Deep in the Alaskan Woods (Alaska Wild #1) - Karen Harper Page 0,11

saw the TV remote was lying on the floor. He must have stepped on it or punched it somehow, and a news program had come on. A commercial ran now, one for a getaway to the very Caribbean resort Lyle had decided would be their honeymoon spot.

She began to sob so hard she could barely walk back into the bathroom to turn off the shower.

She dried herself, clicked the TV off and got into bed, sobbing silently and praying she’d get enough sleep and find the strength to go on the next day.

* * *

Alex called her parents and her cousins briefly each night, and Charlene once to thank her for all the help and wish her well. Lyle had been to see her, but she had met him at the door with a friend who was a cop and pleaded ignorance of where his former fiancée had gone. Alex could hear Charlene’s four-year-old daughter’s voice in the background crying that Spenser-doggy wasn’t coming to visit anymore.

And then came the drag of a drive through wide Montana, which went on eternally and, wouldn’t you know, that northwestern state was having an early August heat wave.

Then ahead loomed one of Montana’s six border crossings into British Columbia. Thank heavens she had a current passport from visiting her parents in London. She was still going to have to drive a good slice of western Canada, then back into the US, past Juneau, to Anchorage and then even farther north. She’d be crossing another border, all right, one between her past and present—and the future.

Her cousins had told her she could stay in Canada for up to six months with just proof of US citizenship and a valid ID. She knew from working at the clinic, however, that Spenser would need proof of a current rabies vaccination. She also had that since, she’d figured, if she ever took him to England, it could be necessary. It had to be signed by a US veterinarian, so that was the last remnant she had of Lyle, for he had written his name big and bold on the paper.

She crossed into Canada late on the fifth day of her journey. She started to sing an old Johnny Horton folk song, “North to Alaska.” Spenser howled along with her. It was just the two of them for several more hundred miles—then what lay beyond?

* * *

The mountains of Alaska seemed to hem her in, but she felt protected by them, too. So different from Illinois scenery and skylines.

“Hey, Spenser, this isn’t Kansas or the US Midwest anymore!” she said, before she remembered that Lyle, too, had borrowed from The Wizard of Oz when he’d threatened her and her little dog. But surely that part of her life was over. She was safe and free. And she had the strangest feeling that—if she’d stayed home—Lyle could have been crazy enough to make sure her life was over one way or the other.

She tried to shake that off as she turned onto Route 1, the Glenn Highway, which would skirt big, busy Anchorage to the south. Just think: she could have flown into Anchorage in one day instead of driving for almost a week, but it had to be done this way.

As she turned north again, the spruce and birch forests thickened along the road. Lakes glittered through the trees, some big, some small, and she passed numerous white-water streams, a few with people salmon fishing. Everywhere she looked seemed like a stunning postcard come to life.

She saw a sign pointing toward Wasilla and remembered that was the hometown of past vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. As she turned off the highway onto a two-lane road to drive the last forty or so miles to Falls Lake, she had to laugh. Two houses she passed had cutouts of Palin in their doorways, and she saw one of those posters stuck on a truck window that made it look as if Palin were in the back seat of the vehicle, smiling and waving.

Strange, but after driving mostly on highways, this narrower two-lane road seemed endless. Surely everything would work out.

She saw a moose on the side of the road just about the time she saw a bumper sticker that