Return by Sea (Glacier Adventure Series Book 3)

by Tracey Jerald

  No matter how much it hurts every time I hear her voice.

  Letting myself into my adobe oasis I purchased years ago, I relish the security my home gives to me. I spent too many years being shuttled from house to house by my birth parents before they decided I was too much of a burden. A quiver ripples through my stomach as I slam the heavy door behind me.

  No, I left those burdens back in Alaska. I refuse to bring them here.

  “What I need is a good workout. Oliver prattling about took up my sparring time,” I decide aloud. Not caring my voice echoes off the travertine, I wander into the workout room and drop my clothes into a pile in the small locker room I had built. Pulling on a pair of workout shorts, I grab my cell and a towel before heading out into the fully equipped workout room that’s bigger than a three-car garage. Picking up a jump rope, I set a timer on my phone and begin to lose myself to the routine that’s as second nature to me as breathing after so many years.

  After I finish jumping rope, I do reps of heel-to-butt kicks, walkouts, and lunges—front and back, side to side. Muscles comfortably warm, I stretch lightly, beginning with my neck, moving down to my shoulders and arms, before I stretch my quads and hips. Then I pad barefoot over to my workout chart. Hmm, arms. And here I was in the mood to kick a little ass.

  But like Oliver said earlier, you don’t get to be the champion without a work ethic and without training. And for years I’ve done little but both. Especially since Jed died.

  The racks of free weights are neatly organized. I reach over and pick up a forty-pound dumbbell. Bracing my arm, I begin doing curls when my cell rings. Lowering the weight, I press a button on my watch and then hit Speaker. “What do you want?” I growl at John Jennings jokingly. At least, I hope after close to twenty years of friendship he knows I’m joking.

  “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?” he worries.

  I roll my eyes. Despite the fact in my younger days I was a complete douchebag to women, I can’t remember the last time I had one in my bed. “I was working out, asshole.”

  “You do realize you’re getting old. Eventually you’re going to have to turn over training the new guys you’re picking up to the younger guys who work for you,” Jennings comments mildly.

  “Fuck you, Jennings. Just remember, I’ll always be better-looking than you,” I counter, unperturbed. “Now, why did you call?”

  “Let me get Brad and Kody on the line so I can tell everyone at once.”

  Before he can add them, I rush out with, “Is everything okay? What’s wrong?”

  Kody’s face appears in the corner of my screen, his blondish-red hair practically glowing in the Montana sunset. “Hey, Jenn— Hey, Nick! What’s the occasion?” Kody’s framed by the back of his new house in Montana. He’s covered in sawdust, not an unusual occurrence for the acclaimed builder.

  Before I can speak—or Jennings can—Brad’s face also appears. It’s a few hours behind in Juneau, so chaos is reigning as usual at the Meyers household. Rainey—Brad’s wife of close to twenty years—is bellowing at their two kids to wash up and get ready for dinner. Finally, an almost eerie silence rains down on us.

  “Well, now that everyone’s here, I can share the news. Kara and I wanted to wait until...” Jennings’s hand is shaking, and he’s crying.

  “What is it?” Kody demands.

  “Is someone sick? Is it Kevin?” Brad demands.

  But they’re not studying his face. There isn’t agony on it; there’s joy. “Kara’s pregnant?” I take a wild guess.

  And Jennings lets out a wobbly laugh. “Damn straight she is. So, you might always be better-looking than me, Nick, but I still have enough power to—”

  “Jennings!” We all scold him before we’re offering congratulations on top of one another. But my hand reaches up and clenches around the gold cross Jed left me when he died. His grandfather’s cross.

  “He should be here for this, damnit.” I can’t prevent the bitterness that laces my voice. But for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would be. So would his husband. “Jed and Dean would be fantastic uncles.”

