Page 34 of Reeve

His frosty tone tells me if I’m not already overstepping a line, I’m about to. And I guess that’s good timing, because the headlights of Aaron’s approaching truck tell me that my ride’s arriving, and it’s time to go.

“You’re not bad-looking, Dad,” I tell him, leaning up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Get back out there.”

“Cheeky,” he mutters as I skip down the steps to meet my date.

Aaron parks the car in front of my cabin and hustles around to open my door. His eyes take a quick sweep of my boots, hair, and makeup, and he smiles at me.

“You lookamazing,” he whispers. Then, looking up at my dad, he calls, “I’ll keep her safe tonight, Mr. Stewart.”

“I know you will, Aaron, and Lord help you if you don’t, because Joe, Quinn, and Sawyer are all at the Parsnip tonight. They’ll be keeping an eye on her, too.”

“Great!” says Aaron. “One o’clock okay for her having her home?”

My dad’s eyes connect with mine through the windshield.

“Reeve’s over eighteen,” he says, winking at me. “When she gets home is up to her.”

“Thank you, sir!” says Aaron, maybe a bit too enthusiastically.

“But one sounds good to me,” he adds.

“One it is,” says Aaron, shutting my door and walking back around to his door.

My dad waves goodbye from the porch as Aaron pulls away from my cabin. He glances at me as we turn left onto the Old Dyea Road.

“You look beautiful tonight, Reeve.”

“Thanks,” I say, feeling a little breathless. “You look nice, too, I’m betting.”

All I’ve seen of Aaron’s New Year’s Eve outfit is his police parka, some dark slacks, and his regular cowboy boots. But I know this guy. I know he wants tonight to be special, and that means he’ll have put effort into how he’s presenting himself.

“Hey!” I say. “I have a question for you. It’s been bugging me.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks. “Lay it on me.”

“What ‘thoughtful gift’ did you give McKenna and Tanner that impressed them so much? They both mentioned it, and…I don’t know, I guess I’m curious.”

“You are, huh?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“Okay, well, like me, McKenna was an only child, you know?”

“Well, you have two half-sisters in Jamaica.”

“Who I’ve met seven or eight times in my whole life.”

“Right. Okay. Keep going.”

“If you don’t have lots of siblings and cousins, you don’t have built-in ‘memory keepers.’”

“‘Memory’… What now?”

“‘Memory keepers.’ She doesn’t have five brothers and sisters who remember everything about her life. She has Isabella, sure, but my understanding is that Isabella already has a huge family, two living parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, etcetera. But McKenna only had her grandmother, her Mimi, and no one else.”

“She has us now.”

“Yes, she does,” he says. “That’s for sure. But who you marry doesn’t change the first few decades of someone’s life. Someone who’s gone hungry might always be a little scared of being hungry again, right?”

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