***The End***
Book 4: Shockwaves on Bruins’ Peak
Sarah J. Stone
Erin D. Andrews
Chapter 1
Broken glass shattered into an explosion of tinkling shards and crashed to the hardwood floor. A window collapsed into sheets on the front porch at Dunlap Homestead. Screaming voices echoed through the jagged hole, “Leave me alone! Why can't you all just leave me alone?”
Marla Dunlap burst through the door so fast it smashed back on its hinges. The knob jabbed through the other front window and shattered that, too. Plate glass hit the porch and broke into pieces. The upper door hinge bent and snapped, and the door slumped at an odd angle. Its bottom corner dug into the floorboards, and the door leaned to one side.
Marla paid no attention to any of that. She tossed herself into a wicker armchair and buried her head in her hands. She shuddered and struggled to catch her breath. The voices died inside the house, and the bird songs rose from the forest beyond the lawn to take the place of shouts and screams.
Her breath steadied after a few minutes. Just when she started to gain control of herself, a figure appeared in the open doorway. Harmony McGillis studied the broken door before she stepped out onto the porch. She craned her back to compensate for her swollen belly, and her dress stretched tight around her bulging middle. Harmony picked her way through broken glass to sit down in the chair next to Marla. She hesitated a moment before leaning close to murmur in Marla’s ear. “Are you okay?”
Marla dropped her hands and threw herself back in the chair so fast she startled Harmony back. “I was just fine before you came out here and spoiled my whole day. Why do you have to keep nagging me about everything? Can't you see I came out here to be alone?”
Harmony waved her hand over the destruction all around her. “You're still on the porch. This is the main thoroughfare in and out of the house. This is where everybody passes, coming and going. If you really wanted to be alone, you would go to the forest or somewhere like that.”
Marla glared at her. “You think you're so stinkin' smart, don't you? Well, no one invited you to come out here and massage my ego. Go back inside with your friends.”
“They're not friends. They're family, and family takes care of each other. They're your family, too, and they only want to help you, the same way I do.” Harmony laid her hand on Marla’s arm. “We can all see something's bothering you, and we want to make it better if we only knew what it was.”
Marla batted her hand away and snarled through gritted teeth, “The only thing bothering me is that everyone thinks something is bothering me.”
Harmony settled back in her chair and straightened her dress. Her eyes flashed. “You might think I'm still an outsider, but maybe that's why you could believe it coming from me when you couldn't believe it coming from your own family.”
Marla narrowed her eyes at her. “Believe what?”
“I've been living in this house for months now, and I've been keeping track. This is the twentieth day in a row that you've gotten in a fight with someone.” Harmony marked off the list on her fingers, one by one. “Yesterday you got in a fight with Aiken about passing the gravy at the breakfast table, and today you got in a fight with your mother when she suggested you go to the Mackenzies’ for Lyric's wedding. You get in fights with everyone on a daily basis. It only takes the tiniest provocation to set you off. You're walking around on a hair-trigger, and you blow up every time anybody looks sideways at you.”
“I am not on a hair-trigger,” Marla shot back. “This is just your way of nagging me like everybody else.”
“What exactly is it about going to Lyric's wedding that drives you so crazy?” Harmony asked. “Is it going out of the house? Is it being around so many other Bruins all at the same time? Is it the fact that someone is getting married and you aren't?”
Marla rounded on her. “Don't you start on about getting married. I've got enough to worry about with my mother pressuring me to get married, morning, noon, and night.”
“She's not pressuring you,” Harmony countered. “She just asked if you wanted to go to Lyric's wedding. Most people would just say yes or no and leave it at that.”
Marla bristled. “You must think I'm really stupid or something. She's been working on me to get married for years. Her asking me about Lyric's wedding is just an underhanded way of pushing me to find a mate, too. I'm not so stupid I can't see that as plain as the nose on your face.”
