by Terry Spear
Robyn realized that if the men had taken pictures of them and the wolves, that was bad news. Then she remembered they had their backs turned to the men. She glanced at the buffet line and her heart gave a little start when she saw a woman who looked like the photo of Josh and Jeremy's cousin. “Is that Josh and Jeremy's cousin, Lisa?”
"It sure is." Edward jumped up from his seat and strode toward her.
So glad to see Lisa before they left the resort, Robyn waited at the table, not wanting to overwhelm Lisa if she were to head over there too. Edward talked to Lisa, then motioned to Robyn and Lisa turned to look. The lady and Robyn exchanged smiles, then Lisa finished filling her plate, and she and Edward joined Robyn at the table.
“Your cousins hoped to catch up with you here,” Robyn said, though she knew Edward would have already told her that.
“Yeah, Edward told me. And that you and he are married and have two sons. That was quick.”
“Not quick enough,” Edward said.
Robyn smiled at Edward and took ahold of his hand and squeezed it. “Will you come with us so you can spend Christmas with your cousins, Lisa?”
Lisa nodded. “Sure. Thanks for the offer of a ride. I was working on a news article in the area, but I just finished it up, so came to the chalet to spend Christmas. I had an offer of a ride to White Bear after the weekend. I lost my phone on this trip, so I didn’t have any way of getting a call from Josh and Jeremy, but they knew I was in this area. They just didn't know who I was doing the interview with or I'm sure they would have sent me word that way.”
“Well, we’re leaving after breakfast, if that works for you,” Robyn said.
“Yes, that will be fine. I had a friend drop me off and he was going to pick me up after I was here for a couple of days and take me back to White Bear. I’ll call him when I pack up my things in my room and let him know I’ll be going home for Christmas. He’ll be glad to hear it. I'll cancel my reservations at the chalet also.”
Robyn wondered if the guy was a boyfriend, but then he would have been here with her for Christmas, she figured. They talked about the boys and the concern they'd had with Robyn's in-laws. She didn't mention the problems with her family with Lisa, thinking she might already know about it anyway. And she felt Lisa would think everyone in the world had a grudge against Robyn if she mentioned them too.
They had a nice visit in any case, and Lisa seemed pleased she hadn't been alone for the meal.
Once they finished breakfast, Lisa said, "I'll bring my bag down to the lobby. I'm going to the front desk to cancel my reservations."
"Okay, see you in a few," Edward said.
He and Robyn headed for the stairs.
"I'm so glad we saw her in the restaurant, and she wanted to come home with us," Robyn said.
"I think she was really pleased. We can have a nice visit on the way back to White Bear. I didn't mention anything about the situation with your family. I'm sure she knows something about it."
"I was afraid to bring it up after mentioning about my in-laws. She might think I made enemies of everyone."
Edward smiled down at Robyn, his expression totally warm and loving. "Only with those who don't count. Everyone in White Bear loves you."
That's what she loved about Edward. He knew how to turn the darkness into light.
In their room, they grabbed their skis, snowshoes, and their bags and left. After taking the elevator, they walked through the lobby and headed outside and loaded their gear into the Jeep, then went back into the lobby to wait for Lisa.
As soon as they saw her pulling her bag behind her, they joined her, and they all headed outside to the Jeep. So far, so good. No sign of any of Robyn’s family.
“Thanks so much for taking me with you. I’ve got to let my cousins know I’m going home with you, and my friend know I don’t need him to pick me up. Can I borrow someone’s phone?” Lisa asked. "It's amazing how much we're hooked on them and how useful they can be when you have them and how lost we can be when we lose them."
"I so agree." Robyn gave her phone to her, and Lisa began texting someone.
They piled into the Jeep and drove off toward White Bear, hoping they wouldn’t run into Robyn’s family on the way out of here.
15
On the way to White Bear, they’d been on the road for about half an hour when something felt wrong with the Jeep, Robyn noticed, as Edward tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “What’s going on?” She immediately glanced in the direction of the trees. They were swaying, but not from the wind. “An earthquake!”
