On the wall is a collage of pictures meticulously hung—including the dreaded Mr. and Ms. Smith mockup Jed and I did for our parents. But what else is there is a life history of Kara, Jennings, Kevin, Dean, and—I try to swallow so I can say something—me and Jed.
Photos of all sizes, shapes, and ages. From the time Kara and Dean were young to the wedding ceremony of our brothers in the Caribbean. From Kevin’s birth, to vacations. The early years of Jennings and Kara to photos taken when we flew to see Meadow. Pictures of Dean and Jed, of Jed alone, a lifetime of pictures.
No, a lifetime of love.
And there’s an entire section of the two of us—God, where did she accumulate so many? My eyes burn as Kara holds up her iPad to show us drunken selfies, photos of us from her wedding, pictures of just me when we were thousands of miles apart and time was passing us by when we were desperate to be together and knowing we couldn’t.
How do I admit to her I screwed up? That all these years that wall could have been filled with so much more? Tears fall down my cheeks, and choked laughter bubbles out when my best friend steps back so Rainey and Meadow can get the full effect. “Here it is, ladies. Mr. and Ms. Smith,” Kara announces grandly.
But Kara knew her announcement wouldn’t be met with more laughter. “It’s beautiful,” Meadow whispers.
“I’ve never seen anything more…Brad! I have a project for you.” That’s when the tension around my heart starts to lift.
Kara flips the camera around, and I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I love you. I always will.”
“The same is true for me. Now, if you think you’re getting that poster out of my hands, we’ll just see about that.” Her voice is smug with good reason.
Maybe I won’t take the original. Maybe I’ll just ask for a copy if I make it to Florida.
And if she’s still talking to me after I explain the truth.
Later, as I prepare for bed, I pick up one of the leather-bound books that’s caused me such heartache in the last year. The one thing tarnishing my precious memories of my brother.
His journals. Journals that I found hidden beneath a monstrous number of boxes of mementos and memorabilia in his closet that I chose to start cleaning last summer.
I sit down on the edge of the bed, and a sigh rips out of me. “What compelled you to write down what you knew, Jed?”
Because you’re not the only one who’s ever felt the way you do right now.
“And for the record I wish you’d get out of my head.” I slam the book back down on the nightstand. Flopping backward, I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. There are things in there I should never have known. Things that make me ashamed of who I’ve become in order to protect the wounds I’ve sustained as a woman, physically and mentally.
And they were secrets that belonged to other people.
I stare blankly ahead at the ceiling as I talk aloud. “Brad wanted to leave Alaska for a little while, but he got Rainey pregnant which is why they got married so early. Then they lost the baby. Kody was in love with Meadow the entire time, but while Jed wanted him to man up, he suspected his advice drove him not to pursue her. Jennings had a childhood that drove him to make something of himself first to prove his self-worth, which is why my brother didn’t tell him. And Nick? God, Nick.” The heels of my hands press against my eyes.
“I owe you an apology, Nick. I have no right to hold on to old grudges, do I? You needed a friend more than anything. But like every other insipid female you likely came into contact with, I wanted something else. Yet, I knew you, Nick. We talked for hours. You told me the reason you stopped in Ketchikan, you jerk. You stopped at that damn grocery store and at the Lumberjack arena to say thank you to my brother for rescuing you because you believed he saved your life. And despite my being a bitch, you ran after me when they finished reading his will.” I swallow hard. “And here I am still being as nasty as I can. Why? Because you wrote me a sweet letter and asked me to come to see you on the most special night of your life? The night you won the belt? You made me no promises, and it’s time for me to own that. And it’s time for me to get over the absolutely nothing you did. So, no more.” Then thinking about his supreme ego, I amend my vow. “At least, I’ll try.”
I lie there for a while thinking of the other things I read in the journals I found buried in the back of Jed’s suite. I began to clean it out thinking it was time, and as I found pieces of the Jacks, I sent it to them. Without thinking, I reach over to the nightstand and pluck the latest journal I’m reading from. I left a bookmark in the spot where I finished last night. Ruthlessly, I pull it open.
