Page 31

S ilence followed Papa’s statement, giving the impression that it echoed faintly through the room, though it was likely all in my head.

“Forgive Brien?” I repeated to clarify.

“You are not deaf, child. You heard me,” Papa groused, folding his arms.

“Ah,” Eli cut in with a nervous voice. “I think I just heard someone calling my name from up front. I better go, uh—go.”

Eli couldn’t hightail it out of the kitchen fast enough.

“Papa!”

“Don’t you ‘Papa’ me, young lady. I’m not the one acting like a—like a—” He couldn’t think of the word in English, so he said it in Russian. “ Like a spoiled brat.”

I ducked my head and studied my scuffed shoes, which were now a dark umber color with all the grime hiding the once bright orange. “Papa, it’s not that simple.”

“Incorrect. It is that simple. What could he have done that was so awful to erase sixteen years of friendship?”

“Why do you care?” I challenged. “I thought you said no boys until I was forty?”

“Brien’s different, and you know it. Besides, your mother would have my head if I didn’t press you on this.”

“Fine. You’ve fulfilled your obligation. Consider yourself off the hook with Mama.” With that, I spun on my heel to retrieve another load of supplies from his truck.

Tears stung my eyes, making the boxes waver in front of me. I swiped at them angrily, frustrated that Brien could still get to me so easily. I thought I’d gotten past this. With a tired sigh and sagging shoulders, I turned and propped my hip against the worn tailgate.

Through the opening of the alley, I could see far out into the distance. Stillwind was rather high up in the Rockies in a small fishbowl valley wedged between two of the larger ranges in the area, and with the right angle, theoretically, one could see for miles. Since Stillwind was surrounded on most sides by sheer walls of rock, pine trees, and wilderness, we only had a view of the mountains.

But what a view it was.

Sweeping clumps of trees trailed up the snowy ridges like fingers, stretching to reach the beautiful snowy mountaintops that shone a blinding white when the sun hit them.

A cool breeze swept through the alley, and I bundled my jacket closer around me. Even though summer was fast approaching, a lot of the snow wouldn’t melt until well into the middle of the season.

That was the one thing I disliked about Stillwind. I loathed the cold with a passion. Anyone that had gone through what I had would probably feel the same, and up in these mountains, the frigid air lingered like a constant presence. Even with the limited weeks of balmy weather, the chill was never far, sometimes creeping in overnight and frosting the grass just to remind us that it would soon return in full force.

The back door opened as footsteps approached.

I kept my gaze in the distance, already knowing by the heavy, lumbering tread who it was.

His stare bored into the side of my face before he sighed. The truck lowered as he settled his enormous frame beside me and stared off in the same direction.

“ Sashka ,” he grumbled. “Look, I just want what’s best for you. You and Brien were thick as thieves throughout school, despite my dislike of your best friend being a boy. I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

“I don’t have any regrets,” I denied immediately.

“Liar.” He rubbed a hand over his face, much like I had before. Despite not being related by blood, I’d been with both of my parents my whole life and had picked up their mannerisms. “You know, Sashka , your mother and I won’t be around forever, and a boat stands firmer with two anchors. You need companionship.”

I eyed him. “Are you already pulling out your Russian words of wisdom this early in the afternoon?”

“Don’t change the subject, little lion.”

I fought back a grin. “Okay, fine. But two can play that game.”

“I do not know to which game you are referring.”

“Uh-huh. So if I said, ‘What fell off the cart is as good as gone,’ you would have no idea what I was talking about?”

He grunted with displeasure before a smile stole across his features. “I am pleased you remember that, but I used that one to get you to stop crying over your stuffed turtle, not to use it later to talk about people.”

“Mr. Shell,” I supplied.

“Mr. Shell. Ah, of course. How could I forget? You carried that thing around until he was missing an eye and a leg. It was ridiculous.”