“Okay, the rule is to slow down when you’re driving a vehicle during an earthquake”—which Edward had already done—“pull off the side of the road, park, and stay in the car. But there’s no shoulder here.”
“Keep going until you find one,” Robyn said, her heart drumming, and Lisa agreed.
Tension was high in the Jeep as the road was swaying and the vehicle was rolling back and forth. Then the road began to break up, the noise of cracking pavement filling the air. That was the thing with their bear senses, their hearing was much better than human’s. Robyn prayed they wouldn’t get stuck out here, or worse, injured or killed. All she could think of was her boys losing their mom and dad. The road buckled and Edward slammed on his brakes. The trees continued to sway, the pavement breaking like an asphalt puzzle being ripped apart in a spiky, nonsensical way, with chunks of the road caving into the earth, other sections solid and level as if the rest of the road hadn’t just been torn asunder.
Robyn began taking pictures.
Some of the pavement was twisted downward into an area of about ten-feet long and ten-feet deep. Edward continued to drive down one section of road that had collapsed, scraping underneath the Jeep, then turning onto another section far to the left. He stopped the Jeep. “I’ve got to get out and see how far down the pavement is. I can’t tell if we’d make it down the ragged incline." He opened the door, got out, and peered down at the pavement below.
“Can we make it?” Robyn asked, joining him and looking down at the pavement way below. She didn’t want him risking damage to the Jeep. They could be stuck here for who knew how long.
“Yeah. I think so. I’m willing to risk it, but how about you, ladies? Are you willing to chance it?”
Lisa joined them and looked down at the collapsed road. “It’s your Jeep. I’m sure you know how it performs in bad situations better than we do. It’s up to you.”
“All right, let’s do it.”
“Are you sure, Edward?” Robyn asked.
“Yeah, let’s go before more aftershocks unsettle it further.”
They got back into the Jeep, and then Edward eased the vehicle down as slowly as he could, scraping the undercarriage. She hoped that didn’t mean the jagged asphalt had done damage to the vehicle.
She felt like they were on a roller coaster, doing a nose dive in slow motion, but then finally making it to the base of the road. The whole while, she was taking video of their ordeal.
Edward took a relieved breath and continued to drive across the broken segments of road. This time he had to make a sharp right, climbing up a section of road tilting up. He was really good at this. She wouldn't have had the nerve to try it. Though, with her pickup, she definitely couldn't have made it, she didn’t think.
Then he maneuvered to the left again, navigating a section of serrated pavement, until he could make it to a patch of snowy earth. He finally drove back up onto the road, again scraping underneath the car with a loud, grinding noise, making her skin crawl.
“Do you think everything is okay?” Robyn asked.
“I hate to say it, but we need to make an emergency run into Anchorage to the nearest garage so we can have the vehicle checked out. I don’t want us getting stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the way back to White Bear if the Jeep’s been damaged.” Edward finally made it past the torn-up part of the road. As far as they could see, the rest of the road was in great shape.
“We have to do it.” Despite regretting that they would have to go into Anchorage, she knew they couldn’t chance continuing on their way until they ensured the vehicle was safe.
“I know someone who can fix it, as long as he hasn't closed his garage and gone home for the Christmas holidays, and he didn’t have any earthquake damage to his place of business. He’s a grizzly and he owes me a favor. I did a great write-up on him last year after he took care of some people’s vehicles who were stranded when their cars were damaged in another earthquake,” Lisa said. “He received all kinds of great publicity from it and lots of new business. As long as he’s available, I’m sure he’ll get right on it.”
Robyn hoped he would because she didn’t want to run into her family in Anchorage while Edward was with her. She wasn’t even sure how they would treat her if he wasn’t here. She handed Lisa her phone again so she could call her friend or text him.