“I’m worried about Maris. There’s a storm in her eyes that I’m terrified is uncontrollable. It’s almost as bad as the ones I saw in Nick’s when he and I were still living in Ketchikan.
If there was ever anything that’s convinced me the two of them were not meant to be right now, it’s this. They’d self-destruct. And instead of worrying about Maris’s broken heart, or Nick’s recklessness, I’d be worried about losing them both.
I know what it is, of course. It’s the anniversary of the accident. You don’t go through something that life-altering and not expect it to…”
I slam the book closed as I recall the details of that night.
I was twenty-three, closing a Saturday night at the Brewhouse with my father. I was young, outgoing, and carefree as I raked in money hand over fist waitressing. Men were often the best tippers when they were slightly inebriated because they would flirt under the watchful eyes of my brother and father. I remember Brad and Rainey being there, raising a few shots and laughing. I stopped by and gave them a quick hug as I wove myself in between patrons carrying a tray of drinks.
But there was one man who caught my eye. It was the first time since Nick had left, and I was hurt deep inside since he’d broken his promise to keep in touch. The attention I was getting was flattering as all hell.
Jed grabbed my arm as I passed by, warning me, “Be careful, Sunshine.”
“Knock it off, Jed. I don’t tell you what to do. Besides, he’s not one of your precious friends, is he?” Jed was shocked, but finally, he let me go.
Over and over, no matter where I was in the crowded bar, my eyes kept drifting back to the stranger. Finally, I worked up my courage and made my way over. “Carter Jones,” he introduced himself before taking a pull of his longneck.
“Maris. But I guess you knew that from the name tag.” I fluttered my eyelashes at him, and his throaty laugh sent shivers down my spine.
“Maris!” my father bellowed over the din. “Drinks up!”
“Right. See you around, Carter.” I spun on my heel, but before I could move an inch, Carter’s lips were at my ear.
“I hope so.”
Since it was a Saturday night and early, I honestly don’t remember how many drinks Carter was served that night. And I had to answer that question and many others later on the stand after he stood trial for drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident. After all, he didn’t stick around when he hit my car while showboating on a long stretch of road, causing me to roll over and over, leaving me trapped, and sped off without calling the police.
I found out later it was an hour before someone found me and another to cut me out. I was—fortunately—unconscious most of the time. After being airlifted to Fairbanks, I was triaged and then sent into surgery.
It wasn’t until Jed and my parents were by my bedside the next day that I came around enough to find out the accident caused me to hemorrhage blood from an unknown ovarian cyst that had ruptured.
“Did you have cramps during your cycle?”
Embarrassed to be talking about this in front of my dad and Jed, I nodded. “Just on one side.”
“Often?” the doctor probed.
Mom squeezed my hand, and I whispered, “Yes.”
“When was your next cycle due?”
“What do you mean, was?” Mom asked quietly. Dad slipped an arm around her.
“What happened to Ms. Smith is called an ovarian teratoma tear. There were complications.” The surgeon patted my hand as he explained. Patted my hand. After all, it wasn’t his life that had changed in that cramped white room.
It was mine.
“What do you mean complications?” My voice shook.
“It’s often referred to as ‘unicornuate uterus,’ where only half of the uterus forms, with one ovary and one fallopian tube,” the doctor informed us all.
Mom started to cry. Dad and Jed began yelling simultaneously.
As for me, I couldn’t process the news. I began to shake as pain—both physical and mental—swept over me. I began to repeatedly click the button for the pain meds as the rest of the surgeon’s words flowed over me. My singular ovary. Apparently I’d only been born with one, something I had no idea about until they had to remove it.
“Why the hell would they name it something like that? Who the fuck was trying to be funny?” I snapped. The room became still at my outburst. “Because I’m sure as hell not a unicorn anymore. I just lost my fucking horn.” That’s when I began to cry.
