by Молли Харпер
I chuckled. “Would that be the dessert you have covered?”
Alan dashed into the inferno and came back with what appeared to be a large charcoal briquette. I assumed that at one point, it was a pan of brownies. Alan chewed his lip. “You know, with enough icing, it might not be half bad.”
“Alan, take the chess squares, and stop being stubborn.”
“Thank God, my hands are freaking burning!” he yowled, ending his manly acceptance of second-degree burns by tossing the burning lump into the bushes.
“Don’t you want to salvage the pan or something?” I asked as he ushered me into the house.
“Nah, I’ll get it later. The stench will keep the bears away.”
“Nice,” I said, snickering as he led me into the great room, a combination dining room, living room, and office. In the corner, I could see a radio, several maps on the walls, a huge first-aid kit, all of the equipment you’d expect a forest ranger to need on hand. But the rest of the house was all Alan, exactly how you’d expect a single man living in the woods to decorate his home. We’re talking a lot of plaid and hunting trophies. But it was clean and tidy. There was a comfortable little blaze going in the big stone fireplace and a pretty pine rocker next to the hearth. The table was set with dishes that matched and wine glasses that didn’t. There was a basketball-sized bunch of blue petals blooming from an old crockery pitcher on the table. And the smell of slightly singed brownie filled the house.
“Forget-me-nots?” I asked, rubbing my fingers against the tiny, velvety blue petals. He nodded. “That’s very sweet.”
Alan shrugged. “Well, it sounds nicer than eating by a bouquet of wooly lousewart.”
I considered that for a moment. “That it does.”
“I wasn’t kidding about the Stouffer’s box. Tonight’s menu consists of bagged salad and frozen lasagna. I don’t cook for myself much, which is why I come to the saloon for most of my meals. Well, it’s not the only reason,” he said, winking at me. “The company isn’t bad.”
“Yes, Abner, Buzz, and Leonard are charming,” I conceded. “I appreciate not having to cook. I’m sure anything you serve will be great . . . with the obvious exception of the brownies. Can I help with anything?”
“Nope, you just sit, and I’ll get everything on the table.” I climbed up onto a bar stool near his kitchen counter, watching as he got dinner on the table with all the agility of a wounded moose. I would have offered to help, but I figured it was a point of pride for him. All I could do was watch, cringe, and try to make polite chitchat. As we ate, we talked about his job, his huge family back in Montana, how he had adjusted to life in Alaska.
“It really wasn’t that different from home,” he said as he tried to dish a third square of lasagna onto my plate. Stuffed beyond capacity, I waved it off as I poured both of us healthy glasses of red wine. “The same kind of weather. The same kind of rough living. I missed my family a lot at first. I’m the only one of seven kids to have moved off the ranch. Everybody else married and set up house right there with my parents in a sort of complex of those prefab houses. I told my dad if they added too many more, they’d end up on the news like those weird polygamist groups.”
I choked on my wine.
“You have to move on and be your own person eventually, you know?” he said, sipping thoughtfully. “It’s not that I don’t love them all like crazy, but sometimes . . . I don’t know, sometimes I wished I was an only child, just so I could finish a sentence, finish a meal without some dramatic announcement, get through a holiday without wanting to throw a turkey leg at someone’s head and yell, ‘Nobody cares what you think about the next election!’”
“Well, I’m an only child, and I couldn’t do any of those things, either, if it makes you feel any better,” I told him as we moved over to the big, comfy brown corduroy couch. “Except for the turkey legs. My parents are vegetarian. I had to throw brown rice.”
“Hmm. The grass isn’t greener. Nope, that doesn’t make me feel better at all. You’re destroying my childhood fantasies here.”
“My childhood fantasies involved vaccinations and parents who didn’t see the PTA as some sort of conformist conspiracy. By my calculations, you lived my childhood fantasy.”
“Hippies, huh?” he asked, his face suddenly sympathetic.
“The hippiest.”
