by Lisa Ladew
“Xylitol?”
Bruin kept his expression neutral. “I’m not trying to kill you, Mac-attack, at least not this week.”
Mac threw him a grin, while Rogue watched from slightly behind, her face almost slack. Mac nodded. “Right. Bottoms up, sugar-bear.” He twisted off the top and dumped the whole bottle in his mouth.
Bruin didn’t say a word. He’d expected as much, which was why he’d only gotten a tiny bottle. Mac and Rogue were both alike in that way, in that they never went halfway on anything. One dropper-full was for pups, Mac might say.
Mac mimed tossing the bottle over his shoulder and grinned, showing all his teeth. “Thanks, bear.”
Bruin smiled back, but sadly. Mac hadn’t smiled a real smile in several weeks. Bruin had decided it was anxiety-related, not Mac’s, but Rogue’s. Rogue didn’t broadcast her anxiety over not being able to find her sister, but it was there. Bruin could see it clearly, both in her and in Mac. The two were connected so strongly Bruin was surprised Mac wasn’t stealing, too.
The boarding announcement came again. They gathered their bags, retrieved Troy from out of the pretty woman’s lap, and headed for their gate. By the time they arrived, Mac had dropped his bag twice and was listing to the right a bit. Holy smokes, that stuff he’d gotten to help Mac relax was stronger than he’d thought it would be.
On the plane, Rogue took the window seat, blocking Mac’s view of outside, and trying to get him comfortable. Mac took the middle seat, and Bruin took the aisle. He would have sat at the window if he could, but he didn’t fit well, even in the larger-business class seats. Trent and Troy had all three seats across the aisle from them.
Quicker than should be possible, they were in the air, still climbing, as Bruin watched Mac and breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes slipped closed and his breathing evened. Was he really going to sleep on the flight? Bruin caught Rogue’s eye, returning her slight, sad smile, then sighed deeply as she wrapped her pinky finger around Mac’s pinky finger and pulled him over to lean his head on her shoulder, their bond evident in the way Mac relaxed further as soon as his mate touched him.
Bruin tried not to stare, but seeing them together soothed him. He loved the way they came together like puzzle pieces, smoothing out their rough edges only for each other.
A young child began to cry a few rows behind him, catching Bruin’s attention. He frowned as someone actually groaned at the sound. When the child didn’t stop and his mother’s shushing turned frantic, Bruin felt around in his cargo pockets. He had to have something that would help.
Pushing aside tiny honey packets, his fork and spoon, his secondary bottle he’d gotten for Mac in case the first one didn’t work, and a few other important items, he found what he was looking for and drew it out, glancing at Mac as he did so. Eyes still closed. Good.
Bruin eyed the seatbelt light until it dinged off, then stood, hunching his back and bending his neck so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling of the plane as he maneuvered down the aisle. He saw the mother and child immediately, the mom in the aisle seat, her hair disarrayed and hanging in her face, as she glanced up at the seatbelt sign, then pulled the belt off her child and picked him up, bouncing him and whispering in his ear. He was a cute little guy, no older than three, blond curls framing his face, but he only cried harder when his mom picked him up.
Bruin fixed a gentle smile on his face. There was no hiding his size, but if he smiled just so, people generally relaxed around him. Mom looked around, her face saying she knew everyone was cursing her. Bruin caught her eye and held out his hand, opening it slowly. Two yellow and black Minion characters sat on his palm. He’d gotten them from boxes of Cheerios, and had been saving them for Mac, hoping to have a complete collection by the time Mac had pups, but Rogue was in no hurry to start that process, so there was time to get more.
“Does he like Minions?” Bruin asked softly. “They’re his, if he wants.”
Mom searched Bruin’s eyes, shrinking back in the seat for only a moment before relaxing and smiling back. “Jerry,” she said into her boy’s ear. “Do you want toys? The nice man has some toys for you.”
“I have gum, too,” Bruin said. “If he’s old enough for it.” He always had gum.