Harmony smiled at her. “I'm not saying it wasn't an underhanded suggestion, but it's only natural for a mother to want her daughter to find a mate. You don't have to dignify her underhanded suggestions with more than a one-word response, let alone lose it in front of the whole family.”
Marla smacked her lips. “Do you have to be so all-fired helpful about everything? I don't even know you, and here you come sticking your nose in a private situation.”
“You don't know me,” Harmony conceded, “and that's why I'm trying to make friends with you. We're sisters. If I can help you, I want to do it.”
“We're not sisters,” Marla snapped, “and you can't help me. Just because you married my brother doesn't give you a ticket to invade my privacy. Why don't you go shut your bedroom door and mind your own business?”
Harmony extended her hand one more time toward Marla. “I want to be your friend, Marla. If you're having trouble with something, I want to help you.”
This time, Harmony never got as far as touching Marla before she struck out to fend Harmony off. “You can help me by buzzing off. I don't know how many times and how many different ways I have to say it. Nothing is bothering me except every blamed tramp from town trying to be my friend and dogging after me when I'm trying to be alone.”
The smile evaporated from Harmony's face. “You don't have to get nasty with me.”
Marla bared her teeth. “Apparently, I do, because saying it nicely doesn't penetrate your thick skull. Nothing is bothering me, and if it was, you would be the last person on the planet I would want to talk to about it. I hate you. You're a filthy foundling from town. You ought to go back there and see if you can pick up a best friend from the street corner. That's a little more your speed, don't you think?”
Harmony stiffened. “I hear it coming out of your mouth, Marla, but you don't have to look any farther than this porch to see what's going on inside you. Look at this place. Both windows in pieces and the door broken off its hinges, and this will be the fifth time in two months the boys have had to clean up your mess. If it isn't the house smashed to pieces or food thrown across the room, it's nasty words and your mother in tears. You better clean up your act quick, or your father will send you to live with one of the other tribes. He's told you that a dozen times.”
“He says it,” Marla muttered, “but he never does it and he never will. He'll never send me to live with any of the other tribes. He'll keep his dirty little secret all to himself.”
Harmony lowered her voice almost to a whisper, “Do you mean he wouldn't want the other tribes to know about you? What do you say he wouldn't want them to know? He wouldn't want them to know how messed up you are, or he wouldn't want the other tribes to find out whatever is bothering you?”
Marla's arms flew out at Harmony and she screeched at the top of her lungs. “Are you deaf or something? Nothing is bothering me!”
Harmony didn't flinch. She fixed her eagle eye on Marla and kept her voice cold and calm. “That's your worst fear, isn't it, Marla? You never leave the house, not even to take a walk in the forest. Aiken said you haven't shifted in years. You're totally dissociated from your bear. You don't want to be around Bruins, and you never go to gatherings with the other tribes. You won't look sideways at a man, let alone go out on a date, even though you've been asked by three different eligible bachelors in the last three months.”
Marla shot out of her chair. She leaned her hands on the arms of Harmony's chair and thundered into her sister-in-law's face. Harmony clenched her eyes
closed to block out the drops of spittle flying into her face. “Shut up! Can't you just shut up for two seconds? Is that asking too much? I swear to God if you say one more word to me I'll push you down the stairs and break your ever-loving neck. Get out of my face and get out of my life!”
Marla's mother, Beatrice, came to the door. “Marla! What in the world has gotten into you?”
Marla rounded on her with a snarl. “Are you satisfied now, Ma? Is this what you all want for me? You want me to be stark-raving mad, don't you, so you can point at me and say how normal and well-adjusted you all are. Well, I won't be crazy for you. I won't be your dirty little secret anymore.”
“No one wants you to be crazy, Marla,” Beatrice murmured.