“We get a couple of those up here every year, wanting to build a cabin in the preserve and live off the land Thoreau-style. Generally, I end up rescuing them off the top of a bluff because they didn’t spend enough time researching or preparing for life up here. They don’t plan for the right kind of gear, clothes, food, shelter. They go toddling off half-assed and end up getting hurt.”
“Is that what you think I did?” I asked.
“No!” he exclaimed, squeezing my hand. “You’ve got more common sense than most locals, Mo.”
Clearly, Buzz hadn’t told him about my tendency to get cornered by wolves and serial waitress robbers.
Alan moved in closer, and I could smell Irish Spring soap, wine, and the homey warmth of prepackaged tomato sauce. “I think you’re fitting in just right.”
Alan was a first-rate kisser, right up there with Jeff Moser, my date to the senior formal and claimer of my virginity. Alan covered all the bases. Soft, increasingly insistent brushes of his lips against mine. Cupping my chin in his hand and running his fingers along my jaw. Pulling me close enough to show me how much he wanted me without making me feel as if he was grinding against me.
I could have gone on kissing Alan all night. It was certainly a more pleasant way to spend the evening than my solo birthday plans, which centered around Sno Balls and Sixteen Candles. But when Alan’s hands moved to the buttons of my shirt, I stopped him, tilting my forehead to rest against his. I just wasn’t ready for this yet. Alan was a sweet guy, but there were no guarantees that having sex with him wouldn’t turn out to be a huge mistake I would have to cringe over every time he came into the saloon for the next six months. I liked Alan. I wanted more time with him and a lot more kissing. But I couldn’t help but feel that we were falling into this just a little too easily.
God damn it, Evie.
I would spend the rest of my evening in a cold shower, contemplating whether it was a worse punishment to give her a kick in the butt or deny her chess squares for the next week.
I groaned and buried my face in the crook of Alan’s neck. “I’m sorry. I think I should get going.”
“Too fast?” he asked, grimacing.
“I’m not saying never, just not tonight,” I told him. “I don’t want to rush into anything.”
“Neither do I,” he assured me, kissing my cheeks. “As long as we get there eventually.”
“Maybe we can do this again sometime?” I suggested. “I’ll cook.”
“I knew it. Dinner was below your culinary standards.” He shook his head in mock shame.
“Hey.” I kissed him again. “You did your best.”
“I bow to the master,” he said, pulling me to my feet.
“Don’t you forget it.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long to ask you out,” he said, sliding my coat onto my shoulders. His long fingers tucked the collar under my chin and remained there for a few seconds, warming the skin and making me smile. “You just seem, well, cautious. And you seemed to be getting so much attention straight off when you got to town, I didn’t want to spook you.”
“I can appreciate that,” I told him. “And you don’t spook me. In fact, nonspookiness is one of your better qualities.”
Considering his biggest competition at the moment was a werewolf, I felt that was a fair statement.
Alan snickered. “Well, something has to balance out the bad cooking.”
Alan walked me to my truck, gave me a knee-buckling kiss good night, and asked me to call him when I got home safely. Sweetest. Guy. Ever.
I pulled into my driveway, glad that I’d remembered to turn on my porch lights. The night was cle
ar and bright, but I felt better being able to see whatever or whoever might be lurking near my doorstep. Humming a silly country tune, I hopped out of Lucille and paused to pick my house key out of the jumble of metal on my key ring.
“Why do I have so many keys?” I wondered aloud.
The moment I stopped moving, I felt it, a familiar presence over my shoulder on the east side of the little clearing that surrounded my house. I turned to see the black wolf standing there, just staring at me, his blue-green eyes burning eerily in the reflected light of the waxing moon. I took an instinctual step toward the door, but I dropped my keys. I crouched down to pick them up, keeping an eye on my visitor to see whether he moved when I was a smaller, more vulnerable target. He simply sat on his rear haunches, watching me with his head tilted at a quizzical angle, as if he was saying, Come on, hurry up, you’re the last stop on my security detail, and then I can take off and chase rabbits for the rest of the night.
