by Amy Star
With a breath, Jaxon began. “Sherry…it’s my grandfather. He’s… Sherry, he’s not gonna be around much longer. It may only be months now.”
A look of sorrow and sympathy fell over Sherry’s face. She held Jaxon’s arm, the hard and muscled arm that had held her so many times. Her voice laden with the way she felt, she said, “Oh, Jaxon, no. Mom and Dad told me he’d been having some heart trouble. Is he…?”
“He’s old, is what he is,” replied Jaxon. “He’s just old, and he’s sick, and he’s been stuck in bed, and he’s not gonna get better. It’s just a matter of time now.”
“Jaxon, I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do?”
He paused, fidgeted a bit, and licked his lips nervously. “That’s kind of what I came to talk to you about, Sherry. Yeah, there is kind of…something you can do.”
“What?” Sherry asked. “You know how far back our families go, how Dad’s business has always counted on your business. If we can help in any way, you know…”
He cut her off. “Sherry,” he abruptly said, “my grandfather remembers.”
Sherry leaned back a bit and blinked. “Remembers what?”
Apprehensively, Jaxon said, “He remembers…from when we were sixteen. You know what happened when we were sixteen?”
“Like I could forget,” Sherry said. “When we were sixteen, you and I first started…you know, like we used to say… ‘going fishing.’” She was using their old private expression, the “fishing” metaphor that referred to a very different sort of “rod.”
“Yeah,” said Jaxon. “And you remember what happened when my grandfather found out about you and me ‘going fishing’?”
Sherry backed up a step now and looked off for a second. In that second, the realization came to her, and she looked at Jaxon with eyes as wide as they’d been when he appeared in the dining room. In a hushed tone, she said, “Jaxon, no. You don’t mean… You’re not saying he really expects… Jaxon, everyone’s forgotten about that, haven’t they? I mean, no one even took that seriously, did they?”
Gravely, Jaxon replied, “It looks like he did.”
Almost wanting to laugh, Sherry nervously scratched at her hair. “Jaxon, no. No, no, no. That just can’t be. That just can’t happen. I mean, everyone knew that was just…not really for real. We were kids. And…and…we had completely different ideas than that. Jaxon, for God’s sake, everyone was just humoring him, right? Right?”
“Maybe everybody was humoring him back then. But it looks like he took it seriously. And he says…it’s what he wants. He wants it to happen now. You know, before he…goes.”
Now Sherry did laugh, a shocked, bitter, nervous, and very worried laugh, a laugh of utter dismay and total disbelief. “But Jaxon! No one does that anymore! When was the last time you heard of anyone doing that?”
Jaxon only shrugged, looking a bit helpless, almost a bit lost. “People weren’t even really doing that when we were kids. But people still remember when they did. Or they remember all the stories about it. And I guess my grandfather still takes all that stuff seriously.”
“Well, I don’t!” Sherry blurted. “Do you?”
Jaxon just shook his head. He had no answer for that. Or perhaps any answer he could give her might have felt futile.
Sherry began to pace back and forth on the porch. “Well, you know, everyone always loved your grandfather, and everyone always respected him, but there are limits. I mean, there are just limits. He’s going to have to understand that. There are just limits!”
“I’m sorry, Sherry,” was all that Jaxon could offer.
“And I’m sorry too!” she said, stopping herself from raising her voice. “I am sorry, Jaxon, but I had plans for my life, and you must have had plans for yours. And none of our plans included anything like this!”
“I know,” he said softly.
She stopped pacing and looking him squarely in the face. “There’s no way, Jaxon. No way at all. This is ridiculous, and we’re just going to have to get this idea out of his head. Because I’m telling you, this is not working!”
They were quiet for a moment. Jaxon nodded, accepting her words, agreeing.
And Sherry pressed home her point, to make it very explicit and very plain.
“We cannot—I mean, Jaxon, we cannot!!—get married!”
And there it was. She had said it aloud. She had actually put out the word, that word, into the gathering dusk in which the fireflies twinkled off the back porch. She had said the thing that grandfather Humbert Michaels expected, which Sherry and Jaxon both deemed completely out of the question.
Married. That was what the old Ursan patriarch wanted and expected. And as far as Sherry McCabe and Jaxon Michaels were concerned, no such thing was on the table.
Chapter2
“He cannot possibly hold us to that,” Sherry maintained. “The time when people went into ‘peace marriages’ of all things—maybe that was still going on in the 1950s, but even then, people were forgetting about that. People don’t do that anymore, Jaxon.”
