Iditarod Nights (16 page)

"Let's go upstairs," he murmured.

"I don't think I can make it."

"All right."

He drew her with him to the floor.

***

Sometime before daylight, Dillon carried
Claire upstairs and tucked her into his bed. Her warm body spooned
to his made it possible for him to close his eyes and sleep without
dreaming.

Chapter 26

Claire couldn't believe the number of people
packed into Nome's recreation centerfor the Iditarod Awards Banquet
the following afternoon. Only two mushers still remained on the
trail; the rest, along with volunteers, their families, friends and
race fans, sat around dozens of linen-covered tables. ITC officials
announced awards and distributed trophies from a podium on stage.
The room burst into applause and cheers as the first-place winner
came up and spent fifteen minutes thanking everyone, including his
team. Cameras flashed nonstop. Each musher was treated with
high-spirited kudos. Claire received a commemorative belt buckle
and a check for $1,049, symbolizing the length of the Iditarod
Trail. For finishing in the top thirty, Dillon's cut of the prize
money was a percentage of the balance.

"This will buy a lot of dog food," he
said.

There seemed no end to the awards: Most
Improved Musher, Golden Harness and Golden Stethoscope,
Humanitarian and Sportsmanship awards, Mushers' Choice, Rookie of
the Year, Checkpoint of the Year, fastest time from Safety to
Nome.

They shared tales from the trail and dined on
prime rib, king crab and gallons of strawberries. Locals – some of
them regulars at the Bering West – stopped to congratulate Dillon.
Again, the feeling of being part of something much larger than
herself, of a community, filled Claire.

She looked over at Dillon.
I love him
.
Waking this morning in his bed, his body radiating heat, his arm
over her. Letting him cook breakfast for her. Showering together.
She'd gone with him to take care of his dogs. Frank Johnson's
kennel yard was small, a couple dozen assorted huskies and mutts.
Bonnie and the rest of Dillon's team looked healthy and happy.
Claire loved Frank instantly, a big man with wild red hair and a
beard to match, easy to smile, even easier to laugh.

"If the boss had warned me he was bringing
company, I'd've put on my best overalls," he said with a chortle.
"Least I can do is offer you a cuppa java."

"Putting a fancy name on it won't make that
mud you brew any more drinkable," Dillon remarked. But his tone was
good-natured, as though they'd shared this conversation countless
times.

"I like my coffee to
mean
something,"
Frank said, striking a pose that reminded Claire of a Shakespearian
actor and made her laugh.

She'd not only fallen in love with an Alaskan
man, she'd fallen in love with an entire state and its people. They
felt like family. A fist tightened around her heart. She'd told
Dillon they had two days to figure something out, but there was no
out. By this time tomorrow she'd be in Talkeetna, packing for her
return to Portland to keep promises made, and Dillon would stay in
Nome. Where he belonged.

"Hey." Dillon's hand on hers drew her back,
concern in his breath-stopping blue eyes. "Are you alright?"

She flashed on another banquet, when he'd
rushed a green-at-the-gills rookie from the Millennium Hotel's
banquet room. "Don't worry," she said, smiling, "I'm not going to
faint this time."

"You're stronger than you look."

Tears tried to push through her smile.
Can
you be strong for me?
"Right now it doesn't feel that way."

Chapter 27

Dillon stared out across Front Street at the
seawall. Early morning's light cast its soft promise over the
scene. Claire lay sleeping in his bed a few feet away, her head
cradled in the crook of one arm, her hair spilled across his
pillow.

Things changed between them last night.
Instead of an explosion of heat and passion, every moment became
precious. He felt it in the way she touched him, her fingers
lingering, as though committing him to memory. As though their time
together was something fragile to preserve.

He took what she gave, held it in his heart,
and gave in return, knowing the more they shared, the harder it
would be to do the right thing. To let her go. His head was fucked
up. If she stayed, he would destroy her the way he'd destroyed the
people he left behind in Portland. The past was scarred with
emotion. It screamed at him. The only way to get through it was to
disassociate, suppress the feelings.