I slipped my key into the door and pushed it open, turning toward the wolf to—I don’t know, say good night? But he was gone. The branches where he’d been standing weren’t even stirring. I scanned the rest of the yard. Nothing.
Had I imagined the whole thing? Was I going through some sort of delayed PTSD reaction? What if the wolf never existed? What if my subconscious just made up my canine companion to protect me from memories of killing Teague, dumping his body, and setting his truck on fire to cover up my crime? I mean, I’d never shown previous signs of multiple-personality disorder, but that sort of thing could develop under extreme duress, right?
These were not the ponderings of an emotionally well-adjusted person.
Oddly enough, though, this didn’t even rank on my “top five weirdest ways I’ve wrapped up my birthday” list.
DESPITE EVIE’S CLAIMS that Cooper would be “coming around,” he pointedly avoided coming into the saloon, even though I saw him walking right past the window sometimes. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I felt guilty, because Cooper was changing his schedule and missing time with his friends because he wanted to stay away from me. I was annoyed with myself for assuming that his issue was with me, annoyed with myself for caring either way. And then I was back to guilty. It was a vicious cycle.
Fortunately, I was distracted by a whole new kind of annoyance. A week after my birthday, Susie Q came into the saloon with a smug Cheshire cat’s grin and told me there was a package waiting for me at the post office.
I told her it couldn’t be mine. I’d already received my birthday package from Kara. No one else would send me anything here.
“Well, it’s a pretty big box,” Susie said slyly. “It took me a while to figure out it was for you. There was no address, just sent to the post office in care of the postmaster, Grundy, Alaska. And then I saw the name on the label. It confused me for a little bit, too, but you are the only Wenstein in town.” Finally at her point, Susie grinned. “Mo is a clever nickname. I never would have guessed your full name is Moon—”
“Shh!” I cried, pressing my hand to her mouth before anyone at the counter overheard. Susie snickered against my fingers. My full name has been a thorn in my side since the day I started public school. The stunned gasp following my announcement at my high school graduation stalled the ceremony for a full three minutes.
Sure, I could legally change it, but my parents effectively kept me “off the grid” until my late teens. I’d barely gotten my social security number in time to apply for college. The idea of erasing what little personal history I had because my parents were unapologetic hippies was just irritating. So I carefully guarded all personal information and forms and suffered through. I really didn’t want to do that in Grundy.
“Sorry,” I said, snatching my hand away from her face.
“Oh, I think it’s a lovely name,” Susie said, teasing. “Very unique.”
“What do you want?” I asked, my eyes narrowed. “How do I buy your silence?”
“A dozen of those chocolate chess squares ought to do it,” she said, nodding at the glass-domed dish.
I wrapped them carefully. “On the house,” I told her. And by the house, I meant me.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Moon—”
“Shh-shh!” I spluttered, making a “zip it” motion with my hands.
Susie snickered and hopped off her stool. “You can pick up your package anytime before three.”
“What was that all about?” Evie asked as I gave a departing Susie the stink eye.
“Nothing,” I grumbled.
There was only one person who would address a package to me using my full name. My mother.
I left the package sitting at the post office for three days while I stewed and did some compulsive baking. I finally picked it up out of morbid curiosity and a desire to keep Susie from claiming the package was abandoned, opening it, and finding whatever humiliating thing my mother had sent.
“Are you going to open it?” Susie asked, her curiosity evident as she helped me heft the box to my truck.
“When I get home,” I said. “Did you enjoy the chess squares?”
“I took the lot of them down to the Cut and Curl,” she said, grinning. “They were a big hit. Gertie Gogan asked what I’d done to merit a full dozen, and I told her I was just helping out a friend.” Susie looked mildly embarrassed now. “Of course, some of the ladies down at the beauty shop hadn’t been into the Glacier since you and Evie made all those changes. They hadn’t heard of you yet. So Gertie and I told them all about you, about you being a transfer and all . . . and then somehow, yourfullnameslippedout.”
