All the Winters After Read Free Page B

place lured him back in. Then it yanked him hard with long lines of memories: Denny buying him beer at that very liquor store, which still sported the same flashing orange sign; his mom rushing him into that very emergency room when he was nine and had split his knee open; that same hardware and tackle shop his dad got lost in for hours while Kache waited in the truck, writing lyrics on the backs of old envelopes his mom kept in the glove compartment for blotting her lipstick. Kache had written around the red blooms of her lip prints.
    Some things had changed, sure, and yet not enough to keep away a hollow, emanating ache.
    But it was breakup. Here, early spring was the depressing time of year, when the snow and ice gave way—cracking, breaking, oozing—as if the earth bawled, spewing mud everywhere, running into the darkest lumpy blue of Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay.
    â€œThought we might get to see Janie. Couldn’t get away from work?” Snag asked, glancing at Kache. He shrugged. “You’re awfully quiet. For you.” She fiddled with the radio while she drove and then turned it off. It was true that Kache’s dad had dubbed him Chatty Kachey, but that was a long, long time ago. “Ah, a break from the rain.”
    â€œWe don’t get enough in Austin. I’d like a good watering.”
    â€œIn a few weeks, you’ll be soaked through to the bone, I’m betting. Fingers crossed we’ll have a decent summer. Since you don’t…you know…have to get back to work. Or, apparently, Janie? You’re staying a while, aren’t you, hon?”
    â€œI’m thinking a few weeks.” That was the goal anyway, if he could stick it out. It would get easier in a day or two. He wanted to hang out with Snag and Lettie. Face the things he needed to face, get out to the homestead. Snag had said a nice family was renting it. He’d try to fix whatever out there needed fixing, do whatever needed to be done for Lettie and Snag, hold it together, be strong enough to look it all in the face so he could get on with his life. Janie was right. It was way past time.
    Snag pulled the car into the parking lot of the low brick-and-concrete building. “Gram’s a lot weaker, Kache. She asks about you still though. It depends. Some days she’s clearer than most of us, and some days she’s cloudy, and some days she’s plain snowed in.”
    He got out and held open the glass door. The walls of the lobby were covered in flowery pink-and-green wallpaper and paintings of otters, puffins, and bears. He nodded approval. “Not bad, considering.”
    â€œBelieve me, it’s much better than the third-world prison camp they call a nursing home down in Spruce.” She smiled wide. “Hello there, Gilly.”
    â€œSo this is Kache.” A woman, probably a little younger than Snag, reached out and shook his hand. “Not a mere figment of Snag’s and Lettie’s imaginations after all.” She wore a name tag printed in oversize letters pinned on a cheery smock and had blue eyes with nicely placed crow’s feet, the kind that told you she’d spent a lot of time laughing. “If I’d known last month you were coming up, I might have been able to talk my daughter into staying. I told her we have a boatload of single men up here, but she only lasted a couple of weeks. She said, ‘Mom, I’m going back to Colorado where at least the men shave.’ Plus, she heard that folks regularly get their eyebrows and noses pierced by hooks while combat-fishing the Kenai. It all fairly crushed her fantasy version of Alaska.”
    Snag touched Kache’s face. “Five o’clock shadow.”
    Kache said, “Can’t help that. But it’ll be gone by morning.”
    â€œSee, Gilly? Your daughter missed out.”
    Kache rubbed his chin. “It won’t be long before I start forgetting how to shave, I suppose.”
    Even