“I sure hate not having a phone. That's something I need to do right away when I get home. Buy a new phone." Lisa called him. "Hey, Billy, I'm with some friends who are taking me home for Christmas in their Jeep, but we ran into fallout from the earthquake." She paused. "Earthquake damage to the road we were on and we hit the road a couple of times hard on the undercarriage. Are you open for business?" She sighed with relief. "Okay, good. Your place is okay? All right, thanks. See you as soon as we can get there." Lisa ended the call. "He said his shop is fine, he’s open for business, and to bring the Jeep right in.” Lisa gave Edward the directions to Billy's garage.
Robyn was using Edward's cell phone to take pictures on the way into Anchorage, snapping shots of one of the primary schools that had a collapsed roof. "The news says that the earthquake could be felt as far away as Fairbanks and it's caused some fires to break out." They saw a grocery store where the glass windows were cracked and broken. "Some of Anchorage has no electricity. Some of the pictures people are sharing show broken plates and dishes, grocery stores with tons of products tossed into the aisles."
They saw homes with broken glass windows, roofs partially collapsed, a crack down the center line of one of the roadways that made Robyn feel like they could be swallowed up if it widened. "Tsunami warnings have been issued for areas located along the coast." They had to make several detours and the GPS kept rerouting them.
Signals were out, and there were no lights. Cars were lined up for gas way down the road, and Robyn was glad they wouldn't have to get gas until they were on the road home. Only two gas stations were open that they'd seen. Aftershocks could be worse than the original earthquake, so they hoped they could get out of the city as soon as they could. "Even some of the ice-covered lakes have major cracks in the ice." Robyn continued to watch the news on the cell phone. "No major aftershocks should occur, they're saying now."
"That's good news," Edward said.
“This is where you’re from originally, isn’t it? Anchorage, I mean,” Lisa said.
“Yeah, and it wouldn’t be good if my old sleuth knew I was here with Edward.”
Lisa texted some more. Robyn hoped she was telling her friend to make this quick or they could have some really bad company if her family found out they were here. “Wait, that was Edward and you in your fur coats on the news?”
“Right. Which is the reason we cut our honeymoon short a day, just in case someone in my family saw the news and headed for the chalet to give us grief,” Robyn said.
“I wonder if the chalet had any damage,” Lisa said.
"It might have," Robyn said. "I hope not though."
They started hearing a lot of military aircraft flying overhead, surveying the damage.
They finally reached the auto body repair shop and Edward said, "I think we're here."
Billy waved them into the garage, then shut the door, and put the closed sign up. “Go inside where it’s warm and I’ll check out the Jeep pronto. Billy’s the name. The coffeepot is fine, but it's kind of a mess in there.” He shook Edward’s hand. “I understand there’s some bad blood between you and the missus’s family. I’ll get this taken care of right away, if I can, and get you on your way.”
"Okay, sounds good to me." Edward stayed out there with him as Billy elevated the Jeep and they both checked out the undercarriage. Lisa and Robyn went inside to have some coffee, stay warm, and help straighten up the place. A lamp had fallen over and magazines and books were all scattered on the floor.
“I was at college when all that went down with Edward and your brother. But I’d come home on spring break when I heard how badly injured Edward was.” Lisa poured them both cups of coffee.
“I hated leaving him.” Robyn added sugar and a creamer to hers. Then she made a cup of coffee for Edward.
“But you did it to protect him. I understand. You made a great sacrifice, even if he worried it was because you hated him for killing his brother.”
“I didn’t though. I hated my brother for trying to kill Edward. And for forcing us apart in the end. I knew my other brothers would want revenge if I stayed with Edward. And I knew if I told Edward why I had left, that I wasn't angry with him for killing my brother, he would have come after me. It would have been the death of him.”
“Well, despite all that, you are finally together.”
Robyn assumed she didn’t know that they had the boys together. “We have two sons together.”
Lisa’s brows shot up. “No. Wow.” Then she smiled. “He said you had kids, but I didn’t know they were actually his. How old are they?”
“Nearly five.”
“Ohmigod.” Lisa laughed. “I bet that was a shock to Edward.”
