“I need to check on Bo and Luke,” her dad said, rousing as she parked. He had the door open before she’d turned off the truck, heading out to the large bear pen that still bore the sign HOME OF ELSA AND GEORGE.

She watched him as he walked up to the pen. The bear cubs had been deep in hibernation for the past four months, but recently, she’d seen them emerge, and her father had started putting out frozen salmon chunks.

Now it looked like they were back inside the wooden den he had built long ago.

She got out, and her breath formed in the air, a lonely wisp in the night.

Granite came off the porch, looking more wolf than Siberian husky, with his gray-black face, his ruff of white over his shoulders, the perked black ears. She crouched, rubbing him hard around the ears. He leaned into her hand.

Her other sled dogs whined and barked, penned in the massive dog run that also contained their straw-bedded shelters. Granite was the only one she trusted to stick around.

Maybe she was jaded, but a girl with her history had a right to be. Sooner or later, the ones you love leave. Which meant that maybe they never loved you at all.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by the time she lugged the propane tanks to the porch. Granite stayed at her heels as she ferried in the groceries, heated water, then fed her dogs.

She had come inside and pulled off her boots and jacket and left them in the arctic entry by the time her dad finally came in.

He too shucked off his outerwear, then he came into the kitchen, leaned against the doorframe. “Sorry for the commotion in town.”

“It’s okay. I’ll make dinner.”

“There are some moose steaks left in the freezer out back.”

“Yum.” She thought of her unfinished fries. Oh, she liked moose. She was just grumpy.

Her dad started a fire in the stone hearth while she went out to the back pantry and opened the freezer. She pulled out a couple steaks, but it would be hours before they thawed, so she set them in the refrigerator for tomorrow and retrieved a bowl of yesterday’s chicken soup.

She put it on the stove to warm, then she unwrapped the homemade bread and sliced it. She found the last of the honey and set it all on the table. Then she put a kettle on to boil and sat at the kitchen table.

For a so-called homestead, the place still bore the impeccable taste of her mother. Her father had added the second story as an anniversary gift, using up all the sunlight one summer to finish it.

Then he’d given her the new kitchen, with a butcher block island, custom-made pine cabinets, hardwood flooring, and furniture she’d had shipped up from Anchorage.