The woman’s frail shoulders lifted and fell in a steadying sigh. “That even though I don’t know you and have never spoken to you, you feel like my daughter. Buck talked about you often. Coveted pictures and trinkets your mother would send. Sometimes, as strange as it sounds, you felt like ours. Like you were just away for school.” Clotilda blinked hard and cleared her throat. “You bought his cabin. I told him that when I visited his grave. He would’ve been so happy to have you back here where you belong.”
Where you belong. Nicole bit her trembling bottom lip and snuggled closer to Link.
“I’m sure you have questions about how things got so messed up, and I guess the simplest explanation is that sometimes people just don’t fit together. Sometimes people bring out the worst in each other. You are part of this place, but your mother never was. She didn’t want to be. Her place was in a fancy house with a man who could give her warm winters and a comfortable life. You got stretched between two worlds, and you had to land somewhere. Alaska lost you for a while.” Clotilda rubbed her knuckle under her eye and smiled. “I saw you. In Galena, I saw you. I drove there as soon as I found out you’d come back, but I wasn’t brave enough to talk to you. You had that beautiful mark, and you look so much like him, but I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t strong enough yet. I followed you into the clothing store, and you smiled at me. Buck smiled at me.” Clotilda swallowed hard. “Look in the closet, Nicole. There is a box on the top shelf he left for you, just in case your mom ever slipped up and told you where you came from, and just in case you came back to Alaska looking for him. And when you’re ready, you come see me in Kaltag, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I moved in with my sister. Your man knows where. He loves you very much to go to this trouble, so don’t take him for granted. No day is promised us with the ones we love, and I’m sorry—so sorry—that you missed the chance to meet your father. But you should know that he knew you. And he loved you very much. You were never forgotten.” Clotilda looked away from the camera for the first time at Link. She nodded once, and a moment later, the screen went black.
Nicole’s shoulders shook as she tried and failed to keep her emotions inside. Link didn’t balk or try to soothe her. He stroked her hair and let her cry against his chest until his sweater was damp with her tears.
And when she finished, he kissed her gently, then stood and disappeared into the room she’d been avoiding since the day she moved into this place—Dad’s room. He wasn’t Buck anymore. He wasn’t some stranger she had no connection with. Link had brought her firsthand accounts of her father’s life that had shaped his image in her mind and given her the knowledge that she was loved. It wasn’t fair that she’d missed his vibrant life, but at least she had this. She had a piece of her dad, and that was more than she thought she would ever have.#p#分页标题#e#
Link returned with a small cardboard box with her name scribbled across the top. She sank onto her knees on the wood floor and carefully pulled the top open. It was full of pictures. The one of her in the red jumpsuit hugging him, her high school photo, and so many more. Baby pictures, and her as a toddler asleep on his chest. Her in a carrier on his back while he tramped through the snow with a grin on his face and a trap hanging from a chain in his hand. There was one of him and Mom. Her dad was grinning at the camera, so obviously happy, but Mom looked lost and haunted. That one, she folded in half so she could just see Dad’s joy. There were stacks of artwork she’d done as a child with dates and ages in the corner. A macaroni rainbow had scribbled across the bottom, Look Clotilda! Macaroni! Told you she was my kid! in the same scrawl that was on top of the box. She laughed thickly and set it down, then picked up a stack of letters. There were no addresses, but they all had her full name written across them, as if Dad had been planning on mailing them the second he found out where she lived.
She read the letters in order by date. They began formal and heavy handed, but by the third, he wasn’t talking about the weather anymore. He was talking to her like she was right there beside him. He’d detailed his life at each moment in time. What he had trapped, fur prices, meeting Clotilda, setting up his trap line. He told jokes he had heard and told her about friends and funerals. He sketched animals he saw, and sometimes, instead of signing the letters, he would paint Alaskan scenery with drippy black ink at the bottom. And in the last one, Dad told her what had happened between him and Mom. He told her how Mom had withered here. How he didn’t hate her for leaving because he’d always known it was coming. How she cried at nights, and it had broken his heart piece by piece. How he’d wanted to follow, but she forbade him to. She’d told him if she was ever going to love again and have a normal life, she had to forget him. He’d written that Mom had kept their address a secret from him in case he ever forgot the rules, but if he ever found out where Nicole lived, he was going to send these letters and hope they reached her well.