Jaxon shook his head. “I know they don’t. I know it’s like older than old school. So old it’s got dust on it a hundred layers thick. I know. But Granddad says he always wanted to see it. You remember back then, when he found out about the two of us ‘going fishing’ and he had that talk with us, and your folks, and my folks, about how things were done and what people expected. He was serious about that shit. He knew we were in love then, and he really wanted us—wants us—to…”
Sherry continued for him, “…‘to join our families together forever to keep the peace between humans and Ursans, because blood doesn’t fight blood!’ Yes, I remember how they used to put it in the old days when my kind and your kind wanted to kill each other…”
“…actually, it was your kind that was scared of my kind, and my kind wanting to defend themselves…”
“Whatever! Humans and werebears were afraid of each other and couldn’t trust each other and wanted to kill each other off, and they came up with the idea of marriages to keep everyone alive. That’s how it was, like back in pioneer days. But the world went on, and they all got used to each other, and no one needed to do that anymore.”
“Everybody knows that, Sherry,” said Jaxon.
Sherry almost shouted again. “Your grandfather doesn’t seem to!” Forcibly calming herself, she went on. “Listen, Jaxon, my family loves Humbert. We all love him. We always thought he was a sweet old bear, even back then. But if he expects us to just get married, of all things, because of this old tradition that no one gives half a thought to anymore…I’m sorry, we’re going to have to disappoint him. He has to know there’s no way he can make us do that.”
Solemnly, Jaxon said, “He thinks there is.”
“And what makes him think that? What is there that could possibly make us want to do such a ridiculous thing that’s so out of line?”
Jaxon took a breath, considering how best to put this. Then, delicately, he said, “There’s this…change he made to his will.”
Warily, suspiciously, Sherry asked, “What change?”
“Well, you know how my family’s lumber business is the main supplier for your family’s furniture and building business…”
A cold feeling came over Sherry at this. She could sense where this was going. “What about it?”
“This change in his will…you know Granddad still has controlling interest in the company, even after we broke it up so everybody in the family gets a share. Granddad always kept enough interest for a deciding vote. This change in his will says that if you and I don’t get married, our business with your business is over. We don’t sell you anything anymore. Nothing. Zip. Nada. And then, you know what happens. Your Dad will have to go to other suppliers, people who won’t give him the kind of deal he gets from us because our families go back such a long way. He’ll end up paying more for supplies than he’s always paid, doing business with us. If we don’t get married, the deal’s gone.”
&nb
sp; And now, Sherry’s self-control completely went. Jaxon flinched back from her reaction: “WHA-A-AT?!” The sound of her voice exploded out into the night like a vocal hand grenade. Jaxon imagined little animals in the forest beyond the backyard flinching in shock, leaping behind bushes, diving under logs. He pictured Sherry’s parents and relatives and friends inside the house suddenly freezing, stunned and startled, at the sound of her. It surprised him that the fireflies themselves were not making streaks of light in the evening air, looking for places to hide. He made a pained expression at her.
“You know,” he said cautiously, “I tried telling him this wasn’t cool…”
“Not cool?” Sherry balked. “It’s all kinds of not cool! A thing like that shouldn’t even be legal…”
“It’s his will, Sherry. His will and his business, and he’s within his rights…”
“Oh! Oh! ‘Within his rights,’ now! Granddad is ‘within his rights!’ What about us? Are we ‘within our rights’ wanting to decide what we do with our own lives? Where are we in all this?”
“All dressed up, standing in front of the preacher?” Jaxon offered, shrugging.
Sherry gave him a burning look. “That is not funny.”
“Sorry,” Jaxon offered again, feeling rather weak about it.
Sherry began to pace again, rubbing her forehead in the way Jaxon remembered her doing when she was most upset and most trying to contain herself. There was one particular time when they were in school together, and they’d had a particular kind of potentially life-changing accident. It turned out they had dodged a bullet, and there was nothing to fear, but at the time, Jaxon had thought she would wear holes in the carpet and grooves in her forehead. They had almost broken up over it. Only their basic inability to keep their hands off each other, stay dressed, and remain standing up had kept them together.
“All right,” said Sherry, thinking aloud while reminding Jaxon of that time when they were seventeen, “he’s got to know there’s no point to the whole thing. I mean really, it’s pointless. Hasn’t he ever heard of an annulment? We could go through the whole ridiculous thing, everyone could go to all the trouble of making it happen the way he wants—because of course he’ll want to be there and make a big ‘do’ of it—but then we can just turn around and have the whole stupid thing annulled. He’s got to know that. Even changing his will is no good, because he can’t put in his will that we have to stay married once we get married. You can’t make someone stay married. So, what good is it?”
Jaxon shrugged again. “It’s still what he wants. He wants it done the way it used to be done. And he wants to see it before…”
“I know, I know. Before he ‘goes.’” She stopped pacing. “Jaxon, he is a sweet old bear, but he’s an idiot.”
He sighed, agreeing. “He’s old, that’s all. They get set in their ways, they know what they want, and they don’t care.” He paused, watching her reaction, seeing her try to rein in her feelings again. “You’re right, he’s old and stupid. And people his age think we’re young and stupid. One day, we’ll be where he is.”
