All the Winters After Read Free

owning a bush plane. “The long finger with the red fingernail pointing to the mountains? I bet the earth is so proud of those mountains. Wants to make sure we don’t miss seeing them.” She tucked one of Kache’s curls under his cap, her smile so big. “As if we could! Aren’t they amazing?”
    It had always been a breathtaking view, the kind that made him inhale and forget to exhale, especially when the clouds took off, as they just had, and left the sea every shade of sparkling blue and green against the purest white of the mountains. He had to admit he’d never seen anything anywhere—even now during the spring breakup, Alaska’s ugliest time of year—that came close to this height or depth of wild beauty.
    But the view was doing more than taking his breath away. Maybe his mom had been wrong. Maybe that strip of land was the world’s middle finger, telling him to fuck off, saying, Who you calling flat? Today that red spot of caboose looked more like a smear of blood on the tip of a knife than a fingernail. Either way, the view stabbed its way into his chest, as if it were trying to finish him off before he even landed.

CHAPTER
    THREE
    Snag hadn’t stopped maneuvering through her small house since Kache’s call. Kache. Finally agreeing to come home . In the wee hours of that morning, she’d mistaken the ringing phone for the alarm and kept hitting the snooze button until she sat up in a panic. It’s about Mom . But no, it was Kache, calling back from Austin. Ever since they’d hung up, she’d been bathing every surface with buckets of Zoom cleaner, suctioning up the cat hair and the spilled-over cat food with the vacuum, stuffing the fridge with a ready-to-bake casserole, moose pot roast, and rhubarb crunch, wrapping the bed in clean sheets.
    Snag thought she resembled a well-made bed. Polishing every last streak off the mirror, she saw her chenille robe creased under her breasts as if it were a bedspread tucked around two down pillows. They rose and fell with her deep breaths. She moved fast despite her size, wiping the counter, putting away a pepper grinder and a bottle of salad dressing with Paul Newman’s mug on it. She closed the refrigerator door.
    There was the memory of Kache, sitting on the kitchen stool, dark, curly head bent over his guitar, opening that same door and standing in front of the assortment of cold food like the refrigerator was some god requiring homage. How many times had she swatted him, told him to close the damn door? “A million? A billion?”
    Since the day she had to put her mom into the home, Snag had been talking to herself. Before that, sometimes all Lettie had added to the conversation was, “Is that right, Eleanor?” But it was something.
    No one but her mom still called her Eleanor. Around age nine, she came home from fishing the river alone for the first time, holding up a decent-size salmon. “Look, Daddy. I caught a fish all by myself.”
    Her daddy laughed and pulled the hook out of the side of the poor fish. “Eleanor,” he said, “what you did was snagged yourself a fish.” Glenn, jealous that he was the same age and had yet to catch or even snag anything, started calling her Snag. The name took hold and never let go. Most of the town’s newcomers thought the name came from the fact that she had a gift for selling. It was true. Whether someone needed Mary Kay or Jafra cosmetics, Amway detergent, or a new house, Snag was the person to call.
    Real estate had been particularly good to her. She preferred to live in her simple home, but she waxed poetic about the benefits of a sunken tub or a granite countertop. Lately, she’d stepped back from showing houses. She’d made enough money, and she wanted to give the newbies a shot. The one element in life that had come easily to Snag was money, and she didn’t need to be piggy about it. She still sold products