  “Yeah, they would. So, Kara and I expect the three of you to make up for them and to get your asses to Florida as soon as you can after this baby is born.” Jennings’s words are nothing more than one friend should expect from another after a half a lifetime of friendship, but for a man who has held himself a step back from emotional entanglements of any kind since he was shoved into the Alaskan foster system at fourteen, it’s a huge leap of faith for him to expect this from me.

  Then again, it’s doing what Jed would want me to do when he gave me this cross, damnit. Squeezing it so tightly, I wonder absently if I’m crushing it. I’m the first to respond, “Okay.”

  “Just that quick?” Jennings wonders aloud. “Just that simple?”

  “It’s what Jed would have done.” And after the other assurances that Kody and Brad will be in Florida as soon as they can make it after the birth of Kara and Jennings’s second child and more congratulations, I disconnect the call.

  “Can you believe that, Jed? Another Jennings.” I pick up the weight in my other hand and begin reps.

  A little voice inside my head taunts me, You could have had that if you hadn’t broken her heart.

  Only if I wanted to ruin her life the way mine was.

  Feeling the darkness settle over me, I finish my reps and put away the weights. Slipping on gloves, I move over to the heavyweight bag and begin taking out my frustrations—past and present—on it. Punch after punch, I land with lethal force at my intended target.

  Myself.

  Maris

  “If there was a price to be paid for love, I’d do anything, sell anything, be anything to set that emotion free in my baby sister again. But day after day, year after year, I know it will take a man with a will of steel to breach the barriers around her heart. I pray for them both.” - From the journals of Jedidiah Smith.

  Sixteen years. It took sixteen years, but I’m finally fulfilling my brother’s wish for me.

  I found a love that makes me happy.

  Tenderly, I reach out and cup his chin. His long-lashed dark eyes hold mine captive before a wary smile flashes briefly. It’s gone quickly but not before his cherubic cheeks flash dimples that likely have broken the hearts of everyone he’s ever met in his path.

  And he’s only nine.

  Sarah said to talk with him. “All of them are quick as a whip, Maris. The love you show them means so much.”

  “David, you are such a special little boy.” Even though it’s not my decision, my heart is already his. He just has to ask for it. If it were up to me, he’d be coming home today. After all, just like Nick was given, the little boy Sarah’s been fostering deserves a chance when life has given him so few at such a young age.

  “Are you going to be here for always?” he asks.

  My heart melts at the way he phrases it. “Well, I do have my own home. But if Sarah says it’s okay, you could come to visit. All of you could,” I amend quickly.

  “I mean, will you never leave?” In his question, I hear his hopes and fears of being let down rolled into one. The black spot that’s been plaguing my life since I got the call about my brother’s death three years ago is dimming, and it’s because I found his soul again here on earth.

  No longer feeling like I’m counting days until I can join Jed, I stand, holding my hand out. David’s muddy one clasps it trustingly. “I’ll do whatever I can not to,” I vow.

  “I trust you, Maris.” His soulful brown eyes smile up into mine.

  And another bond of love snaps into place. First came knowledge, then came trust. Now come the promises.

  And this time it’s up to me to keep them.

  After I leave David at his foster parents’ home, I call Kara.

  She answers on the first ring. “How did it go?”

  I immediately burst into tears.

  Her reaction is exactly what I expect from the woman who’
s been my best friend for twenty years. She lets out a war whoop that might be able to be heard by every person across the four thousand miles that separates us. “We’re having a baby!” she shouts.

  “David’s not a baby,” I remind her for the hundredth time.

  “You want him to be your first child; that makes him your first baby. Trust me, even when they stand over a foot taller than you, they’re still your babies.” Since Kara’s youngest child is seventeen, and as tall as his father, Jennings, I decide to take her word for it.

  Then I voice my biggest fear. “God, I hope nothing goes wrong.”

  Immediately, Kara’s jubilance is tempered. “Why would it?”