She stirred in her sleep. He resisted the
urge to go to her, lay beside her and hold her. Time was too short.
He felt the void creeping nearer.

***

Claire found herself alone in the bed when
she woke. Daylight filtered into the apartment through the open
shutters. She glanced at the nightstand clock. Her plane left for
Anchorage in two hours.

Dillon stood looking out the window. He wore
last night's jeans and gray sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed to his
elbows, a mug in his hands. Claire wrapped a blanket around herself
and went to him. He didn't protest when she took the mug from him
and sipped the dark coffee. It was cold. Her eyes lifted to meet
his. "Did you get any sleep?"

"A little."

"Another nightmare?"

The look he gave her tore at her. "I've been
pretending everything's normal, but it's not.
I'm
not. Or
I'd get on that plane with you instead of hiding in Nome."

"Hiding?"

"What would you call it?"

"Surviving. Instead of putting a gun to your
head, you survived. You started over, got sober, then chose to test
yourself every single day by owning a bar, for God's sake."

"None of which changes the fact that I killed
a nineteen-year-old boy."

"That
boy
would have likely killed you
if you hadn't shot first."

His jaw muscles tightened, released. "We'll
never know, will we?"

Tears welled in her eyes despite her vow to
not, under any circumstances, cry. "What do you want to do,
Dillon?"

"Push rewind. Freeze time. Hell, I don't
know." His callused hand cupped her face.

Claire felt his lips tremble as they met
hers. She forgave him for letting her go, for being the strong one.
"Love me," she whispered.

"That was never the problem."

***

Dillon cherished every touch, the taste of
her, the sound she made when she came. Then he watched her pack and
took her to catch her plane.

"If there's anything I can do to help," she
told him, the determined angle of her chin not quite steady, "you
know where to find me."

Unable to speak, afraid of the despair
closing his throat, he kissed her and watched her leave.

Chapter 28

Claire stood in the middle of the garden she
and her mother put in so many years ago, a light Spring rain
pattering the hood of her waterproof jacket. After leaving Nome,
she compartmentalized her emotions and did what needed to be done
to disconnect from Alaska and re-enter the life she left behind. A
life without the Sommer family, without the dogs, without Dillon.
Landing at PDX lacked the comfort of coming home she'd hoped for.
But here, where her childhood memories were the strongest, she
could get close.

Mud sucked at her faded pink galoshes. They'd
been waiting by the door of the covered patio, where she left them
two years ago. Planting season was still at least a month off, the
vegetable cages and trellises stowed in the shed, the raised beds
sprouting dandelions and clover. Over the years there'd been
countless varieties of tomatoes, pole beans, beets, hot and mild
peppers, zucchini, half a dozen different greens, and cucumbers –
especially lemon cucumbers – produced in this fifteen-foot square
plot.

Claire remembered picking the first pumpkin
grown by her own hands. Her mother baked and pureed the pulp for
pies. It became a tradition to let one pumpkin grow as large as
possible for a Halloween jack-o-lantern. The year Claire was able
to handle the carving tools without help, Mama had begun to grow
weak from the cancer treatments. The brightly patterned scarf tied
around her thinning hair made her pale skin appear sallow, almost
transparent. It frightened Claire. She remembered tears dripping
from her chin onto a pumpkin with triangle eyes and jagged
teeth.

"Don't be afraid, honey."

Claire knew people who grieved over not
recalling the sound of a deceased loved one's voice. Not so with
her. She heard the gentle inflection of her mother's words as if
spoken just yesterday. Mama dried her face with a dishtowel and
said, "I plan to be around for a very long time."

"Promise?"

There'd been the slightest hesitation in her
mother's response. Claire hadn't noticed it as a young girl in
misery, but looking back now, she saw it with the clarity of
maturity and time.

"I promise," Mama said. "But I might need
your help to take care of Daddy until I get better. Can you do
that? Can you be strong for me?"

