Page 6 of Sawyer

“Went for a walk. Grabbed some ice cream,” I say. “Vix wants pizza for dinner again.”

“Then order pizza.” His face is weary. “That’s fine.”

“Can I make something for Aunt Pris?”

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head. He glances down at her, his eyes filled with equal parts worry and love. “She won’t be up for hours.”

“Neena at the IGA is putting together a bag of teas and broths for me to pick up tomorrow.”

“That’s kind of her. What are the girls up to?”

“Watching a movie and coloring mandalas. I told them to stay quiet, if possible.”

“You’re a godsend, Ivy.” He looks up at me. “I know I must sound like a broken record, but—”

“Iwantto be here, Uncle Alan,” I tell him. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

“I wish I could pay you something.”

“Come on. We’re family. I wouldn’t accept a dime. I love you guys.”

He sighs. “I know that. And we love you, too. But you should be starting your post-college life in Juneau. Planning your wedding. Digging into your internship. Instead, you’re trapped here…”

“Hey,” I say, holding up my hand to stop him. “I’m nottrappedanywhere. Juneau will still be there when she’s better, okay? It’s just on hold for a little bit.”

“Your father’s not happy about your being here. He’s called me twice now offering to pay for a professional nurse so you can get on with your life.”

“Aunt Priscilla wouldn’t want a stranger in her house, and we both know it.” My uncle is the younger of the two siblings and has always been intimidated by his big brother’s wealth and success. “Don’t worry about Dad. His bark is worse than his bite. You know that.”

“Well, thanks for everything, Ivy. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

And I don’t know what I would have done without you and Aunt Pris, I think.

“No problem,” I tell him. “I’m going to get the girls’ laundry going. Get some rest, okay? I’ll wake you up for dinner.”

He nods, placing his glasses on the bedside table and shutting his eyes as I pull the bedroom door closed behind me. I stop in my cousins’ room, collecting the dirty clothes hamper from their closet and heading down the basement stairs to the washer and dryer.

As a lonely little girl, I looked forward to my summers with Uncle Alan and Aunt Priscilla all year; their house was a safe haven, and their affection was offered bountifully with no strings attached. Without their love and kindness, I have no idea how I would’ve survived my childhood.

It’s not that my mother and father were bad people, per se, but some people are cut out to be parents, and mine were not.

My father, Alexander, who is one of the wealthiest businessmen in Alaska, met and married my mother, June, twenty-two years ago after a wild night in Vegas. He was there for a convention. She was an entertainer. When sober, she used to claim that she was a model and dancer at that point in her life, but her frequent drunken rages about “what I had to do to make ends meet,” have led me to believe that her employment was probably a lot more sordid than modeling or dancing. She never forgave herself for whatever she did to pay the rent. From what I remember of her, which isn’t that much, she was full of rage, sadness, and regret.

She was a terrible match for my stoic, workaholic father who was fourteen years her senior. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me the weekend they met and married, they may have gotten their union annulled a few weeks later. Instead, my fatherhanded her a handful of platinum credit cards, installed her in his austere Fairbanks mansion in the Alaskan wilderness, and proceeded to ignore her.

He worked hard and got wealthier.

She drank more and got lonelier.

And I was raised by a revolving door of housekeepers, maids, nannies, and babysitters, who inevitably quit after a few months of my father’s long absences and my mother’s erratic behavior.

The year I turned eight, my mother left. One day she was there, and the next she was gone. She left a note saying that she couldn’t stand another minute in Fairbanks and was returning to Vegas. She said she loved me and always would, but that I would be better off without her. That was it. I never saw her or heard from her again.

My father, who was away on business at the time, came home for a week, trying to track her down without success. Uncertain of how to care for an eight-year-old child on his own, he decided to send me to Skagway to spend the summer with his younger half brother—an uncle I’d never met and didn’t even know I had. I still remember stepping off the private plane, my hand clasped firmly in that of a hired flight attendant, who’d accompanied me south. I had no idea whose face to seek as we entered the airport terminal together. In the end, it was my uncle’s fiery red hair that caught my eye and felt familiar. It was the same brassy shade as my father’s and my own.

Wearing sandals, jeans, and a sweatshirt (an outfit my own father wouldn’t be caught dead in), he’d squatted down in front of me.

“I bet you’re Ivy,” he’d said, looking me straight in the eyes. It had made me feel seen by an adult, maybe for the first time in my whole life.

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