Harmony stood up. “It's okay, Beatrice. I'm finished here, and I'm finished with you, Marla. I've been trying for days to get through to you, and you just get nastier and nastier. I don't have any female friends close to my own age on Bruins' Peak, so I tried to be your friend, but I won't try anymore.” Her voice cracked in spite of her brave face. “If you want to be alone and miserable, I won't try to stop you.” She pushed past Marla and disappeared into the house.
Beatrice gave Marla her pained expression. Marla knew that expression. She caused her mother pain on a daily basis. “Oh, Marla! How could you?”
Marla twisted up her face in a mask of disgust and hatred. She rolled every word in her mouth to savor and enjoy them. “It was easy, and I loved every minute of it.”
Beatrice gasped, but Marla didn't wait around to hear any more. She spun on her heel and made for the garden gate. She kicked it open and enjoyed the crunching noise it made when it banged against the picket fence. That was another repair job for Boyd to do to clean the mess that was his little sister Marla Jane.
She scooted through the gate and headed down the big lawn to the shed hidden in the trees. The Dunlaps kept their cars and trucks and heavy equipment out of sight of their manicured Homestead. That's the way the Dunlap tribe worked. They kept the dirt and mess of farming work where it wouldn't disturb their domestic aesthetic.
They did the same thing with Marla. They kept her at home, where no other Bruins would see her explosive outbursts. They surrounded her with a protective halo so everyone outside their immediate circle saw a normal family with no problems. God forbid other Bruins should ever find out they had problems.
Marla was a problem. In fact, Marla was their biggest problem. The more trouble she gave them, the more they fell back on the only solution they could think of: to marry her off.
She pushed her way down the flagstone path to the shed and found the door standing open. She paused in front of her brother Boyd's pick-up truck. The shed gave her a queer, unfamiliar feeling. This was the farthest she'd been outside her own house in she couldn't remember how long. The sad fact remained she had never seen Boyd's pick-up before in her life, and he bought it more than three years ago. That's how long since she went anywhere.
The shed smelled of engine oil and Windex. The boys and their father Jasper kept their vehicles sparkling clean, and the tell-tale spraying noise alerted her she wasn't as alone as she wished she was. Before she could retreat and find another refuge, a big square man came around the end of a tractor down at the shed’s far end. Her brother, Aiken, squirted window cleaner on its windshield and rubbed it off with a green rag.
He looked up. “Oh, hello, Marla,” he chirped. “Where did you come from?”
“From Hell,” she snarled.
His head shot up to stare at her. Then he burst out laughing. “Let me guess. Ma's been at you again.”
Marla let out a shaky breath. “You don't know the half of it,” she muttered. She couldn't exactly tell him Harmony was at her.
Aiken sprayed another spritz of Windex on the tractor windshield. “Well, don't let the suckers get you down. You'll find someone one of these days and get married.”
“I'd rather slit my wrists.”
He studied her. “It's not as bad as you think. It might actually do you some good.”
“Now, don't you start.”
“I mean it. You think you aren't interested, but you might feel differently if you found the right man. You might settle down and be a lot happier.”
Marla's temper flared. “You're just like all the rest. You think because you found a mate and got married, that everyone else has to do the same thing. Did it ever occur to you or anyone else that I don't want to get married—not even to the right man? I can't think of anything I would like to do less.”
“What do you have against getting married? Maybe it's men in general you have something against. Dad thinks you might be a closet lesbian or something.”
“That's impossible. Bruins can't be lesbians.”
“But you'd like to be one if you could be. Is that it? What do you have against men?”
“You are one. You ought to know.”
“You got me there.”
Marla waited, but he didn't move. He just stood there smiling at her. He couldn’t make her madder if he tried. “Don't you have any work to do this morning?”
“I just finished.” He set the Windex bottle on the work bench against the wall. “What are you up to?”
“Just trying to find some peace and quiet.”
“Well, good luck.” He went back to the tractor and popped up the engine cover. He started tinkering with the spark plugs.
Marla glared at the back of his head. “I thought you said you were done.”
“I just want to check something.”
