Free Pathways (9780307822208) by Lisa T. Bergren Page B

through it?”
    “Yes. We’ll be fine. I’ve flown through stuff like that plenty of times.”
    She nodded again, a bit too eager to agree. He glanced back at Bryn, who stared wordlessly out at the tundra beneath them. She was more beautiful than ever; the five years had given her the gift of more pronounced curves and a mature look that enhanced everything right about her. But there was a touch of mournful sorrow in her eyes, and the crow’s-feet at the corners seemed deeper, the shadows beneath, darker. She was plagued by something unhappy. He cleared his throat and stared ahead again.
    Ben always said Alaska was filled with people who were runningeither away from something or toward something. If Eli were a betting man, he would wager she was running away. But from what? Where was her father? Coming in soon? His questions would have to wait until he could return to Summit, without Sara.
    They dropped Bryn off at her cabin while the heavens softly rained, reminding her of flour coming from her grandmother’s sifter.
    “You going to be okay, Bryn?” Eli asked after bringing her duffel bags up to the cabin. He looked troubled, as if he wanted to say more but knew he had to get back to the plane and Sara.
    “Oh yeah. You hop in; I’ll push the plane out.”
    “Okay. Let me know if you need anything, all right? We’ll be here until tomorrow evening. I’m coming back next week with supplies for Ben. He’s home. Radio me in town if you need something.”
    “All right,” Bryn said, thinking about him and Sara alone in that snug little cabin across the way. “
Here until tomorrow evening.” Surely Eli and Sara wouldn’t …
She resolutely pulled the hood of her parka up, and they ran back to the plane. She smiled as Eli’s face reappeared in the cockpit window and she called, “Thanks for the lift! See you around!” It was none of her business what Eli Pierce did or didn’t do these days. Never mind that she couldn’t even get the man to kiss her five years ago. There had been plenty of others who had been willing in the interim. Unfortunately, none of them seemed worth her while. Not like Eli.
    She pushed them off again, and Eli ran up the engine and motored across the perfectly still lake, marred only by the tiny raindrops and the wake behind the plane. Within minutes, they had landed on the other side.
    Suddenly Bryn felt bone-cold and very alone. Sighing, she madeit up the beach and under the protection of the porch roof she and her father had built. Bryn ran her hands up the nearest pole, her eyes scanning the length and breadth of their work. It was holding up well. “Oh, Dad,” she whispered. It made her ache inside to recognize how lonely she was, how different Summit was without him.
    She knew she had come here to feel closer to him, to remember when he was still trying to reach out to her. But she had also come here for her. To look forward, to find rest and rejuvenation and direction. It was a challenge to spend two months on Summit alone. And a good one. From the looks of things, Eli wouldn’t be around much, with Sara in the picture and tourist season soon coming to its zenith. It was up to her. To figure out where she had been, where she was now, and where she was going.
    Bryn fished for the old key in her pocket, slid it in the lock, and then pushed on the lever. The door creaked open. Even her father hadn’t been back since they had left, pestered by her mother, plagued by an intense work load, then caught up in his new …
    She hauled one heavy duffel into the sitting room and then the other and her groceries. The fire was laid in the wood stove, just as they left it—“I like to know it’s here, ready for me to come and light it,” her father had said upon their departure—and thankfully, with a quick strike of the match, the dry tinder immediately blazed to life. She left the cabin to gather more wood, pulled from beneath the higher, wetter logs. She dumped her armload beside the