When Love Comes

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Hannah gripped the steering wheel of her parents’ Toyota truck and felt waves of grief alternating with exhilaration flow through her. Her father’s friend Frank had offered to drop off the truck for her when she landed in Anchorage. Nostalgia washed through her when she spied the bright red truck in the airport parking lot. When she opened the back of the cab, she found herself looking at odds and ends that had traveled with her parents in any of the trucks they’d had, her eyes landing on two pairs of brown XtraTufs. XtraTufs were the favored heavy-duty rubber boot in Alaska—her parents never went anywhere without them. Knowing that they had probably last been touched by her parents brought a flash of grief.

For God’s sake, they’re just boots. With her chest tight, Hannah tossed her bags into the back of the truck.

It was late spring in Alaska with lupine starting to bloom in small clusters in the tall grass along the highway. The landscape varied, fields of grass alternating with spruce forests and ocean views. Exhilaration rose through the grief and came from being back in a place where she belonged. She had missed the feeling so much that she hadn’t known how empty she felt away from here. At the same time, the loss of her parents was so sharp; she could barely tolerate it at times.

Hannah’s recollection of her mother, Janet, was one of steadiness and warmth. To those in the lower forty-eight (as the rest of the United States was known to Alaskans), her mother’s beauty would likely have been considered at odds with her willingness to get dirty. She could change the oil on a truck, fillet a fish, chase off moose, and head out for dinner looking beautiful. As for her father, John, he’d loved his wife, his daughter, and his work. His love of biology led them to Alaska and kept him intellectually immersed.

Hannah grinned as she caught sight of a moose along the side of the road, calmly nibbling at an alder tree. They were so common in Alaska that drivers had to be careful in the winter months to avoid them on roads. They were often seen ambling about town and in backyards. Diamond Creek was south of Anchorage toward the lower end of the Kenai Peninsula. There was only one route there, south along Seward Highway and then farther south on the Sterling Highway. This had been the last road she’d traveled in Alaska with her mother –almost two and a half years ago when her mother drove her to Anchorage for her flight out to Massachusetts when she moved away. Hannah blinked when she recalled that she and her mother had argued on that drive, the last time she’d seen her mother. Her mother had tried to bring up her concern about Hannah’s most recent impulsive choice—that she’d blown her meager savings on a trip to Costa Rica with a man she’d barely known. Hannah had reacted as usual—she’d dismissed her mother’s concern and changed the subject. She’d tried to hide what it felt like to let them down time and again and shoved her battered self-respect out of the way with bravado.

The recollection made her cringe. The argument between her and her mother could have been a record she played over and over, the only variations related to where she was running off to and with whom. She didn’t like to think much about it, but she used to drive her parents nuts. In some ways, she had it together in that she had high grades and usually had a job. Before college in Anchorage, she had been less wild, but then she had her heart broken in the worst way. Or that’s how it felt. She’d fallen hard for Damon, a charming, rugged, handsome guy from Juneau.

Damon was everything Hannah thought she wanted—funny, smart, and an avid outdoorsman. She fell hard and along the way ignored all the obvious red flags, such as that he was a tad too familiar with lots of women and tended to be vague if she asked too many questions. But he was so much of what she thought she wanted that she dove right in, convinced they would be together for good. Her fantasy was blown up about a year into their relationship when she and Susie, her best friend, had gone for coffee at a new place in Anchorage. Lo and behold, Damon was there, cozied up to another woman. Susie had walked right up to Damon and called him out. Hannah had slunk back to the car. She’d actually let him persuade her it was a fluke and a huge mistake. Take two was when she ran into him with yet another woman when she was out for dinner with Susie and a few friends.

She’d had enough sense to break it off for good then. But the damage was done, and she spent the next few years running away from how she felt. She kept her relationships shallow and let the taste of adventure tug her just about anywhere, her heart shielded all the while. She’d convinced herself she could play it just as cool as the men who kept things casual. Her parents worried about her and didn’t like seeing their only child running off on trips around the world with men she barely knew. The consequences of her superficial, flighty choices were the incremental loss of her self-respect and her parents’ disappointment. She also had no savings to speak of and was often scrounging for money to cover bills.

Hannah wished her parents knew she’d stopped being so impulsive after they died. It was as if a switch turned off. She’d become almost rigidly responsible. Actually, the last trip she’d chased after a man had been the trip to Costa Rica, which had been the source of conflict with her mother. The man in question had ended up leaving her stranded in a hotel with no money to pay the bill while he took off with a lovely young woman he met there. Hannah had been forced to sneak out of the hotel, using what little money she had left to pay for the cab to take her to the airport. She’d been wise enough to purchase a round-trip ticket. After her parents died and she’d built up a teensy amount of savings, she’d paid off that hotel bill.

