“If you could tell Nicole anything about her dad, what would it be?” Link asked softly.
“I would tell her he was a good man. He took care of everyone. Knew everyone’s name. He was never too busy to have a chat with someone who needed it. And he loved her.” Desdemona’s gaze arched from behind the camera to straight into the lens. “He loved you.”
As Nicole hugged a couch pillow to her middle, the next interview came on—an older man sitting in a rocking chair on a porch. He told a story about Buck going on a hunting trip with him, and them both being stuck out in the cold for a night and having to sleep on uncomfortable spruce branches in snow caves they’d dug. He told of Buck’s love for macaroni and cheese, and she laughed as he described his habit of carrying the pasta in every pack he traveled with, and how he and some of their other friends nicknamed her dad Mac. She loved macaroni and cheese, too. It was the only cheap, boxed food Mom had ever allowed her to eat when she was growing up.
The interviews came one after the other with Link always asking revealing questions, always guiding them to keep talking, to share good memories. Buck had liked cats, hated trapping wolverines, lost a pinky finger on a saw, walked with a limp after he fell off a ladder in his late twenties, loved witty one-liners, adored Alaska in the winter, built his cabin from the ground up, worked at a gas station in Galena in the off-season, never met a stranger, and he died loving two people. His woman, Clotilda Black, and Nicole.
“This is the last interview,” Link said from behind her. How long he’d been standing there, Nicole hadn’t a clue. Quiet wolf.
“Come here,” she said.
Link sat on the couch next to her, draped his arm around her waist, and pulled her against his side. The beating of his heart was steady under her cheek as a pretty woman with silver hair sat down in front of a log house. She smoothed her pants and clasped her hands in her lap before she looked up at the camera.
“Can you say your name and how you knew Buck?” Link asked.
The woman didn’t look at Link but stared directly into the camera, never glancing away. “I’m Clotilda Black, and I was with Buck for fifteen years until the day he died. I guess a part of me is with him still.”
“What would you like to tell Nicole, if you could talk to her now?”
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.