I couldn’t tell you the entire story behind our houseguests. 

Until now. 

See, I didn’t want you to know I’ve been alone since they left. 

I — I didn’t want to get murdered. 

Stop. I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve listened to every podcast episode of Unsolved Mysteries. 

Twice. 

So I know what I’m talking about. 

And I don’t want to be a Netflix special, thank you very much. Or a Lifetime movie. 

Ooh — unless Jennie Garth plays me.  

If Jennie Garth plays me, murder away, my friend. Murder away. 

By the way, I searched this very website for a story link to Unsolved Mysteries. 

The search turned up seven of my articles. 

I don’t know what it says about me that I reference Unsolved Mysteries enough to be the bulk of our site’s search results. 

One other article, written by a colleague, showed up in the search, too. It’s about a cold case, a crime committed right up the street from my house. 

So see? I’m not ridiculous.  

I mean, I’ve been alone here for almost two weeks so I might have a Twilight Zone-astronaut-thinks-he’s-the-last-man-on-Earth kind of thing going. But I’m not, like, deranged. 

Anyway, our houseguests took my husband with them when they left. The three guys met up with a fourth friend in Seattle. 

From there, they flew to Fairbanks, Alaska.  

For normal people, Fairbanks is the destination.  

The Fairbanks website boasts a Midnight Sun Festival, the northern lights, the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, and Santa’s village a reindeer’s gallop away. 

Their “Places to Stay” tab features cozy bed and breakfasts, charming log cabins, luxurious hotels, and lodges glowing with warmth from within, aurora borealis from without. 

My guys — my guys didn’t stay in Fairbanks. 

They didn’t even go to Santa’s village. 

What they did was take one of those little Buddy Holly planes into the remotes of the Arctic Circle. 

And they’ve been camping there ever since. 

Camping. 

They don’t even have logs for cabins or beds for breakfasts. 

They don’t have trees. 

Before we get into this, let me assure you the life insurance is, in fact, paid. 

Because while I’m used to my husband’s remote excursions, this is the most far-flung and treacherous trip he’s ever taken. 

When you prepare for a trip by anticipating bear attacks, you have achieved a wholly different level of the great outdoors. 

The work for this trip has gestated since January. 

To start, each guy, with every bit of his gear strapped to him, couldn’t weigh more than, like, 250 pounds.  

That weight includes decent amounts of muscle for hiking through the Alaskan terrain. 

Muscle, if you don’t know, is denser than fat. It weighs more. 

Quite the paradoxical problem. 

As the summer wore on, my husband periodically donned gear in our bedroom and perched on the scale, seeking the magical number to keep the plane airborne. 

Overweight gear on a plane like that and my guys are looking at their own personal Lord of the Flies. 

“The only time we’ll be warm,” my husband often said this summer, a grin on his face, “is when we’re in our sleeping bags at night!”  

And I was happy for him. I was.  

I was happy for me, too, curled up with my tea and cookies and streaming Tudor history lesson.  

I was cordially uninvited on this trip. 

Thankfully. 

There aren’t a lot of bear attacks with Tudors and tea. And I have enough to worry about with scuba diving and one of you trying to murder me. 

Now, the bear thing — that stressed me a bit. I mean, I can’t even hold it together over six hours of houseguests. That my husband might meet his end because of a bear? 

Although, it would make a great story — suddenly single thanks to an Arctic bear.  

But I’d rather he just stay in a cozy lodge and visit Santa. 

One of the guys on this Arctic trip — he sent a text to all the wives before the guys were too remote for cell service. 

Wait. Did I not mention that? 

Yeah. No cell service.  

Get real. They don’t even have trees. You think someone is running 5G towers up there? 

The guys communicate with a satellite device pinging texts to our phones. All I can think of is William H. Macy’s satellite phone in Jurassic Park III.  

It does little to assuage my bear fears. 

Bears. Genetically modified dinosaurs. They’re basically the same thing. 

When the text went out, the wives and I made a support group. 

Sorry — a chat group. We made a chat group.  

Tonight, as we wait for the little plane to pick up our guys, one of the wives received a satellite ping. “We have,” her husband texted her, “a visitor at our camp.” 

Cryptic. 

Maybe a bear.  

Maybe Santa. 

Or maybe something much, much worse. 

Maybe Lifetime will make a movie about it. 

Get ready, Jennie Garth. 

I still need someone to play me.