As she approached Diamond Creek, she pulled over to a viewing spot. Parts of Diamond Creek along the shoreline sat high on a bluff that flanked the ocean below. She leaned against a railing along the edge of the bluff. In a few weeks, the area would be filled with campers and RVs, drivers stopping to snap photos of the view. For now, it was blessedly empty. Looking out over Kachemak Bay, Hannah breathed deep. It was early afternoon, and the wind was light. The mountains stood silently across the water, mostly green with patches of snow left in the shady areas. Tears slid down her cheeks, and her chest loosened for the first time in years. A raven flew past her and called to another in the distance. An eagle glided low along the shoreline.

Gathering herself, she went into the rest-stop bathroom. Wiping her face with a damp paper towel, she looked in the mirror. Her long brown hair hung in tangled waves around her shoulders. Sky-blue eyes looked back at her, eyes she’d inherited from her mother. Her mouth was wide with full lips. She was too tall for the mirror, which cut her reflection off at the forehead if she stood up straight. Tugging her hair back, she twisted it into a knot and returned to her truck.

The sign for Emerald Road sat crookedly at the base of a small hill. She remembered when the city had installed new street signs years ago. The Emerald Road sign had tilted drunkenly after the first spring of frost heaves and mud, remaining in that state since. Her childhood home was the last on the road, which ended in a gravel cul-de-sac. The house was a two-story barn-shaped home with cedar siding. Blue spruce trees stood sentry at the entrance of the short driveway. She came to a stop and turned the engine off. Silence seeped through her for a moment before being interrupted by magpies chattering in the trees. Her gaze traveled around the yard. The spruce trees opened up to a small grassy area with the house sitting to one side. A field of fireweed, not yet blooming, flanked the left of the house with trees filling the rest of the area. Her mother’s raised flower beds were overgrown with weeds.

Hannah imagined the family’s old dog, Grayson, running out to greet her. Grayson had died peacefully in his sleep shortly before she’d left for graduate school. She felt his absence sharply. He’d been a fixture of her life with her parents in Alaska, a quiet, steady presence.

Aside from the funeral, which Hannah barely recalled, the last time she’d been here, her parents had been vibrant and well. The house had usually buzzed with activity, holding a sense of motion and purpose. Now it lacked any sense of presence within. The house looked out over the road, which afforded an open view of the bay and mountains. Turning away from the view, Hannah stepped to the deep purple door that stood out against the wood-frame house, reflecting her mother’s whimsical touch. When she entered the house, a soft quiet enveloped her. Despite two years of absence, the house held echoes of her parents’ presence.

Hannah’s heartbeat kicked up as she began to move through the house. The first floor of the house consisted of an expansive living room that opened onto the kitchen, exposed wooden beams angling across the rooms. A bathroom and laundry room were situated behind the kitchen. A deep green soapstone woodstove anchored the living room. Walking upstairs, she stepped onto the landing and into a loftlike space with a railing on one side from which the living room could be seen. It had morphed throughout the years from a playroom to a television area to her mother’s office and sewing area. Her parents’ old bedroom was down a short hallway to the front of the house with the other two bedrooms on the back end.

Her parents’ bedroom looked as it would have had they gone on vacation, clean and quiet with the bed made. Their clothing still hung in the closet. Hannah’s bedroom was as she’d left it last. In here, at least, she felt less of her parents’ lingering presence. Though few of her belongings remained, her bed was covered with the quilt she’d had throughout high school, a spiral of bright colors with a swirling star in the center sewn by her mother. Her chest started to loosen. In spite of two years of fear, she’d gotten through what she had been most afraid of: being here, in the place that held the memory of her parents. Back downstairs, she looked at the empty refrigerator. She needed to go to the store, which while maybe not as difficult as coming to her old home, would actually involve speaking to people.

Hannah left her bags in her old room since it felt the most comfortable for now. Her choice now was to wander around the empty house or take her hungry self to town. She had one granola bar left. She wished Grayson were here to give her courage. He’d loved car rides and often tagged along on errands. But no Grayson, just herself. For a flicker, she felt swamped by the cold emptiness that she’d tried to keep at bay since her parents died. She took a deep breath, shored her feelings into a corner, and hopped back into the truck.