"With everything I am."
"I don't have enough saved up."
"Don't worry about that. Briney started a Farrah Fund at the bar. The Landing's people have been dropping money in it for three months just for a plane ticket back. Everyone wants you back here where you belong. I can book a flight tonight. You can come home whenever you want."
Home.
Hope bloomed inside her, filling her until warm tears of utter happiness touched her cheeks. "Can you make it for tomorrow?"
Chapter Twenty
Aanon set the phone down slowly and stared at it on the table. He hadn't just imagined her, had he?
Briney leaned against the sink with his arms crossed, and his bushy eyebrows lifted to his hair line. "Well? What did she say?"
"We're going to need the Farrah Fund."
A slow smile spread across the old man's face. "I'll take care of the plane ticket. When does she want it?"
"Tomorrow." His own voice sounded dreamy, far away, but Briney slapped him on the back, then gripped his shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled, slamming reality back down like a hammer on a nail.
When the old bartender grinned like a fool, he couldn't ever remember seeing so many of Briney's teeth.
"You must really want to retire," Aanon teased.
"Darn tootin' I do. And I don't trust nobody but Farrah to run my bar. I'm going to go. Plane tickets to reserve, you know. Give me your number, and I'll call you with the times and information she'll need."
Aanon scribbled the digits across the back of an old grocery receipt, and Briney shoved it in his pocket. "I can't believe she's coming back."
"Well, she never should've left, if you ask me. That"-Briney halted and glanced at Dodge, who was wrestling a carton of milk from the fridge-"ex fox of yours got you two all tied up. Cunning little critter, she was."
Briney let himself out, mumbling about how Burtlebey better not have burned his bar to the ground, and Aanon watched Dodge slowly toddle his way back to the table with the milk.
Scooting his glass from lunch closer, Dodge prepared to pour.
"You need help, bud?"
"No, I'm big."
Dodge spilled a bit, but it was nothing that couldn't be cleaned up. Most of the milk poured into the glass, and a sense of pride filled Aanon at his son's independent streak. It would serve him well if he ever decided to run the homestead like the generations of Falks before him.
She's coming home.
The thought was a warm brush against his heart, stirring life there once again. The months since she'd left had been hollow and clouded with fear. He'd been adrift without her here, and scared about losing Dodge for good. Aanon had lost part of himself he thought he'd never get back. But the thought of her coming back to him stirred within him a glimpse of what could be. Something he hadn't dared dream about before, when everything had gotten so out of control.
Dodge chugged the drink and wiped the creamy mustache from his upper lip with the back of his hand. "Aaah," he said with a satisfied grin, and Aanon chuckled.
"You and me, we have to clean up this house. Farrah is going to be staying here, and we can't have her coming home to an untidy bachelor pad, can we?"
Hours later, as he rinsed a sponge out in the bathroom sink, he glimpsed his reflection in the mirror. His face looked sunken and tired. He ran a hand over his newly shaven jaw. Before the court hearing that morning, he'd shaved his beard. He hadn't had the capacity to worry about shaving after Farrah left but wanted to look less like a hobo for the judge. He hadn't given much thought to anything besides losing her and the possibility of losing Dodge, too. But now? His life had meaning again. Purpose. He'd be given a chance to do it right this time. Give Dodge a stable home and provide for him and Farrah. And Oleanna.
A ghost of a smile brushed his lips. There he was again. He wasn't totally lost because that smile was so familiar. It's the way he used to see himself before everything went belly up.
Oleanna.
The name was Norwegian, and even if Farrah hadn't said she loved him with words on the phone earlier, the declaration of the baby's name said them for her. She loved him still, and if anyone could bring him back completely, it was her.
His phone rang, and in a rush, he accepted the call. He was only a little disappointed when it was Briney with the flight information. It would've been a relief to hear Farrah's voice again so soon, but knowing when she would arrive in Anchorage was the next best thing.
Besides, now he had a reason to call her back.
****
The four hour layover in Phoenix was torture. Farrah had plenty of time to leave the airport and find some local fare to eat, but paranoid about missing her flight, she'd settled on a fast food burger restaurant outside her terminal. Staring out the window, she watched flight after flight take off and prayed for time to pass so she could be up in the air, on her way to him.
Oleanna stretched within her, and she rested a hand over the movement. "We're almost there, baby."
When her flight was finally called, she ignored the suspicious glances from fellow passengers that said they thought she'd deliver at any moment. Nothing could dampen her mood. She'd never thought to see Aanon again, and now every mile she traveled brought her closer to him.
She settled into her seat on the plane and fidgeted impatiently. Five more hours and she'd see his face.
"Excuse me," said an older woman with a stylish bob and glasses framed in a rosy hue to match her lipstick. "I'm in the window seat."
"Oh, here let me stand and let you pass."
The woman pressed her carry-on bag into the compartment above and scooted into her seat.
Farrah settled back in and worried a loose thread on her jeans with her fingertip.
"Nervous flyer?" the woman asked.
"No. Just ready to get to Anchorage. Someone is meeting me there."
"Corinne," the woman said, offering her hand.
"I'm Farrah." She settled her palm in the woman's for a shake.
"Are you meeting your husband?"
"My husband?" Farrah asked.
Corrine pointed to her protruding stomach.
"Oh no. I'm not married."
"Oh, I'm sorry, dear. I just assumed."
"It's okay." She felt the need to explain Aanon to the stranger so she'd understand. But what could she say about him? Calling him her boyfriend wasn't enough. He was so much more. "I'm meeting a man who has been really good to me, though. My love story is complicated."
An easy smile brightened Corrine's face, making her look years younger. "I'm not an easy flyer like you are." At a questioning look from Farrah, she asked, "Would you mind sharing your complicated love story with a stranger?"
A pleasant looking woman with curly red hair and rosy cheeks leaned across the aisle. "Two strangers?" she corrected with a questioning arch to her brows.
The flight attendant stood in front and gave a short lecture on safety procedures and how to use the seat belts. Directly after, the plane taxied the runway.
"Okay," Farrah agreed as the plane took off. "I first met Aanon when I was six."
And for the first hour, she told of how she'd come to be on this flight, in her last trimester, running back to the man she loved. Conversation after that drifted and flowed this way and that as the other women shared stories of their lives. There was something freeing about talking to people she'd never see again, and her earlier wish was answered. Time passed quickly.
As the plane descended on Anchorage, she became quiet and restless again. What if he didn't like the changes in her? Residual sadness still clung to her like a second skin, and as much as she didn't want the past three months to come between them, he'd see what they had done to her. The Aanon she remembered didn't miss anything. What if he gave her back, like Miles had done?
"Go get him," Corrine said with a kind pat to her leg.
She smiled her thanks and pulled her carry-on from the bin above. The wheels of her ratty purple suitcase made a hitched rumbling sound as she followed the others out of the plane. Gripping the handle of the luggage, her palms began to sweat, and her body felt as if it was floating. She stopped on the loading ramp and leaned against the wall as others passed, eager to meet friends and family waiting for them. God, what if she wasn't enough for him?
Gasping against the panic that pressed against her chest, she leaned her head back until it rested on the cloth wall. She'd just have to work to be worthy of his love as he had worked for hers. Emotion shook her as she stepped unsteadily toward the exit.