"Yes, Mama. I promise."

She hadn't felt strong, but she promised,
hoping it would make Mama better. She never told her dad. A secret
held dear. Dad thought she returned because of her promise to him,
but it was the one made to her mother that called her home.

After Caroline Stanfield's death, Alice, the
stay-at-home mom next door, offered to help work the garden plot in
exchange for a share of the harvest. With Alice's help, the garden
continued to thrive year after year, a living legacy to the mother
Claire still missed.

By the end of her second week home, Claire
found a one-bedroom apartment within walking distance of the house.
Just far enough to give her breathing room.

"It's small," her dad commented when he
helped her move a few of her belongings out of storage. The rest
would stay in storage until she decided what to do with it. Too
much of it reminded her of Grant and would be donated or sold
anyway.

"It's all I need."

Her time in Alaska taught her that. A place
to sleep, a place to eat, a place to bathe. Her physical
requirements had simplified. The rest – the emotional stuff – would
take longer.

Chapter 29

She shouldn't be here. He watched bloody
fingers grab her from behind, begin choking her. He tried to pull
her free, save her, but his hands passed through the ghost-white
figure and he lost his balance. Fell. Got up. She struggled to
breathe, her wild eyes pleading for help. He lunged and fell again,
slipping in the blood on the floor. Not the floor, snow. Cold. Red.
Red with her blood. God, she needs to get out! She's going to die
and he can't save her. No!

Dillon jolted awake, realized an instant
later he had fallen out of bed and was sitting on the floor. The
sick knot in his stomach pushed its way up his throat. He forced
himself to look over his shoulder at the tangled sheets, terrified
he'd see Claire's bloodied, lifeless body.

She wasn't there.

The sick knot shifted to his heart. She never
would be.

He thought he understood the grief Ethan
Stanfield bore. The void inside him ripped wider.

***

"Got a minute, boss?"

Dillon flinched, saw Vic standing in the
doorway, sans his customary stained white apron.
Quitting time
already?
A glance at the desk clock confirmed the diner had
locked up an hour ago. "Come in. I'm – " His gaze dropped to the
timesheet in front of him. It was upside-down.
Like my life
.
"Finished." He slid the timesheet aside.

Vic entered the closet-size office and closed
the door.

Aware of his cook's claustrophobia, Dillon
straightened. "That serious, huh?"

"You tell me." Vic pulled the room's lone
folding chair around and straddled it, resting his thick arms
across the back. "Kristi left in tears this afternoon."

"Ah hell." The starch went out of Dillon's
shoulders. He'd been nursing a killer headache when his young
waitress waltzed into work that morning with lime-green hair. The
stark color hit him like a knife to both eyeballs. He didn't
remember his exact words, but the hurt look she gave him would take
awhile to forget. "I'll have a talk with her tomorrow."

"
If
she comes back. What's up with
you, man? The girl's only nineteen. Cut her some slack for wanting
to be a teenager a little while longer."

Vic's tone rankled. Nineteen was old enough
to know better. Yet even as he thought it, he felt like the lowest
piece of shit over his behavior. "I said I'll talk to her."

"You haven't been sleeping, have you."

The observation caught Dillon off guard.
Sleeping?
He worked longer hours at the diner. He spent more
time with the dogs. None of it helped. He couldn't sleep without
the night terrors, so he stopped trying. "It's like this after
every race, you know that."

"Yeah, yeah. I know how the race screws with
your sleep patterns and it takes awhile to get back to normal." Vic
grunted. "Whatever the hell
normal
is." His eyes narrowed.
"This time is different. It's been a month. Everybody can see your
fuse getting shorter. Something happened out there on the trail,
something that's eating your insides."

Dillon resented being cornered by his own
fallibility. "If I wanted a shrink," he said, his words sharp, "I'd
hire one."

"No you wouldn't. That's not what we do."

"We?"

"Wounded warriors, disabled vets, fucked-up
soldiers."

"You've got the wrong guy. I've never been in
the military."