Page 50 of Fake It True

She giggled and yanked on her clothes. “I’ll start coffee.”

After she hurried out, I chuckled at my reflection in the mirror. I looked downright giddy.

When I walked out to the kitchen a few minutes later, Dora was talking at full-speed to Casey about otters. She grabbed Casey by the hand to pull her over to the windows to show her a moose and two calves standing in the field outside. Casey was more alert than me at this hour, but seeing as she often went into work at the coffee shop over an hour earlier, that made sense. As I watched them, my heart felt so full it ached.

Dora turned toward me and beamed. “Daddy!” That tightness in my chest eased, my heart feeling cracked wide-open as if sunlight were pouring directly into it.

Dora ran across the room. She hugged me briefly, but she didn’t linger. She caught my hand. “We’re making scrambled eggs.”

My gaze arced over to Casey who was following us. This was one night, and I knew I couldn’t start playing house with Casey. And yet, it was the first step in the direction I knew I wanted to go.

Dora let go of my hand to open the door to the refrigerator, calling out, “How many eggs should I get out?”

Casey stopped beside me, her eyes crinkling at the corners with her smile. “What do you think? Eight?”

“Yeah. Trust me, we’ll finish them.”

Casey giggled and started to move away. I curled my arm around her waist. Dora was preoccupied with counting out the eggs. “Can we really do this?” I asked.

Casey smiled at me. “We already are.”

EPILOGUE

Luna Talton

A gust of salty air blew my hair wild. I lifted a hand to catch it and smooth it back. I looked out over the water, marveling at the view. The mountains towered in the distance and the sun struck sparks off the ocean’s surface. Even though I’d grown up in Alaska, it never failed to wow me. Whenever people told me they didn’t believe in any kind of spirituality, I would tell them they just needed to go to Alaska. Because it was truly a spiritual experience. Nature here snatched your breath right out of your lungs and reminded you that the whole world was a cathedral.

“Luna!” My friend Casey’s voice reached me and I spun around.

She was lugging a cooler all by herself and stumbled a little on the rock-strewn shoreline. I hurried over and reached for the other handle. “What’s in here?” I asked.

“Food,” she teased. “We have empty coolers too. Everyone tells me we have fish to catch. Have you ever done this?” she asked me as her gaze whisked over to several fishing nets propped up against another cooler nearby on the beach.

“Of course! Dipnetting is an Alaskan tradition. If you grow up here, you have to do it. I can’t even imagine not doing it.”

After we set the cooler down, I opened it to peer inside. “Oh wow, you didn’t mess around.” When I glanced up at Casey, she grinned. “Well, you said we might be here all day.”

Someone called her name. She looked over her shoulder, a smile stretching across her face. Her cheeks went pink when I chimed in, “You are so in love.”

She shrugged. “I am. And, it’s really the best thing ever.”

I impulsively hugged her. “Everyone deserves love like what you and Leo have,” I said just before her fiancé reached us.

“Hey, Luna,” Leo said, stopping beside us. “Ready to net some salmon?”

“Absolutely!”

Leo chuckled, holding two fishing nets aloft. “I have two options for nets. There’s my favorite, which is the cedar handle. I also brought a stainless steel one.”

Casey studied the nets before her gaze bounced to me. “People arereallyinto the nets for this. I can’t dipnet yet. I haven’t been here a full year yet.”

“You can watch. It’s fun,” I replied.

I glanced around the area. Seagulls were calling raucously in the air, and I could hear the distant screech of an eagle. We were at the Kenai River in Alaska, a favorite destination for dipnetting. The activity was aptly named. You gathered on the shoreline at the edge of the water with handheld fishing nets to catch the salmon swimming upriver. Some people chose to dipnet with nets dangling over the edge of boats, but I’d always preferred to be on the shoreline. We were near the mouth of the river, where the fish came rushing in from the ocean in a race to spawn before they died. If they didn’t get scooped up in a net, they would spawn and die.

The beach was getting crowded. There were regulations for the size of the nets and just about everyone had an opinion on the best nets.

I started to suit up in my neoprene fishing waders. Casey looked around, commenting, “This is crazy!”

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