“You know, Brien claimed he saw you stuffing Mr. Shell in the recycling bin before school one morning. Is that true?” I stared at him with rounded eyes and an innocent expression.

His brows furrowed as he caught my gaze. “Now, now. Don’t go giving me that face with your bright blue eyes.” He slapped his thighs and got to his feet in a hurry. “You know, maybe you are right to hold a grudge against this Brien. He seems like the bad sort.”

My jaw dropped as I watched him evasively busy himself with stacking the remaining boxes. “Oh my God.”

He continued to haul the supplies into a pile, avoiding my gaze. “What?” he grumbled.

“You.”

“Me what, Sasha Li? You’re going to have to elaborate more. I know your mother has gotten onto you about this before—”

“All those years, I denied it,” I whispered to myself as if my world crumbled around me. “Brien was so adamant that he’d seen you, but I told him that my papa would never do something so…” I trailed off, shaking my head in disgust as I sought a word dark enough to describe the awful deed. “So heinous .”

He huffed, realizing that I’d been teasing him. “Do not be so dramatic, daughter. It is not becoming.”

I smirked. “I disagree. You were so nervous. I only ever see you that timid around Mama.”

“Well, it’s been hanging over my head for years! It was so ridiculous. I am a strong, Russian man, and I felt like I’d committed murder. You moped and cried for weeks over that stupid stuffed turtle. I wanted to beat up anything that would dare upset you, only that time, it was me. I’ve been very conflicted for a long time.”

I couldn’t hold back the peals of laughter any longer. The thought of my dad, Ruslan Popov, the town intimidator, broken up over a dingy stuffed animal… it cracked me up. “Oh, Papa,” I cried through my laughs.

He folded his arms. “I’m glad you find this amusing.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t laugh—” Another bout of giggles interrupted that statement before I could finish it, drawing a scowl from my father. “It’s just, oh my, all these years? You’ve carried this around all these years?”

He picked up the larger stack of boxes, and I hurried to catch up to him while hefting the smaller pile.

“Papa, I forgive you. You were right to do what you did. It was just a stuffed animal, and it was getting a little creepy.”

“Only a little? You had begun to set a place for him at the dinner table every night. I swear the thing started following my movements with its beady black eyes, like there could only be one man in your life, and it didn’t intend for it to be me.”

I bit back a laugh at his exaggerated shiver. And he’d called me dramatic? “Yeah, let’s not bring up the past. We both made mistakes. The important thing is that we learned from them and moved on.”

With an almighty heave, I unloaded the last of the boxes onto the counter. A frown crossed my features as I studied the piles of boxes needing to be unpacked. I’d held off on the supply run too long. It’d take both Eli and me the better part of the second shift to put all of it away between customers’ orders. Speaking of, I noticed the big chef was still making himself scarce, the coward.

Papa’s phone rang, piercing the relaxed ambiance of townspeople enjoying a meal in the front of the café. He pulled it out with a frown, answering, “Hello?”

I read his features, and my concern mounted. I recognized that ringtone, and it wasn’t for his tree care business.

After a brief conversation with the person on the other end of the line, he hung up.

“Was that Hannover?” I blurted, unable to hold back my curiosity any longer.

He nodded, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the phone. “It was.”

“Another fire?” I guessed.

“Yeah, but you’re not going to believe where it was this time.” He met my eyes. “It was at the abandoned mill factory way up on Pine Road.”

I tilted my head. “I don’t get it. No one goes up that far because the road is dangerous. If the other fires were by the negligence of the house owners like the reports claimed, then what would cause this one?”

“We’re not sure. It’s not the right season for all these fires. We’ve never had so many before.” He dusted his hands off. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I should go. He’s calling in all of the oldest volunteers with the most experience this time. He must want to get to the bottom of these strange fires as well.”

“Do you think he’ll need my help?”

He waved me off. “I doubt it. There are at least ten volunteers with more experience than you that he’ll call first. Besides, he knew I was going to be helping you out this morning, so if he thought he’d needed you, he would have asked me to pass along the message. Try not to worry about it. You just run your café and make us proud.”