But Jerry’s wails had already started to taper off. He twisted in Mom’s arms to examine the Minions, then held up a tentative, chubby hand. Bruin lowered his own hand so that Jerry could snatch the toys and turn them over in front of his face.
Mom mouthed, “Thank you,” at Bruin as Jerry forgot to cry for a few moments. Bruin nodded and turned around to head back to his seat, observing his companions as he did so.
Trent was curled in a ball across the middle and window airline seats, his eyes closed, his breathing even. Troy was sitting up in the aisle seat, his eyes on a pretty flight attendant who was coming his way. He cocked his head in a way that caught the woman’s eye immediately. Bruin grinned and looked to his seatmates. Mac appeared to be sleeping, comfortably nestled into Rogue’s side, and Rogue had her eyes closed, one hand brushing back Mac’s short hair with soft, languid movements.
All was currently as right as could be in Bruin’s world. He sat in his seat, carefully arranging his long legs so as to give himself maximum space but not trip people coming down the aisle, then closed his eyes, folded his hands in his lap, and waited for the flight to end or someone to need him.
Chapter 2
Willow Meadow Kendall stopped her truck and stared too hard at the sign reading, “You are now leaving Serenity,” that was through the intersection to her left. She could only see the back of the great stone statue of a momma bear with her two cubs that greeted people as they drove into Serenity, or left it. Her eyes traveled over the folds of the rock, carved to look like a bear, as she tried to determine which of the thoughts and feelings flitting through her mind and body were her own, and which belonged to other people.
Many people had sat at this crossroads, just as she was, and considered leaving Serenity… for good. But she wasn’t actually considering that, was she? No, she would miss her unpredictable mother, her bees, her restaurant, her life, her… promise. But just to drive over that city line, one time? That, she desperately wanted to do.
She let some of the thought-forms of the others who had come before her play through her mind, seeing teenagers running from abusive homes, men running from responsibilities, and even a middle-aged woman running from a family who didn’t appreciate her. Willow let herself sit with that thought-form for a moment, as the miles of road leading away from the 4-way intersection she was stopped at baked in the mid-June sun, not a car in sight for miles. A tractor sprayed something on squat green plants in the field to her right, the low rumble of the engine a purr in her ear that faded as Willow tapped back in to the source of the old energy that Willow thought of as a thought-form.
A thought-form, to her, was something full of emotion for a person, animal, inanimate object, or place, that had happened at that very spot sometime in the past, something that certain energy-sensitive people could see or feel as if it were happening in front of them. She also could see and feel thought-forms that were active and still attached to the person experiencing the emotion and thinking the thoughts, but those played out less like movies and looked more like thick waves of energy radiating around a person.
The woman who had been in the experience bobbed into Willow’s visualization in a way that sat Willow inside the other woman’s body, seeing out of her eyes. The woman was older than Willow’s age of twenty-five, but not quite Willow’s mom’s age of 58. The woman wore a smart pastel traveling suit and the glimpse of her hair Willow caught in the rear-view mirror was bobbed in a way that made Willow think of Jacqueline Kennedy on the day her husband had been shot. Willow couldn’t control the thought-form of the woman, because this had already happened, but she was aware of most of what the woman had been thinking, feeling, and knowing in a way that downloaded a huge glut of information all at once to Willow to try to sift t
hrough. The sifting was rarely easy and never perfect. The information came in a way that was garbled and unclear, and that Willow had to pick at around her own likes and preferences, but some of her own stuff always became attached. Basically, the truth of what had happened was always altered a little bit by Willow’s personality, which made Willow reluctant to fully trust what she saw.
She was 42. Her name was Milly, or Sissy, or Mimsie, or something lyrical like that with two syllables.
The car she was driving was a purple, 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and her husband had bought it for her on her 40th birthday. She didn’t quite dare to hate her husband or his two teenage children, one boy, one girl, who weren’t her children, but who expected her to cook for them, clean their shoes and their underwear and the tiny puffs of lint under their beds daily, but sometimes… sometimes she wanted to allow herself to strongly dislike them. The only pleasure in her life was watching reruns of I Love Lucy every evening and current episodes of As the World Turns every day, in between cleaning and shopping and running the house and preparing three meals for four people.
