“The church was packed. There were some hymns and singing, and the preacher said all the necessary words. Then John Snow Boy spoke. Too bad no one could understand what he was saying because I’m sure it was better than the preacher’s spiel.”
“Was he drunk, too?”
Jack uttered a short laugh. “John Snow Boy doesn’t drink, but he speaks English, Inuit and Innu fluently. Trouble is, he mixes them all up into his own language. We call it Innisht. Very colorful but way beyond interpretation. Afterward, there was a pot latch, that’s traditional in this neck of the woods, and then we all came here for the wake. Goody made sure all the kids were herded back home by midnight, and to tell the truth, I don’t remember much after that.”
Senna held the two icy packages of caribou and followed Jack as he left the cabin and headed toward the lake house. “Mr. Granville mentioned he had a sister named Goody.”
“Goody Stewart. Kindest soul that ever walked this earth. She lost her husband eight years ago, and then fell in love with your grandfather. Would’ve married him, if he’d only asked.” Jack never slowed as he spoke, just strode along in that big way of his that Senna was beginning to learn.
“Why didn’t he?” she asked, struggling to keep up as he climbed the porch stairs and opened the door.
“He said she deserved to be happy,” Jack replied, giving her the briefest of glances as he passed through the doorway and headed for the kitchen. He gave the room a quick three-sixty and shook his head. “By God, if Goody ever saw the place like this, she’d skin me alive. Those steaks should thaw quick enough if we put them in cold water. Meanwhile, I’ll take you out to the lake where we can begin discussing our new partnership.”
He held out his hand for the packages of caribou, sealed them up tightly in a plastic bag, then placed them in a large kettle of water on the countertop. Chilkat watched all of this with his intense wolfish expression but remained plastered to Jack’s side.
“There’s no partnership to discuss,” Senna said. “I’m selling my grandfather’s half of the business, and I have two weeks to get everything in order.”
“Two weeks,” Jack said. “That’s not much time, considering what you have to see and do. You’ll change your mind about selling the business when you see it. Bug juice.” He handed her a can of mosquito repellent as he headed for the door. “Be liberal with it.”
“What exactly is there to see?” Senna hurried after him, aware that her heart rate was way above normal. Undoubtedly she was stressed about this executor stuff, but she guessed that Jack Hanson’s insufferable arrogance might have a little bit to do with it, as well.
“You’ve met the dogs,” Jack narrated over his shoulder as he strode toward the dock, “you’ve seen the gear, the supplies, the houses. I’ll show you the plane, and maybe tomorrow, first thing, I’ll fly you out to the river to see the lodge. It’s accessible only by float plane or boat.” He was stepping onto the weather-bleached boards of the dock, and she was right on his heels.
“You’re a licensed pilot?”
“I’m legal, and I have the paperwork to prove it.”
“How far away are these places you want to show me?”
“Far enough so’s you’ll know you’re away from it all.” His eyes glinted with something akin to daring as he came to a halt and gestured to the plane tethered to the end of the dock. “The plane’s good to go, if you are.”
Senna teetered beside him as the dock rocked beneath her feet. She stared dubiously at the aircraft. “It looks ancient.”
“She’s a sweet old girl, a four-passenger Cessna 195. They don’t build ’em like this anymore,” he said, giving the bright-yellow wing that overhung the dock an affectionate slap, as if it were a favorite work horse.
“What year is it?”
“Nineteen fifty, sporting a Pratt and Whitney 985. Beautiful motor.”
“Dear God, that’s older than ancient. And my grandfather owns half of it?”
“The half that never breaks down,” he said with a grin. “So. What do you think of the view? This lake’s four miles across and forty miles long.”
Senna looked across the lake to the far shore. “It’s a big lake,” she said, thinking that this land was lonely and isolated and more than a little forbidding, yet compelling in a way that made her want to see much more of it. “A big land. Are there any towns out there?”
Jack squinted across the distance and nodded. “Standing on this dock we’re looking almost due north. About a thousand miles in that direction there’s a village called Kangiqsualuiuaq, on Ungava Bay. Across the Hudson Strait is Baffin Island, and there a few native settlements on that, as well.”
“You mean to say that the nearest town to our north is a thousand miles from here?”
“Could be a little closer as the crow flies,” Jack admitted. He grinned again at her expression. “Most folks up here follow the waterways, and they seldom run in a straight line. Ever read about the Hubbard expedition?”
Senna shook her head.
“Three men started out on this very same lake, trying to reach the George River and head north to Ungava Bay. Two of them made it back, but Hubbard starved to death.”
Senna gazed out across the vast wilderness. “Let me get this straight. We’re standing here on the edge of nowhere, but that wasn’t wild enough for my grandfather. He had to build a lodge even farther out?”
“For fishing,” Jack said, as if that were a reasonable explanation.
Senna gestured impatiently at the lake. “Are you saying there’s no fish here?”
“Oh, there’s damn good fishing here, but Goose Bay’s just a hop, skip and a jump away, and where there are towns, there are people. On a busy day you might see four or five boats from this very dock, and float planes droning around carrying sports from away. You know.”
Senna shook her head, bewildered. The lake was vast. Four or five hundred boats could have fished all day and never caught sight of each other. “I don’t get it. Was my grandfather a recluse?”
Jack rubbed a jaw that was dark with stubble. “Maybe,” he shrugged. “Hell, maybe we both were, maybe that’s why we got along so well. But first and foremost, he was a fisherman.”
“I never thought of him as anything but an admiral,” Senna confessed. “I can’t even picture him in casual clothing with a fishing pole in his hand.” She paused. “So, the lodge was a place my grandfather built so he could be completely isolated from other fishermen?”
“No. We built the lodge to run as a sporting camp for people who wanted a genuine wilderness fishing experience.”
Senna shook her head, increasingly baffled. “My grandfather wanted to run a sporting camp?”
“What’s so strange about that?”
“I happen to work in the hospitality industry,” Senna explained, “and I know that to be successful you have to make people feel warm and welcome. The admiral just didn’t have the ability to be warm and welcoming. In fact I found him to be quite scary and intimidating.”
Jack was studying her with eyes that sparkled with humor. “You might be surprised at how sociable he could be. Gruffly sociable, that is.”
“We weren’t very close,” Senna admitted as she shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “We didn’t get along that well. In fact, I hadn’t seen him since my father’s funeral. No one in the family even knew where he went after my father’s death. He just disappeared. Never wrote, never answered any letters, never showed up for another Christmas.”
“That’s too bad. You missed