Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

  Matthias Zoeller, or Matt, as he insisted she call him, was the other new face. He was older than Irina by about fifteen years, and he looked like an aging biker, with his gray-streaked ponytail, tattoos, and boots. He seemed friendly enough, though. He’d even lent her a spare hair tie, for which she gave him a grateful smile.

  And it didn’t escape her notice that all the men had the same eyes, honey-colored and sharp. She made a mental note to ask about that. Very curious, indeed.

  For now, she sat on a bench along the stern of the boat, watching the men as they cast their huge weighted nets. Lila stood near Henry, the incessant clicking of her camera’s shutter lost in the cacophony of the men’s shouts and laughs, the cries of the gulls overhead, and the gentle white noise of the sea around them. The other men were scattered around the boat, and she noticed Finn stood near her. He caught her watching him, and he nodded his head in a wordless invitation. She looked up at him warily, but his smile was open, friendly. It seemed their earlier animosity was forgotten, at least for now.

  “You already got your sea legs,” he said with approval, watching her walk toward him.

  She nodded. “My grandfather had a boat when I was younger,” she explained. “He used to take us out onto Knik Arm a lot.”

  “Where’s that?” Finn asked.

  “Anchorage.”

  “That where you grew up?”

  She nodded. “He’d take my grandmother and me out on the boat almost every day in summer. We’d swim out in the open water. Fish, too. Nothing like this,” she said, sweeping an arm to indicate the commercial vessel they were standing on. “But we’d catch halibut, sometimes cod.” She smiled, lost in happy memories for a moment. “He’d say, ‘Irochka, is lucky day. We catch treska,’” she said, imitating Dedushka’s thick accent and perpetually hoarse voice. “Cod,” she clarified, when Finn furrowed his brow. “He loved it when my grandmother made baked cod with potatoes and cream sauce.”

  “Your grandparents were from Russia?”

  She nodded. “They were the first generation in their families to come to America.”

  Finn smiled. “Irochka? Is that a nickname?” She nodded again. “So can I call you that?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Only if you’re eighty,” she replied.

  He laughed, and she leaned in to the warm, husky sound. “Why is that?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just the way the language works. Certain nicknames for certain people.” She watched a gull circle overhead. “My grandparents were the only ones who ever called me Irochka.”

  “What about your parents?” he asked.

  She shivered when a cool breeze blew across the prow. “I don’t remember. They died when I was three. Car accident.”

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  She shrugged. “Can’t miss what you don’t remember,” she said.

  “But you do miss your grandparents, huh?”

  She nodded, her throat clogging. She’d been incredibly close with both of them. Her grandfather had died when she was twelve. After that, it had just been her and Babushka, until Irina had married Charles. Her grandmother had died three years ago, and the grief still felt fresh sometimes. Especially when it caught her off guard, like now.

  She sighed, looking out at the boundless sea. She could just make out Kodiak Island in the distance, a little speck of green against the endless stretch of steely blue. One of her favorite authors, John Straley, had once written that Sitka was “an island town where people feel crowded by the land and spread out on the sea.” It was that passage that had made her think of Sitka in the first place, when she was looking for somewhere to run to.

  Finn cleared his throat and leaned in, lowering his voice. “And if I wanted to give you a nickname in Russian, what would it be?” He looked down at her, a slight smile playing at the corners of his lush mouth. His eyes reflected the sunlight, shining with an intensity she hadn’t yet seen.

  She cleared her throat, shrugging. “Irinka, maybe.” To her surprise, she had to blink back tears. Irina was not a cryer. Even as a child, she’d rarely shed tears.

  She wondered what it was that made her suddenly tear up now. Perhaps it was some sort of delayed reaction to the trauma of this morning. Her emotions had been all over the place today, really. It wouldn’t be so crazy to find herself in tears, she supposed.

  Or maybe, she thought as she looked up at Finn, it was his interest in her family, her history. Charles had never wanted to know about her heritage, had in fact adamantly opposed anything “too Russian.” He’d even called Babushka “Grandma” - until the old woman had firmly put her foot down. Not even Charles crossed Babushka.

  He smiled. “Irinka,” he said, butchering the inflection. “I like it.”

  “You sound like a Bond villain.” She laughed. “No, wait, you sound like Matthew McConaughey imitating a Bond villain.”

  She heard a chorus of laughter around her, and she turned to see that the others were watching them. “Doesn’t get much more country than these two idiots,” Matt said with a wink, pointing to Finn and Colt.