Honestly, first Kara’s mom spills her guts, and now Susie. Didn’t I know any discreet people?
I shrieked. “Susie! I thought we had a deal!”
“It just happened!” she squealed. “It was all that chocolate. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Well, you are cut off. No chess-square privileges for a month.”
“But Mo!”
“A month!” I repeated, climbing into my truck. I rolled down my window. “I’ll sell you the lemon bars, but that’s it!”
Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “But I hate the lemon bars!”
“I know!” I called, rolling my eyes as I drove away.
In the safety of my cabin, with the shades drawn, I opened the box from my mother. Inside I found a very long letter, which I didn’t read, a copy of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Fast Food Nation, a cookbook called The Vegan’s Journey, and a lavishly decorated photo album, filled with pictures of me and my parents in happier times. There was four-year-old me having my face painted by Lutha, a “body artist” who lived at the commune for a few months. Six-year-old me sitting on my father’s shoulders when we saw Jerry Garcia in concert. Nine-year-old me standing with my mother in front of the Mississippi Supreme Court with signs that read, “Save our future!” The sad thing was, I couldn’t tell what we were protesting.
At the bottom of the box, her famous sugar-free honey-oat cookies, a carton of wheat germ, Sun Life Colon Health Fiber Biscuits, and Sun Life Colon Health Fiber supplements with a detailed pamphlet about caring for my digestive tract.
My mother had spent one hundred dollars on shipping to send me cookies, antimeat propaganda, and laxatives.
CHAPTER 8
The 100-Yard Naked Dash of Shame
IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT, and I was content to sit home sifting through the old photo album with a mug of hot chocolate.
I didn’t have to spend Saturday night alone. Alan had called, offering to take me to the movies in Dearly. Somehow a four-hour round-trip seemed like an awful lot of effort for the Kevin Costner movie he wanted to see. Or, really, any Kevin Costner movie. But our plans were canceled when Alan was called out to a trail on the preserve where a large black wolf had been spotted by some campers. We made tentative plans for dinner the next weekend, he wished me sweet dreams, and I returned to my childhood pictures.
I’d found myself pulling the album out more and more ofte
n lately, even though I knew that’s what my mother intended. It made me happy to see that little dark-headed girl and the adoring looks she gave her parents. It gave me some hope for the future.
Of course, this renewed affection for Ash and Saffron was tempered by the fact that my full name was still spreading around town like a virus. But so far, most of the snickers had been covered by polite coughing. Well, Lynette made some snarky comments about Deadheads and pot smoking, but mostly, there was just snickering. Walt even patted my hand as I poured him coffee the other morning and confessed that his first name was Marion. Just like the rest of me, my hippie-dippy birth name had been accepted in Grundy.
Through with reminiscing for the evening, I popped a Duffy CD into the stereo and picked up Walden. It seemed an appropriate selection. I’d just read the opening paragraph when I heard a thumping, dragging noise on my porch.
My blood ran cold, an unpleasant watery sensation that made my legs tremble. Yet some stupid, potentially fatal curiosity had me moving toward the door, even as my brain screamed at me to run in the opposite direction. This was the kind of noise that the blond, barely clad starlet heard just before the mask-wearing psychopath burst into her isolated cabin and turned her skin into some sort of household furnishing.
I crept to my window and peeked out. I saw a flash of bare golden skin. Whoever it was seemed to be breaking into my house in the nude.
A low, hoarse voice from outside the door whispered, “Please help.”
Whoever was out there was injured. The pain was apparent, even in his voice. Then again, I’d read about Ted Bundy putting a fake cast on his arm to elicit sympathy from his victims . . . Gwa-thunk. I looked out again to see that my nighttime visitor had slumped in front of my door. I opened it and was presented with an ass in the air. Even in my shock, I had to admit it was a very nice ass.
I glanced down to see that he had a bear trap clamped around his ankle. The cruel metal teeth were digging into his flesh, oozing blood in a way that made my stomach turn. “Oh, my God. I’ll call nine-one-one.”