My mother and Jed wrapped their arms around me as my father shooed the doctor from the room. All I remember from the following days are two things.
Jed being by my side and asking for more drugs to haze the pain. And I remember talking with Kara when Kevin was born. I just don’t recall Jed being in the room as I tried to drown out the pain of surgery and the pain in my heart as I repeatedly clicked the button to inject myself with pain meds.
But he must have been.
And somehow I have to find a way to tell my best friend her life could have been so different if Jed had made different choices because I have no idea why he made the ones he did. None.
Nicholas
The docking of the ferry leaves me with a multitude of feelings, most of them tinged with regrets.
I’ve made my pilgrimage to Jed in Ketchikan by stopping by the grocery store. I can’t come back to Alaska and not go back to the place where he saved my life by demanding in a very clear voice to his uncle, “We have to do something. It’s just wrong if we don’t.”
As the cool air washes over my face off the harbor, I remember Jed’s words to the police officers. “There’s no question. This guy was here two days ago. In the same outfit.” “God, Jed. Did I ever tell you thank you? Foster homes may not have been the best, but they sure as hell were better than the shit I lived with at home. And later when we met up again at the show, you never said a word. It took until that final summer that I didn’t feel like a wounded animal, afraid to believe the nonsense you had been spouting at me summer after summer; that you were really my brother even if there wasn’t an ounce of blood that ran between us. And now I’ll never have the chance because you’re gone.”
Time. No matter what financial success I’ve managed to accumulate with my career, the distance I’ve managed to place between Nick Cain and the boy abandoned years ago, I can’t buy back time. And I’d give everything I own to have more of it with the people I love, to make restitutions to the people who deserve them. In the last few years since Jed’s death, I’ve had too much time for retrospection, and my thoughts are as turbulent as the water crashing up against the hull of the boat.
So many memories were made those long-ago summers. Humor makes my lips twitch as I swing my duffle up on my shoulder before it dies just as quickly. It’s easy to pull up the flashes of days when we’d all take this exact same ferry from Ketchikan to Juneau to visit the Smiths. The four of us would be in varying degrees of anxiousness—or not—to get off the boat. Every step I take brings a new memory that’s seared in my soul.
I hate this place as much as I love the people it brought to me, which leaves me conflicted each step I take down the ramp and onto the dock. Would life have eventually brought Brad, Jennings, Kody, or Jed into my orbit if I hadn’t been dealt such a crushing blow as a teenager? On the other hand, that agony fueled me in a way nothing else ever could. Alaska gave me the ability to create my own freedom, which I’ve enjoyed lavishly.
Moving inside the waiting room, I glance around, trying to spy Brad among the many people lingering around. Still distracted, I think about the difference of what getting off that ferry would have meant twenty years ago. Despite the anger I’m positive I couldn’t quite hide, there was a young man terrified of being left behind again. And that fear would only intensify the moment we’d hit Juneau where there was this woman who somehow saw through the bluster. Leaning my shoulder against the wall, I contemplate why finally coming to the conclusion that the secrets I tried to keep—so poorly hidden, they may as well have been spoken aloud—were in danger of coming to light here. Closing my eyes briefly, I can hear the roughness of Jed and Maris’s father’s voice as his hand clasped the back of my neck when he dragged me away from the others.
“Figure out your shit, Nick. Once you do, come back and look at my daughter with eyes that actually see her. Then maybe I’ll let you get near her with that expression on your face.” Jed’s ghost isn’t the only one who haunts me. Albert Smith was a man who took no crap from anyone. He built Smith’s Brewhouse from a simple watering hole for fishermen to a year-round moneymaker which his children carried on. Years later, when the man himself called to congratulate me on winning the belt, I reached out to Jed, who was holed up with Maris—somewhere. “I just took out Troy Martinez for the belt. So, tell me why I’m shaking because your father just called?”