  “Because I’ve learned that something always goes wrong, Kara. God, it’s like someone has a cosmic shit hammer ready to swing. Remember? Jed lived his life for far too many years wondering if he’d ever find love. He finds it with Dean, and look what happens to them.” I clear my throat. “I didn’t tell you I’ve been clearing out Jed’s old room.”

  “What kind of things have you found?”

  “Other than the fact my brother was a damn pack rat?”

  “A trait he shared with Dean.” We let out watery giggles. “What else?”

  “Bits and pieces of old letters, stuff from the Jacks. Memories I’m cataloging that I’ll be giving them on birthdays and shit.”

  “That’s incredibly sweet.”

  “That’s not the only thing I found.”

  “What else?

  “I found old journals.”

  “Oh, Maris. How incredible. What did you find?” There’s a rustle of material as Kara gets settled in for a long talk.

  “So much.” My throat gets tight as I remember words of a man’s frustrated words about the way he devised plans only to have them foiled by the actions or inertia of others. His empathy was both more and less than I ever imagined. And I still don’t know what to do about this side of my brother that I can’t share because to do so would wreck the image of Jed everyone has. “God, I’d give anything to be able to share what I’m feeling with Jed and Dean.” Or to hand them back over. Unread.

  “So would I.” Kara’s voice is husky. Even now, though it’s been three years since Jed and Dean died in a car wreck that took them from our lives way too soon, part of me is still floored by the fact our brothers fell in love with one another with one look. Then again, as I admire one of the black-and-white photos Kara’s wedding photographer, Holly Freeman, took of the two of us while Kara was preparing to walk down the aisle, I’m really not. It only took that amount of time for Kara’s and my hearts to connect when we met in Juneau after she answered my family’s ad for a room.

  So many years and—for me, at least—so little has changed.

  I drag myself back to our conversation. “There are days when I come flying down the stairs and I feel like I’m going to see them.”

  “I know you would never sell the house.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “Never,” I confirm. “I can’t imagine it.”

  “What other things did you find in the journals? Stuff about Jennings?” I hear both amusement and curiosity in her voice.

  My hand presses against my stomach, and I try to control my heartbeat. My mind drifts back to curling up next to my brother for both warmth and safety, both of us ignoring the stench of our skin as the days passed by when all I could do was cry silent tears. As clearly as I remember hearing Kevin’s first baby cries, I forgot Jed’s being there during the darkest days of my life.

  And then I read one of his journals.

  Kara believes Jed didn’t know about her having Kevin until that fateful day in Florida. Admitting he knew everything from the very beginning, every secret, I don’t understand how she could forgive me for lying to her. I truly never meant for my brother to find out about her son—Jennings’s son—but I didn’t remember. I was so strung out on drugs, recovering from one of the most painful procedures of my life, that getting up to the bathroom by myself hurt. I didn’t realize what I was saying awake. The answer is obviously too much after I heard Kevin cry as it triggered my own tears.

  Tears my brother wiped and then wrote about.

  But if I thought I knew physical pain back then, it was nothing in comparison to the night I got the call from Kara about Jed’s death. That was the night my heart began to shatter into a million pieces. Nothing, not any pain from having loved Nick, the agony of my medical scars, will ever leave me with the same kind of despair I felt the night I got that call.

  Even if Kara walked out of my life tomorrow.

  Throwing off a quick laugh, I reassure Kara, “Stuff that requires a lot of wine. Therefore, you and your inquiring mind will have to wait. It’s a long time until my newest niece or nephew is going to make an appearance. Speaking of which, when is Jennings going to tell the guys?”

  “He told them earlier tonight. So Rainey can finally stop looking so guilty for not telling Brad,” Kara chortles.

  “What I think is funnier is that Meadow is better at keeping secrets from Kody,” I muse.

  “I notice you haven’t shared your big news with any of them,” she reminds me.

  “That’s because I’d like to get past the initial hurdles since I finally passed the classes.” I run a hand over my head, bringing us back around to my original reason for calling. “I’ve already filled out the licensing application which should trigger the background check and the need for a home visit.”