“He’s already proven himself to be a great, protective dad.” Robyn explained about the ice floe.
“Wow. I’m glad I don’t have any kids. Yet. They sound like a real challenge.”
“They can be. It’s more than just kids that get into messes on their own. As polar bear cubs, they can get into all sorts of different trouble.” Robyn tried not to glance at the clock on the wall, but she found herself looking up there despite trying not to. She left the lounge and gave Edward the cup of coffee. "Did you want me to fix you some, Billy?"
"No, thanks, I'm good."
"All right. Thanks so much for doing this for us."
"No problem at all."
Robyn returned to the waiting room and Lisa handed Robyn's phone back to her. “Maybe you want to call your new family and let them know you’re on the way home. And check and see if there’s been any earthquake problems out there.”
"That's a good idea." Robyn suspected Lisa also wanted to ensure they knew the conflict they could be in if any of her family discovered them here. She called Rob. “Hey, it’s Robyn. We left the chalet after we had breakfast, like we planned, but we ran into some issues on the highway. The earthquake made a wreck of the road while we were trying to navigate it. We’re having the Jeep checked out before we drive any further.”
“Really bad sections of roads? We saw the mess on the news.”
Another aftershock hit and some tools rattled around and the coffee in the coffeemaker sloshed in the carafe. Robyn and Lisa were ready to head outside! But then it subsided again.
“Right. The earthquake ripped the asphalt apart while we were on the way home. We scraped the undercarriage of the Jeep a couple of times, and we had to detour to a garage in Anchorage to check it out.”
“Hell.”
“We’re okay, so far.” But she knew Rob was thinking of contingency plans, like contacting Craig and Andy to fly them out there, but she didn’t even know if they could land at the airport. “I just wanted to let you know that we’re on our way home as soon as the Jeep is checked out.”
Edward came into the waiting area. “We’re good to go.”
“I was just telling Rob where we are and that we’re headed home.” She handed her phone to Edward.
Edward put it on speakerphone. “Hey, Rob, we’re leaving the garage now. A grizzly owns it and he won’t tell anyone we were he
re.”
“Let me know if we need to come to your aid.”
“Hopefully, we’ll be fine. We’re still feeling the aftershocks here.” Edward climbed into the Jeep and the ladies hurried to get in. "We'll call when we're out of the city."
"Okay."
They waved at Billy, and then Edward drove off, trying to find a good road out of there that didn’t have any damage.
“Turn left there,” Robyn told Edward, trying to guide him out of the city. “Wait.”
They paused and stared at the downed power lines crackling and sparking across the road. “Okay, back it up and turn right.”
Edward backed the Jeep up and turned right and they found more power lines down. “Great.”
“Well, the only good thing is that if your family is looking for you, they’re going to have as much difficulty getting around the city as we are,” Lisa said.
They made a little bit of progress, but then came to an overpass that had collapsed. Thankfully, no cars had been on it or underneath it, but it meant they had to detour again.
They could see buildings swaying slightly with the aftershocks. Robyn was searching for news on the earthquake to see which roads had damage. "It was a 7.0 earthquake."
"I wonder if we would have been safer staying at the chalet," Lisa said.
"They've had an earthquake at Denali National Park before. A fault line runs through it." Edward's cell rang and he answered it on his Bluetooth.
"This is Billy from the garage."
Robyn hoped he hadn't forgotten to check some crucial, potentially dangerous problem with the Jeep.
"Take an alternate route back to White Bear," Billy warned, sounding concerned.
"Problem with the earthquake?" Edward asked. They still hadn't made it to the main highway that would take them to White Bear.
"The Conibears learned the two of you are together. A cousin of Robyn's comes in here all the time because she has a real lemon of a car. She just happened to be with one of Robyn's brothers and he smelled you had been here. Rita called me after he dropped her off at home to tell me to warn you. Some woman named Martha called Robyn's parents and tipped them off that the two of you got married and have a couple of sons. So get out of here quick, but don't take the road they'll be expecting you to take."