“Well, we won’t be a married couple when we get there!”
“But he wants us to be one now. I think he’d be willing to start another war between us and humans to get us married.” And he smiled at her, a silly, goofy smile; the kind of smile one makes to try to be reassuring in the face of something completely absurd, which was surely what this was.
It worked, at least a little. Sherry’s utter dismay melted into something perhaps a little more mellow, if still none too pleased.
“What are you thinking now?” he asked.
“I was about to say I’m almost sorry we ever started ‘going fishing.’ Except that would be a lie, you know that. Nothing would ever make me regret a minute of that. Not one minute. I went away to college, and I met a lot of great people and learned a lot of great things. I had a lot of good times. But you and I…that was three years I’d never take back.”
“Same here. I went into the Air Force and lived in another country. I traveled around, saw things, did things, lived some. But what we had, you and me… That was golden, Sherry. We were so clumsy and didn’t know what we were doing the first time. But we taught each other, didn’t we? What to do, how to do it… I’d never trade one time. Not one.”
“You’re right; we taught each other. And you were a really quick study.” She smiled, and he laughed a little, recalling. “You got really good at it.”
He nodded, his blood rushing a little faster and a little harder—and in a particular direction—at the memory. “Remember that one night I did it nine times?”
Her eyes widened, and she actually felt her nipples harden at the thought of it. She covered her mouth for a second, almost embarrassed. “Oh my God—nine times! That was incredible!”
They fell silent again. Even the boys she’d dated in college were not that prolific. They were at their peak, of course, but still they were only human. Jaxon was an Ursan, and that made all the difference. All the incredible difference. And now, here he was again: six years older and six years hotter. And no doubt just as prolific.
“We were incredible, weren’t we?”
Sherry nodded, smiling softly. “We were.” Every single time, she added silently.
“We’re gonna figure this out, Sherry,” he told her sincerely. “We’ll work this out, get it all making sense. There’s a way. We’ll work it out.”
“You said it yourself, Jaxon,” she replied. “He’s old, and he won’t listen.”
“So, when somebody doesn’t listen, you keep talking ‘til they do. My folks, your folks, we’ll get through to him. This isn’t pioneer days, right? This is the 21st Century. Nobody needs a peace marriage now.”
Sherry sighed, and Jaxon could feel some of the tension draining out of her at his words. “We sure don’t,” she said.
“Hey,” he said.
“What?”
He held out his arms to her. “Come here.”
She arched her eyebrows and blinked a bit. She said nothing, but in her eyes was a question. What do you want…?
“Come here,” he repeated. “Just for old times. Come on.”
Feeling a different kind of warmth come over her than the emotional upset she felt at his grandfather’s desires, Sherry stepped over to Jaxon and let him take her in his arms. He held her close, not in the way he once did. He kept his hands above her waist, and she kept hers above his. But in that embrace, an embrace of two young people who were as familiar with each other as it was possible for two people of any age to be, were a million memories, the memories of very different embraces with much less clothing, which might begin standing up but never stayed that way for long.
“Did I say, ‘Happy graduation’ before?” he asked.
“You did,” she replied.
“Oh.” He paused, still holding her. “Well, then…welcome home, I guess.”
“Thank you,” she sighed.
It was a platonic hug, but he still felt so wonderful.
Chapter3
“The way I remember it,” Andrea said, depositing the stack of pancakes with the spatula on Sherry’s plate at breakfast the next morning, “your exact words were, ‘That old bear must be out of his mind.’”
“Did I say that?” Sherry wondered aloud, pouring the syrup on her breakfast.
“You said that,” Andrea replied, sitting down at her own plate and passing the bacon Sherry’s way.
“Well,” said Sherry, taking some strips of bacon and looking from her mother, sitting to her left, to her father at the other end of the table, “you know the only reason I would have said that. It felt like he was trying to plan out our whole lives for us.”
“I know, honey,” said Andrea. “And no one expects you or Jaxon to live up to that. No one would ever seriously hold that over your heads.”
“Nobody but Humbert,” said Sherry, crunching on her bacon. “Dad, what about the lawyers?”
“Ours or his?”
asked Vic after a gulp of coffee.
“Both!” answered Sherry.
Pensively, Vic said, “I’m sure his lawyers—one of whom is his own brother—advised him against it. Arranged marriages just aren’t done anymore, and using one as a condition of doing business—well, that’s just not smart.”
“Thank you!” said Sherry. “Absolutely, it’s not smart! You don’t hold something like that over anybody’s head, especially not somebody you’re doing business with! Daddy, you’ve had this business relationship with them since before Jaxon and I were even born, and we’ve all done great with it. Why mess with that over a thing like this?”