  “I’d like to visit,” Kara says wistfully. “I miss you so damn much. And with all of this going on, I suspect there’s going to be no way you for you to take a trip to come to us this summer.”

  “Not likely,” I concede, my mood plummeting slightly. Every year since Jed moved permanently to Ponte Vedra, Florida, I flew cross-country and spent time with him, Dean, Kara, and her son, Kevin, for a whole month every summer. The thought depresses me, before I realize what I could have at the end—a family of my own. In my mind’s eye, David’s soulful brown eyes blink up at me before a shy smile crosses his face.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to make it for the delivery? I’m not sure if I can do it without you or Dean here.” The panic from Kara’s voice snaps me back to our conversation.

  “What? Are you afraid Jennings will wash out as a labor coach?”

  There’s a sniff before, “No. I think he’ll do great. I just want our baby to be surrounded by as much of his or her family as soon as she comes into the world.”

  “Unless by some quirk of fate that happens to be the week of the adoption, I’ll be there for your delivery. I swear that to you.”

  “You promise?” Kara’s tearful exuberance is clear across the line.

  I don’t hesitate. “I promise. And you know I don’t take those lightly. After all.” I flip to a picture of David and me. “I promised Jed I’d find love, and I finally have.”

  Those words set Kara off on a crying binge that eventually has Kevin coming over and lecturing, “Jeez, Maris. Now I need to get her some Powerade.”

  Knowing he inherited that smart-ass mouth as much from my brother as he did from his biological uncle, I retort, “Get used to it, buddy. Soon it will be your little brother or sister demanding much worse.”

  “Oh, God.” The phone clatters to the table as Kevin takes off. I can hear Kara’s laughter, though she doesn’t pick up the phone again.

  That’s okay. I couldn’t speak if she did. I’m crying myself.

  Curled up in front of a roaring fire, the beauty of the Alaskan summer nights allowing me this comfort, the warm embrace of our generations-old family home plus Jed’s own words reassure me I’m doing the right thing when it comes to taking this step forward in my life.

  Placing the glass of wine aside, I lift the leather journal off my chest and begin to read aloud, “I want to dare Maris to open up her heart to love someone. She gives of herself from what appears to be a limitless fountain—over and over again. But something has to feed that spring t
o keep it flowing clean and pure. I have ideas on what that could be, but it’s not an easy road. And in the end, it may not be enough.”

  Setting the book on the coffee table, I pick up my glass and offer my brother a toast to the cool air that wraps around me. “Jed, I relied upon you so much in our lives, I’m afraid you made it your life’s mission to ensure I reached for what you eventually found—a love so strong that it can still be seen. It’s practically tangible. But darling, not all of us are willing to open ourselves to that kind of vulnerability. There’s a suffering that accompanies the daring of love.” I become entranced in the flickering flames. “But maybe I can go in search of my dreams. Maybe I won’t ache as badly at night, and I’ll still love with everything I can, everything I am. It will be enough. I’ll find that fulfillment you want me to have.”

  A log rolls in the fireplace, startling me. I’d almost believe it was Jed answering me, except an incoming email pops up on my phone. After noting the sender, I immediately open it. Then I let out a war whoop that must be able to be heard in Fairbanks. “They want to do a home study!” I yell to the empty house.

  The dare from Jed to find love may have originally suffocated my earlier relationships, but it forced me to evaluate them with a critical eye.

  Now I know why.

  David, this adoption, this is the course my life is supposed to be on. I immediately whirl around to tell someone the good news only to deflate a bit when I find myself alone. Then I square my shoulders.

  No, this is how it’s supposed to be; I just know it.

  Maris

  “I pity the fool who believes my sister is merely a pleasant woman. She could take on a Kodiak and come out the winner. When pissed, her eyes can skewer you, and her tongue is pure acid if she’s riled. I joke about it, but she should come with a warning sign.” - From the journals of Jedidiah Smith.