Page 22 of Reeve

“Would I?”

“Come on! Everyone loves Montego Bay! Don’t you know the song? They play it on 70s on 7 all the time.”

I know the exact tune he’s talking about. I sing off-key but with gusto. “Sing out! Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa oa-oa oa!”

“There you go!” He chuckles, nodding at me. “Come sing me loud! Come sing me Montego Bay!”

“Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa oa-oa oa! Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa oa-oa oa!”

We both laugh for a second before I turn to him, wanting to hear the rest of his story.

“So, you moved to Anchorage with your dad.”

“Yep. When I was eleven.”

“When you said that Anchorage was only four hours away from Skagway by plane, you knewexactlywhat you were talking about.”

He nods. “Sure did.”

“You went to middle school up there? High school?”

“Yep. And I almost enlisted,” he tells me. “I like the military life, the law and order of it. But I decided that, like my mom, Ididn’t love all of the moving around. So I enrolled in the Alaskan State Trooper Academy in Sitka instead.”

“And somehow ended up in Skagway?”

He shrugs. “Joe posted an open position. I applied for it and got the job.”

“Do you miss Anchorage?”

“Sometimes,” he says. “But it’s close if I want to go home.”

“Your dad’s still there?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “By the time we moved to Anchorage, he’d been in the service for eighteen years. His CO at Elmendorf knew he was a single dad, and kind of looked after us, you know? We stayed put, and he helped my dad with ‘Early Out’ eight years later, so he could retire.”

“Oh. He retired?”

“Yeah, but he got a new job,” says Aaron. “For the FAA. His office building’s a stone’s throw from Elmendorf.”

“You see him a lot?”

“Yeah. I’ll go up there for a few days so we can hang out. Definitely around the holidays if I’m not working. Father’s Day weekend, for sure. Joe always makes sure I have it off. My dad always knows of someone coming or going to Skagway. Makes it easier to get a ride.”

“You’re close?”

“We are. You had a big family growing up. I just had him.”

I’m thoughtful for a moment. “We were both raised by our dads.”

He nods. “We have that in common, for sure.”

“He never remarried?”

Aaron laughs. “Nah. My mom was enough of a roller coaster for life. He’s happier solo. He has a bunch of friends on base and at the FAA. Goes to the Elks. Hangs out at the American Legion. Ice fishes in the winter. Hikes in the summer. He’s happy as a clam.”

James Taylor croons about a cowboy named Baby James who lives a solitary life, and it makes me think about my own father’s life without my mom or another partner.

“I never understood why my dad didn’t remarry,” I say. “I asked Harper once, and she said that Mom and Dad had a once-in-a-lifetime love, and if he couldn’t find that again, it wasn’t worth it. Well…what sheactuallysaid was, ‘Why would Dad want to eat hamburger for the rest of his life when he was accustomed to filet mignon?’ That’s Harper for you!” I shake my head and roll my eyes at her analogy. “ButIalways felt bad for him. All alone during the holidays. Living the rest of his life a shrine to a woman who was long gone.”

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