All the Winters After Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the woodstove.
    Kache spotted the downed trees clearly without the flashlight, and he walked as quickly as his mud-soaked, city-boy boots would allow—until the last bend, where he stopped and readied himself for what lay ahead.
    It was then, standing on the road that was no longer a road, breathing deep, his heart hammering, that the realization jarred him. The familiar scent. The spruce, the soaked loamy earth, the sea—yes, yes, yes. But wood smoke? Too strong, too distinct, not merely his imagination. It was definitely the smell of wood burning, and coal too.
    He edged around the last corner and saw the house through the boughs of spruce and naked birch and cottonwoods. It stood, not a dejected pile of logs, but tall and proud, glowing with warm light.
    What?
    Who?
    Smoke rose straight up from the chimney, as if the house raised its hand. As if the house knew the answer.

CHAPTER
    SEVEN
    Kache stood staring, the cold mud oozing into his boots and through his socks. The house stared back as it always had in his mind, glowing with light and life in the middle of the cleared ten acres.
    Who in the hell?
    Sweating, watching, allowing for the strangest glimmer of hope. Maybe he really had been dreaming, really had been sleeping, and now that he’d finally awoken, life might resume as it had before. Maybe all and everyone had not been lost. Maybe only he had been lost.
    In these last two minutes, he felt more alive than he had in two decades. Maybe he’d been under some sort of spell, broken at last on this anniversary. His mom would love the mysticism and synchronicity of that.
    He shook his head, boxed his own ears. What he needed was common sense. His dad would have reamed him for not grabbing Aunt Snag’s .22 that hung on the enclosed back porch. As much as Kache hated guns, never got himself to actually shoot one, he knew it was crazy to approach the house without carrying one, especially given the lights and smoke. His dad used to say it didn’t matter if you were far to the left of liberal: if you walked by yourself in the boondocks of Alaska, you should carry a gun.
    His feet started moving forward anyway. Forward to his old house, his old room. Who in the hell?
    Inside, a dog barked. A shadow passed by one of the windows. The shade went down, snapped up quick as a wink, and shut again.
    He pressed his back against the old storage barn, took deep breaths, and tried to line up his thoughts, which kept ricocheting off one another. He should go back, return in daylight with the gun. Call Clemsky, Jack O’Connell, a few of the others. He licked his palm and made a small circle on the mud-covered window beside him. He peered in. It was dark, and he barely made out the outline of his dad’s Ford pickup. Aunt Snag had even left that, probably driven it home that day from where his dad had parked it by the runway. She should have used it. That would have meant something.
    The dog was going nuts, continuously barking. Kache pushed on the storage barn side door; it wasn’t locked and opened easily. Along the wall, he felt for the shovel, the hoe, the rake. He decided on the sharp, stiff-bladed rake. Better than nothing.
    Hovering behind a warped barrel and then a salmonberry bush, he tried the back door of the house, knowing it would be locked. He crept along to the first kitchen window, remembering. That window never did lock. He slid it open, pulled himself up on one knee, lowered the rake in first, jumped down inside with a thud.
    The barking stopped, became a whine and growl. He pictured a hand muzzled around the dog’s nose. Kache tried to make himself smaller by crouching and then slipping along the wall. The thought came to him: I am not the intruder here. This is my house. He’d forgotten, taken on the attitude of a thief instead of a protector, and he stood straight with his rake, as if that would shift the perspective of whoever was upstairs, as if the moment were a