunt to the Rainbow clinic every two weeks was one of the bonuses of her practice.
The ground passing beneath them quickly changed from Fairbanks’s sprawling urban development to dark conifer forests where wisps of smoke marked isolated dwellings. Soon, they’d left the forest behind, too, and were soaring over the low peaks of the White Mountains to the Yukon uplands.
“Doesn’t anybody live here?” Sera asked through the headset. She peered out the window at a landscape devoid of cities, towns, or even roads.
“Protected wilderness,” Estelle replied. “I told you—Alaska has more wild places than anywhere else in the US. This is what most of Alaska is like: lots of land, few people. The village we’re going to is on the south slope of the Brooks Mountain Range, tucked into a valley in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That one refuge is as big as South Carolina.”
Mile after mile passed below: rolling hills of evergreens and grassy meadows, punctuated by lakes and bogs and meandering streams, all feeding into the winding Yukon River. Ahead loomed the sharp, rugged peaks of the Brooks Range.
“It may get choppy here,” Estelle warned. She banked eastward to follow the winding valley of the Rainbow River. Mountains rose higher around them.
She pointed out some white dots on a hillside of rocky crags. “Dall sheep. They almost went extinct. They’re coming back now, but who