At that very moment, she was supposed to be heading into town, was supposed to go straight on the road that would take her into Serenity. Her list was right there next to her, in her smart purse that exactly matched the purple of the car. If she took one of her gloved hands off the wheel, she could touch them both, purse and list. Instead, she stared at the “You are now leaving Serenity,” sign to her left and contemplated doing it. Driving away and never returning. Away from nightly sex with her husband in her bed that consisted of nothing more than twelve pumps in the missionary position with the lights off and a gooey mess for her to clean up after he’d kissed her exactly once above her right eye, and retreated to his own room. She hated sex, hated the dry obligation that did nothing for her except highlight how much her husband thought of her as an object. He thought of her only as someone to do his bidding, keep her mouth shut, and be paid in occasional presents, as long as they looked good on her.
Willow frowned, cutting off the stream of consciousness she was accessing from the thoughts of a woman she had nothing in common with… except that one thing. The whole, driving-over-the city-line-and-leaving thing.
Mimsie/Milly/Sissie had sat in this same spot in her own vehicle over fifty years ago. The details of her mundane, unappreciated life had been perfectly clear to Willow, but they did not mirror Willow’s in any way. Mimsie had been normal, painfully, irrevocably so, and that was where the pain in her life had come from, her desire to flee.
Willow, on the other hand, was definitely not normal, and did not want to flee her life. She only wanted to experience it. Willow decided on the spot to tap back into the thought-form from so long ago. To leave her fate to it.
If Mimsie left, then so will I. Right now. If Mimsie drove on to the store to complete her shopping, then so will I. No more wondering, wishing, contemplating what ifs. Fate will decide and I will abide by it once and for all and my mind will have to stop urging me to go. It will have to listen and let go of the thought that it should be allowed control over its own decisions.
Willow opened up her mind once again, eager to see if she would be leaving Serenity for the first time in her life… or heading home and continuing on like the thoughts had never happened. Would she be driving to Serenity Weed and Feed for hive beetle baffles? Or would she be crossing the city line just to know in her own heart that she had done it? That she was in charge of her own life? She wouldn’t go far…
Back to Mimsie and the purple Cadillac…
Mimsie thought hard about what she would be leaving behind. Comfort. Security. A life that seemed to matter to the ladies at the Auxiliary club-they thought Mimsie was someone special.
Willow couldn’t actually read Mimsie’s thoughts, but Willow could feel the emotions they stirred up and receive enough related images in her mind to sense what Mimsie was contemplating.
Leave behind Serenity, comfort, relative safety and belonging. Or head out into the world. Drive away and never return. Get a job somewhere as a… a secretary. Or an operator. Maybe a teacher’s aide. Problem was, she’d never worked a day in her life. Not out of the home, anyway. When her first husband had died, she’d found another as quickly as possible. Could she even do it? Sometimes when she got interested in one of her shows, the clothes would stay on the line long enough to get rained on. And once, four Christmases ago, she’d burnt the turkey and hadn’t had a backup meal planned. Oh, and bigger problem, she didn’t want to be known as one of those… divorced ladies. The two at the kids’ school were ostracized and talked about behind their backs, like they were whores.
Willow held her breath. Which would Mimsie choose? Freedom and the unknown? Or a life without a soul?
Mimsie let her foot off the brake, moving it to the gas pedal as the car rolled into the intersection, rocks popping onto their sides beneath the tire. Her hand hovered over the left turn signal, the one that would lead to something new, a different life. It hovered, then dropped into Mimsie’s lap, never having hit that stick. The car rolled through the intersection on its own steam, moving at a walking pace. Mimsie stared hard to the left, steering by pure instinct, her neck twisting as the sign moved behind her, until she could no longer see it no matter how far she twisted in her seat. That was it. She would never ask that question again. She was doomed.
