Past Lies
Tell the sprout his old man's about to start on the adventure of a lifetime…Some adventure. Roy Nolan was last seen more than thirty years ago heading into the Alaskan bush. His body was never recovered. And everything Alex knows about this man–his father–comes from an old police report and letters to his mother.Maybe if he'd known Roy, his life would've been different. Happier. Maybe if Alex can follow the man's soul-searching journey, he'll understand himself better. Be able to move beyond the tragedies in his past.Maybe he could even let himself take a chance with Ivy, the helicopter pilot who wants him to stay….
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Wouldn’t you know it?
The one guy in a long while who really turned her on would be someone who wanted to disappear into the bush on some wild-goose chase. Ivy started the helicopter’s rotors and went through the preflight routine. They were airborne before she looked at Alex again.
His face was chalky and he was sweating, swallowing repeatedly. With the force of a blow it dawned on her that the man was terrified. He was afraid of flying. She should have recognized the signs earlier that day, but she’d been preoccupied with pointing out the landscape. She’d just expected him to love the experience as much as she did.
He didn’t have his earphones on, so she couldn’t reassure him. She reached over and touched his knee to get his attention and get him to put on the headset.
But he only pointed at the control panel, where smoke was curling out in slow wispy streams.
Dear Reader,
A Valentine’s gift of a helicopter ride over the snowy mountains of Vancouver became the inspiration for this story. The pilot was a gorgeous young woman, and I knew I had the makings for a complex and interesting heroine. Then my brother and I decided to run away for a few weeks. We went north to Alaska on a long, meandering journey by car, and I fell in love with the vast countryside and the unique and generous people we met along the way.
This is the story of a search for personal freedom, which in the end is never satisfied by anything external. I believe that true freedom comes only when we understand that there’s just one of us here, that learning to trust and to love one another on every level brings peace. And if along the way we find one special someone with whom to watch the northern lights—then we are truly blessed.
Please pay me a visit at www.bobbyhutchinson.com.
Much love, always,
Bobby
Huge thanks to Bree McMurchy, who helped me understand the whys and hows of flight, and who nearly convinced me
I should learn to fly a copter. So Bree, this one’s for you. Wheel and soar high, my friend, and come back safe.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
Well, here I am at last, the Final Frontier. The boat just dumped me off in Valdez—which, by the way, the natives here call Valldeeze. A dude with a beard and an attitude corrected my pronunciation. Tell the sprout his old man’s about to start off on the adventure of a lifetime.
From letters written by Roy Nolan,
April, 1972
Valdez, Alaska
Present Day
BE THE HELICOPTER, and keep an eye on the torque gauge.
Ivy’s dad had drilled those axioms into her head while teaching her to fly. Like a soundless litany, his rules flitted through her mind as the altimeter needle dropped and she expertly guided the Bell Jet Ranger toward her targeted landing spot high on La Grave Mountain.
Sure, she’d flown the Bell innumerable times. And yeah, she’d attended professional flight school. But it was still Tom’s voice she heard as she systematically ticked off the details of her landing procedure.
Pay attention to the wind, watch your approach speed, beware a right crosswind—and never get cocky. Safety never takes a holiday.
The Ranger hovered and then settled with a gentle bump exactly where Ivy had planned to bring it down, the rotors kicking up clouds of snow. As the blades slowed and the white storm settled, Ivy squinted through her sunglasses against the blinding sunshine glinting off glaciers, sending up prisms of color.
Mid-April in Alaska meant that the temperature on La Grave was a chilly twenty below. There’d been thirty centimeters of new snow this week in the higher altitudes, and the skiing was reportedly fantastic.
Ivy didn’t know that from personal experience. She skied cross-country and conservatively downhill, but there was no way she’d strap boards on and attempt the heart-stopping crevasses and perpendicular drops of these sheer mountain cliffs. Extreme sports struck her as ridiculously foolhardy, although of course she’d never say any such thing to these ski bums and their guide who’d paid her top dollar to ferry them up here.
“Okay, gentlemen, last stop. Everybody out.” Ivy’s voice sounded loud in her ears as the rotors slowed. She opened her door and balanced on a strut to help unload the men’s equipment.
“Great flight, skipper. You free for dinner tonight, by any chance?”
Ivy smiled at Glen as the muscular giant from Lake Tahoe strapped on his skis. He’d been hitting on her the past couple of days. He was probably in his early thirties. She was only twenty-seven, but she’d already outgrown him. Glen was looking for the next thrill. He wanted new ranges, new mountains. New lovers.