“Can't you check it later?”
“Why should I? If there's a job to do, do it now. That's what Dad always says.”
Marla threw up her hands in disgust. She couldn't relax with him around, and he wouldn't take a hint if she smacked him over the head with a stick of firewood. She whirled away and stormed out of the shed. She couldn't even catch a moment's peace there.
She blew through the door into the bright sunshine, but when she got back to the flagstone path, she faced a new problem. The path led one way to the left back to the house. The other way, the way to the right, wound its way somewhere into the trees. She'd never been that way. She couldn't remember a time when she'd been that way, at least not since she was a little girl riding on her father's shoulders.
She didn't have time to hesitate. She couldn't go back to the house, and she couldn't stay where she was without someone asking awkward questions. She headed right. Trees covered the path and darkened her way. The air cooled under the waving foliage.
Marla stomped down the path in a turmoil of anger and resentment. She repeated over in her mind every word of her confrontation, first with her mother about Lyric Mackenzie's wedding and then with Harmony about their supposed friendship. She argued with them and everyone else ad nauseum about everything they disagreed about for the last several months.
All at once, she stopped dead in her tracks. Moss and grass covered the flagstones at her feet. She couldn't see them well enough to follow them. She had to concentrate to see them at all.
She looked around. Trees surrounded her on all sides. If she focused really hard, she could see the flagstones well enough to find her way back, but that problem paled in comparison to the new danger facing her.
She hadn't been in the forest for years. House walls no longer protected her from shadows and lurking creepers. The forest hemmed her in and clawed at her with its fingernails. Nightmares hid behind every tree and rock.
Chapter 2
Walker Cunningham came out of his back bedroom/office and paused in the living doorway at Cunningham Homestead. His elderly parents and brother, Dax, already sat at the kitchen table. As soon as Walker saw them assembled, he regretted coming out of his room at all.
He could hide in his room. His room protected him from situations exactly like this one. He took refuge in his spreadsheets and his income reports and his personnel time sheets in his room. From his room, he manipulated the Cunningham tribe's finances, their indu
stries, and their investments. Every penny of Cunningham profit sprang from his fingers on his computer keyboard, but his own acumen trapped him in his bedroom so he couldn't come out to face his family.
He took a deep breath. Was he Alpha of his tribe or a mouse, that he should run and hide from prying eyes? He squared his burly shoulders and marched into the living room. His father raised his rheumy eyes when Walker approached the table. “Morning, son.”
Walker pulled out a chair and sat down across from Dax. “Morning, Pop. How are you today?”
Old Kaiser Cunningham let out a long sigh. His voice rose and fell with every breath. “I'm all right. I'm grateful for another day.”
Walker helped himself to a slab of ham and two fried eggs when his mother, Rena, spoke up, “Lyric Mackenzie is getting married on Sunday. Do you need your suit pressed, Walker?”
Walker's fork hung suspended over his plate. Then he let his elbow fall on the table in front of him. He thought fast to come up with some way to get out of going to the wedding. He started talking faster, too. “I forgot about Lyric's wedding. I scheduled that mill inspection for Sunday afternoon, so I guess I won't make it to the wedding.”
Rena’s head shot up and her eyes popped open. “You have to go!” she exclaimed. “It's the biggest wedding since Aiken Dunlap married Laird Kerr's long-lost niece. Every eligible young lady on the mountain will be there.”
Dax interrupted, “I can handle the mill inspection for you. Anyone else could handle it. You don't have to be there for every single solitary thing that happens.”
Walker glared at his brother. “Thanks a lot.”
“And take your elbows off the table, Walker.” Rena pointed at his elbows with her fork. “You should know by now it's not polite. How do you expect to find your future bride if you don't mind your manners?”
Walker wiped his mouth with a napkin and leaned back in his chair. “If she's going to be my future bride, I don't guess she'll mind too much if I put my elbows on the table.”
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