Willow frowned. She’d been so certain that Mimsie was going to do it, going to leave instead of stay, going to live instead of wither. Willow lifted her own foot from the brake. Her truck began to roll forward, through the intersection. The sound of the tractor buzzed from the field to her right, going about its business, completely unaware that fate had made a grievous error.
Her neck turned, just as Mimsie’s had done, preparing to follow the sign as it disappeared behind her.
“Fuck that.” Willow shivered at the word. She wasn’t a person who swore, but the moment called for more than an “oh Mylanta.” She yanked the steering wheel to the left, hard. She was doing it, even if Mimsie hadn’t.
Momentum swung her as the truck obeyed her sudden command. As soon as she was straight, she gassed it, and when the sign and the bear slid by her, she didn’t look at them.
She was doing it. Hot summer air blew in through the open windows, streaming her dark brown hair out behind her. She caught a look at her own self in the rear-view mirror and noticed two things. One, the grin on her face was maniacal, and two, she’d never looked more like the one-quarter of her that was a mix of Native American and Latin American. Normally, that exotic slant of her eyes was more hidden, but with this crazy grin…
Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator, as she realized what kind of danger she was in. She really might not go back, if she went too far. She crested a hill and saw the corn fields and cow pasture in the dip beyond it, then one more hill. What was over the next one? And the next? And the one after that? She might wake up one morning and smell the Pacific Ocean, a many days’ drive from Serenity, Illinois.
Faster. The speedometer read 70. Then 75. Then 82. Fields of vegetation she could see and smell, a clean, earthy, green smell, flew past her. No car was coming from anywhere. She could go faster, maybe break 100 mph… another first for her, who loved speed and wanted to break a rule, just one.
A text message sounded on her phone. Willow let up on the gas immediately. It couldn’t be.
Another text message, then two more in rapid succession.
It was.
Willow pressed on the brake until she could pull over and see who was texting her, although she knew.
Her mother.
She nestled the truck into the pull-out on the side of the road and whipped her phone in front of her face, not bothering to set the vehicle brake, and read her mother’s messages.
Willow. Are you crazy?
Willow. You left town. What are you thinking?
Turn around and come back this instant!!
Willow, answer me!
Willow shook her head slowly. That was what Mom had been hiding from her since Willow’s twenty-fifth birthday. Willow had always tried her damndest not to pry into her mother’s head or heart, to let her keep her thoughts and feelings private, even when a blind person would have realized they were being lied to.
Lucinda had never mentioned Willow’s twenty-fifth birthday, and when Willow had said something, Lucinda had only shaken her head and said “sorry, I forgot,” then hurried out to check on the bees. Willow thought Lucinda had been lying about forgetting, and that was the dishonest thought-form that had been twisting around Lucinda ever since. But now Willow knew Lucinda had actually been concealing the fact that she’d put something in Willow’s phone to track it. To track Willow.
Willow’s resolve strengthened. She would leave Serenity. She would buck her mother’s wishes, finally. She would be her own person, and not wait around for the ‘angel’, any longer. Even if she’d been promised to him by her mother and her father, she, Willow, hadn’t promised anything. She might like this angel, she might not. But she wasn’t going to sublimate her own wants for her mother’s crazy story anymore. If the angel wanted her, he was going to have to win her. She didn’t owe him her life.
She’d been twenty-five years old for almost six months, and no one had shown up. No angel, no devil, not even a gentleman caller with aspirations only of stealing a kiss on the porch.
She was done waiting.
Chapter 3
Bruin hauled their luggage off the belt, tucking Rogue’s big black suitcase under his arm, then throwing the other three smaller suitcases over his back, his large body easily accommodating the weight. He shrugged off Mac’s offer to help, and they all headed to the curb. Trent and Troy loped behind them, unleashed, wearing the orange vests, heads held high as people scattered. Bruin grinned at the effect Trent and Troy had on the humans. Men and women sprint-walked away with their gazes in the air, as if they hadn’t noticed the waist-high, wolf-looking dogs but had, instead, remembered something important in the opposite direction.