I followed him back out to the alley and up to the driver’s door of his truck.

He hopped in, making the thing squat and shake on its squeaky suspension. He cranked his window down and leaned out to kiss my cheek. “Before I forget, remember that we’re having that big family dinner next week.”

I plastered a smile on my face, feeling my heart race in my chest. “How could I forget? Mom’s only been texting me every other day about it. I’ll be there.”

He nodded.

I studied his features, wondering if this would be the last time I saw him. Those thoughts always crossed my mind when he got called in for an active fire.

He’ll be fine, I reassured myself.

Papa slapped the side of his door before he backed out of the alley. His faded red truck bounced along the narrow path with more potholes than pavement. As he turned and disappeared from view, a settled dropped on my shoulders.

I’d thought that becoming a volunteer firefighter myself would make it easier to watch him drive off toward danger, but it didn’t. In fact, it only made it more difficult because I knew about the risks he faced each time he suited up firsthand.

I bit my lip.

Stillwind was such a small town and so far from the beaten path. We didn’t have many incidents around here, though we kept an extensive supply of people trained in case we ever had a forest fire. The majority of our calls consisted of people having a momentary lapse of intelligence. One of the guys had shared a story where he’d been called to a woman’s house because her lamp was making a weird buzzing sound even after she turned it off. After ruling out the light fixture, the guy had checked the bedside table it was perched on. Apparently, one of the woman’s adult toys had turned itself on inside the drawer and caused all the worry.

Other than helping out on car accidents, most of our calls were nonemergency stuff like that.

It was strange that we were suddenly having so many fires crop up within the last three months. In my ten years as a volunteer, I’d gained the most hands-on experience this year alone.

Hannover was right to call in his most senior volunteers for this. Whatever was happening in Stillwind, it wasn’t normal. Something had to be causing such a drastic jump in occurrences.

Luckily, the mill, despite being abandoned, should be easy to handle. When the engineers had designed its layout, they’d taken into account what a fire hazard it would be and had gone to great lengths to clear the forest away from the factory.

Even with the long travel time up such a dangerous, winding road, they would have a good chance of stopping the fire before it reached the tree line, and even if it did reach the woods, melting snow would slow the spread.

Please, please let Papa be okay, I thought.

At least, I thought I thought it until Mrs. Edgar, who owned the hair salon that butted up with the alley behind the café, peeked her head out of her open door and fixed a frown on me.

“Sasha Li, are you talking to yourself again, girl?”

I cleared my throat and straightened. Years of getting shooed off her sidewalk as a troublesome child drew the automatic reflex from within me. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“And don’t call me ma’am. Ma’am is for old people. You tryin’ ta say I’m old, Sasha Li?”

If Mrs. Edgar was implying that she wasn’t, then someone was living with a serious case of denial. Mrs. Edgar had white hair when I was a kid. Did she think the aging process had reversed itself since then?

Dutifully, I replied, “No, Mrs. Edgar.”

She sniffed in satisfaction. “That’s right. Now go on back to work, child. I don’t know how you keep that place runnin’ with all the gallivantin’ that you do all over Stillwind.”

“Yes, m—Mrs. Edgar.” I hightailed it into the kitchen before she could reprimand me for something else.

Inside, Eli had returned to the griddle, and he was whistling a jaunty tune while he flipped and scraped food like his spatula was an extension of his body.

“Done hiding, I see,” I commented as I passed him.

He flashed me a sheepish grin, looking wholly unapologetic. To be honest, I would have skipped out, too, if I hadn’t been the one being scolded.

I just shook my head at him before calling over my shoulder, “I’m going to let Kara have a break, then I’ll be back to help put away the food.”

“Sounds like a plan, boss.”

“So glad you remembered that fact,” I grumbled good-naturedly as I passed through the revolving door.