Jed just laughed as he hung up in my ear.
Smiling to myself now, I know Albert Smith wasn’t just a good man; he was a great one. Despite my initial wariness around him, he taught me a lot about managing a business that I put into practice today—the importance of always keeping your fingers in the pie, of understanding important decisions, and above all, “The hardest part about owning a business is trusting people. Me and Vi can’t tell you how many times we’ve been burned.”
An incandescent fury rose inside my twenty-year-old self. “Then why continue to do it, Mr. Smith? Why not hire a manager?”
He turned eyes—Maris’s eyes—on me and frowned, not in anger but thoughtfully. “No matter what happens, there are things that are going to hurt in life, Nick. But cutting yourself off from people, that just leaves your soul empty.”
My brows drew together, not really understanding the bad side. He chuckled. “One day you’ll understand, Nick. Now, why don’t you go over and talk to those kids your age.” Then he shook his meaty finger at me. “But…”
I held up both hands. “I know. I know. No flirting with Maris.”
“You, I trust to listen. It’s my damn daughter who’s as wild as the wind and is growing up to be more beautiful than I can handle.” His tone was so aggrieved, I actually grinned.
When first Violet, then Albert, passed away, both Jed and Maris were torn apart at their loss. It was one of the few times I willingly came back to Alaska without having to be browbeat by my friends. Then again, how could I not? In a world where I was too used to people of authority who publicly outcried they wanted to help the abandoned child while behind their hands they whispered in undertones about my lack of control. What they didn’t understand was I was choking on my own voice. The Smiths did more than that. They became my surrogate parents years too late.
And then there was Maris. During those summers she somehow forced me to talk, she dug out my dreams. Then she did something worse—she listened.
I never told Maris about falling for her while she wore a polka-dot bikini and cutoffs as Jed held her and Kara in a headlock. Instead, I made some asinine comment and hit the closest convenience store for more liquor. Back then, being a brooding jackass around Maris was the only way I could prevent myself from doing something that would have destroyed us both and broken my promise to her father. Because it wasn’t her I couldn’t see with different eyes; it was myself.
And judging by the disappointment in Jed’s eyes every time I ignored his siste
r, he knew it.
Swearing I’d never return, I packed my bags and caught a ferry to Seattle. From there, it was easy to do the research I needed to get into the Extreme MMA Championship, the world-renowned mixed martial arts organization. Their training and recruiting center—located outside Las Vegas, Nevada—was as different from my life in Alaska as my childhood was from Jed and Maris’s slice of perfection.
In other words, it was perfect.
I don’t have time to recall the memories of my early days in Vegas because a strong hand clamps down on my shoulder. I whirl around, dropping instinctively into a fighting stance, before my whole body relaxes. Then I surge up and clap Brad in a one-arm hug. “Used to be once a year was enough to see your ugly mug,” I joke.
“I was thinking the same thing. Welcome home, brother. It’s good to have you back.”
My insides twitch at the words. This place will never be my home.
Brad just continues. “How was the ferry? Weather’s getting choppy.” He nods toward the boat I just left.
“Not too bad. Not like that trip I took from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen.” I shudder in remembrance.
“If I recall, you called me drunk off your ass about two hours after you got off the boat,”
“I figured I booted enough in the boat ride I deserved to have the hangover to accompany it.” We both laugh as we make our way out of the terminal.
“How’s life down in New Mexico? Are you still dating Roxy? I think she’s the last woman I remember you talking about.”
I cringe. That’s the woman I was involved with before Jed died. “No.”
“Maybe it was Misty?”
“That was like five, six years ago.”
Brad shakes his head. “Then you’re just hanging loose?”
Instead of explaining to him I haven’t been with anyone since I found out Jed died when the explanation about that belongs to exactly two people, I make a vague sound of acknowledgment.
Return by Sea (Glacier Adventure Series Book 3) Page 7