  “Ain’t nobody asked for your opinion, Matthias,” Finn said irritably. Colt merely scowled. She hadn’t heard him speak since he’d laughed at his brother this morning. She wondered what his deal was. He seemed like he had too many secrets. His eyes were older than the rest of him.

  Irina knew that look well. She saw it in the mirror every morning.

  “Well, that’s the advantage of being old,” Matt said with a laugh. “Opinions can be freely given, and I don’t care if you like it or not.”

  “Not,” Finn and Colt said in unison, and Irina laughed with everyone else.

  “But you’re not old, are you?” she asked Matt.

  “I am forty-six years young,” he said, giving them a playful bow, to whistles and catcalls. “But that’s ancient to these cubs,” he added, winking at her.

  “And how old are you, Irina?” Colt asked, staring daggers at her.

  “That’s rude, Colton.” Lila smacked him playfully on the back of the head. “You never ask a lady her age.”

  “Seems like we oughta know.” Colt’s jaw was set in a stubborn line, and he looked so much like his brother that Irina almost smiled.

  Speaking of his brother, Finn took a step forward, his shoulders tense. Irina laid a hand on his arm to try to calm him, and again, she felt that little current run through her. He shivered under her hand, and she knew he felt it, too.

  She cleared her throat. “It’s fine. I’m not ashamed of my age.”

  “Which is?” Colt asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

  She narrowed her eyes. She was not in the mood for this attitude. “Thirty-four,” she said.

  “Aw, hell, you still got your best years ahead of you,” Matt said.

  She let out a humorless chuckle. “Well, I’m certainly due some good years.”

  The curious looks she got made her bite her lip and curse inside her head. She wasn’t ready to share her trauma with everybody. She might feel comfortable enough here for now, but these were not her friends. She needed to remember that.

  “That ain’t the point,” Colt said stubbornly.

  “Then what is the point?” she asked, anger bubbling up again.

  “How old are you, Finn?” Colt glared at his brother.

  Finn scowled right back. “You know how old I am, you idiot.”

  “Twenty-four,” he said, staring at Irina now, a challenge in his eyes. “He’s twenty-four.”

  “And I’m thirty-one,” Henry said to Colt. “And Lila’s twenty-six, and Sherman’s twenty-five, and you’re nineteen.” He stepped toward Colt, and Irina was reminded of a bear standing on its hind legs, for some reason. Henry looked intimidating and ferocious, and she was glad not to be on the receiving end of his glare. “Now that we got that out of the way, can we get back to work?”

  “I’m just saying-”

  “Knock it off, Colton!” Finn’s voice startled her.
His tone was harsh, angrier than she’d yet heard him. “It ain’t none of your business how old she is.”

  “It is if you’re planning on telling her about the be-”

  “Enough!” Four deep voices growled in unison.

  Colt looked around at the group, his expression a mixture of fury and betrayal. He threw a final disgusted look at Irina before disappearing below decks.

  Irina closed her eyes for a moment. Wonderful. These people were obviously a family of sorts, if not by blood, then certainly by choice. And she’d caused a rift.

  “Hey.” Finn’s voice was soft in her ear. “I’m sorry about that.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. Obviously I caused a fight.” As always.

  “No,” he said firmly. “That was not your fault. It wasn’t even about you, not really.”

  She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

  He smiled sadly. “Believe me, it’s all him. He’s got a lot of issues, you know?”

  She frowned. Yes, she knew all about issues.

  Finn watched her, chewing his bottom lip. “Yeah, I guess you do,” he said quietly.

  She made no answer. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell him everything yet. Or at all.

  He smiled softly, taking her hand and leading her to his net. “Never mind. Come on, let’s catch some fish.”

  Six

  A few days later, Irina found Finn sitting on the porch, relaxing after a long day on the boat. Everyone else had gone off on their own. Henry and Lila were on a date; Matt and Sherman were hiking; and Colt had gone off to whatever mysterious place he disappeared to whenever Irina was around.

  After Crash Day, as she’d taken to calling it, Irina had insisted she return to her little cabin. Finn had wanted her to stay at The Cave, as the pack called their home, but Irina had put her foot down. It was bad enough she’d roped them all into her mess of a life. She at least wanted the normalcy, the stability of sleeping in her own bed.

  Problem was, Irina’s own bed was trashed when they got to her house. They’d climbed out of Finn’s old Ford only to see that all her food had been dumped out in the driveway and ground into the dirt. Every window along the front of the house had been broken, and the porch steps had been ripped up. Inside, all the wood furniture had been smashed, and the mattress and couch had been slashed to ribbons. Her clothes were piled in the center of the living room, and the smell emanating from them had made Irina gag. And as the icing on the cake, all her personal items - her toothbrush, her reading glasses, even her hair ties and headbands - had been thrown in the toilet.

  She’d shivered as she’d stood in the living room surveying the destruction. She vividly remembered the beating Charles had given her after she’d left the second time. He’d found her in a motel outside Anchorage, with the little beater she’d bought parked outside. She’d used cash for both the car and the room, but he must have worked his influence with the police department to locate her. CCTV is everywhere, even in this seedy dump, was her rather bleak thought when he’d burst through the door to her rented room.

  “You will never escape me,” he’d said as he stood over her broken, bloodied body. “I will scorch the motherfucking Earth until I find you.” She’d made some kind of incoherent reply, earning her another kick to her already bruised ribs. “I mean it, Irina. If you try this shit again, I will kill you.”

  She didn’t need any further confirmation now that it was Charles who had run her off the road. The metaphorical Earth had been scorched.

  When he’d seen the state of her cabin, Finn had insisted she stay with the pack indefinitely. “We need to figure out who’s stalking you,” he’d said. “Only way you’ll be safe is if we can find him and stop him.”

  But the “investigation” was stalled by the fact that Irina wasn’t talking. Finn knew Irina was hiding something. She could see the unanswered questions in his eyes when they talked about her situation, the suspicion in the lines around his mouth. But she didn’t want to endanger anyone here. She knew that if Charles found her with other people - with another man - none of them would be safe.

  And she wanted desperately to keep them all safe, these people who had made a life and a family for themselves at the edge of the wilderness. She wanted to protect Lila, who had just moved here from Toronto to be with Henry. And Sherman and Matt, who debated religion and philosophy with her while they hauled in their catches. She even cared about Colt, though he’d continued to be hostile toward her. She understood Colt better than anyone. They were both wounded animals, lashing out whenever someone got too close, too hurt to distinguish friend from foe.

  And then there was Finn. She wanted to save Finn most of all. She wasn’t sure what was happening between them, if anything. She’d had one hell of a turbulent week. A turbulent decade, if she really thought about it. So it was not entirely outside the realm of possibility that she’d imagined his lingering glances and gentle touches. And the abrupt change in his demeanor since their first meeting could be due to something completely unrelated to her.

  But she was certain she wasn’t imagining the current of energy that pulsed through her every time his skin met hers, or the way he made her feel freer than she had in years with little more than a smile. It might be foolish to hope for anything more than a friend. There were so many reasons why they wouldn’t work together. But the hope made her a little less afraid, a little more like she had something worth fighting for.

  That something was currently rocking on the porch swing, listening to a staticky play-by-play of a Rangers game, a pair of… were those knitting needles in his hands?

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she settled down next to him.

  “Irinka!” he said, grinning at her. The evening light had turned his eyes to a bright gold.

  “Your accent is improving,” she teased.

  “I have a great coach,” he replied, knocking her shoulder with his. “Speaking of which, I was just coming to find you.”

  “Oh?” She looked again at the knitting in his hand. He seemed to be making an infinity scarf, the kind that looped back into itself. Babushka had made her one years ago, but Charles had gotten rid of it, saying it was too “homespun.” Irina missed that scarf. It was one of the few things she’d still had from Babushka. Slowly but surely, Charles had stripped away those heirlooms

  Nowadays, the only thing of her grandmother’s that had survived was her old tin box of recipe cards with the faded Matryoshka print on the outside. Babushka’s spidery Cyrillic letters were barely legible after decades of wear, but Irina had memorized most of the recipes over the years, anyway. It was more the history of it, the love and care Babushka had put into writing down the family’s treasured recipes for future generations, that made her hang onto it. Irina had almost cried tears of relief the other night when she’d miraculously found the box unharmed.

  Finn cleared his throat, and she took a closer look at his project, realizing it was too small to be a scarf. Her brow furrowed. “What are you making?”

  Much to her surprise, his cheeks were red under his tan when she looked up at him. “Well, I know you’re hurting without your headband.”

  She patted her head self-consciously. Her unruly curls were hard to manage in the best of circumstances, but camping out in someone else’s house was not even close to the best of circumstances. To say she was “hurting” was putting it mildly. She had broken Matt’s comb, then Lila’s brush, and then the replacements she’d bought, all on her first day at The Cave. The headband, as she’d explained to an exasperated Finn, kept the hair from flying all over the place, which kept it from getting too tangled.