Outside, the dining area of the café had several dark maroon booths and pine wood furniture stained and sealed in an amber color. Pictures of locals and Stillwind events hung on the walls, since the business catered to them ninety percent of the time. For the remaining ten percent, if a tourist happened to stumble across our humble little town seeking food, well then, the café was the only eatery around, so they could like or at least tolerate the décor or starve.

It was a win-win situation.

Everywhere I looked, there was pine—roughhewn pine logs for the walls, pine planks on the floor, pine trim and finishing, and the counter, constructed completely from pine planks courtesy of my dad.

“Stillwind, my ass,” a feminine voice complained as they barged through the outer doors. “Should have named it Stillwindy.”

In surprise, I glanced up to see Kara, my waitress, returning with her short black hair in a messy do. It didn’t take long to figure out what had soured her mood in the short time I’d been gone picking up supplies with Papa.

“I like the windswept look,” I teased.

She shot me a frown and furiously set about combing her locks into a more docile style—not that she was a docile person. She bumped the half-door open with her hip to join me behind the counter. “Remind me again why I moved here?”

I helped her tame a few locks that had refused to lie flat. “Because it was close to the college you got accepted to and pretty enough to let your inner art muse soar,” I quoted verbatim.

She sighed as she washed her hands and filled a drink order. “Mentioned it once or twice, have I?”

“Yep. What were you doing outside?”

She huffed, getting all worked up again. “The wind blew over the trashcan on the sidewalk, and I wanted to get it picked up before the dang litter scattered everywhere. Pesky wind. Pfft. Stillwind.” She broke off on another tangent about inappropriately named towns as she left to deliver the order of drinks.

I glanced around, froze, and attempted to furtively run my eyes over Brien, who was in the same booth he always sat at during lunch with his friends or coworkers, or whatever the heck he wanted to call them.

“They’re an odd bunch, aren’t they?” Kara remarked from beside me, startling me into a jump. I hadn’t heard her return.

“What?” I gasped, my hand over my racing heart, terrified I’d been caught.

Kara nodded in the direction I’d been staring. “Those three. I mean, they come in every day at the same time. One of them gives you moony eyes, the mean redhead shoots angry looks your way when he thinks Moony Eyes isn’t watching, and the big guy might be descended from Bigfoot— the actual Bigfoot. He’s like, six and a half feet tall. Although with that long blond hair and beard, maybe he’s more Viking god than hairy beast.”

“Kara,” I scolded in a hush, hoping she’d lower her voice. She had one setting much like Eli, and that was to be heard.

I didn’t dare look at the table to see if the guys in question had overheard her or not.

“Sasha,” she mimicked in the same tone. “What? It’s true.”

I rolled my eyes as I glanced over the open orders she’d written down on a paper pad boasting Stillwind’s only café. “Just, keep your voice down.”

She hunched over, propping her elbows on the counter as if to confide a secret, though her voice didn’t lower any. “Come on.”

“Come on what?”

“You know. Spill the deets! You promised you would.”

I busied myself with the register. “Did I?”

“Sasha Li Really-Long-Last-Name!”

“It’s Ruslanova Popova. And only Popova is my last name. The other is my patryn—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that story before. I want to hear the dirt behind all this tension.”

“What tension?”

“All the tension between you and those three hunks in the corner booth.”

I scowled. “Don’t you have some tables to take care of?”

She waved it off. “It’s just Mrs. Boyce and her ‘friend.’ Like we’re stupid enough to believe she’s not going out on Mr. Boyce. They can wait.” She poked me in the side. “Spill.”

“No.”

“Come on,” she whined.

“No.”

“Please?”

“Yeah, still no.” I caught movement in my peripheral vision, and I noticed Brien make eye contact with me and raise his hand. He still hadn’t ordered? And he thought I’d be the one to handle it?

Suspicion settled over me, pulling my eyes down into a narrowed squint.

He hadn’t been waiting for me, had he?

It was odd that their designated lunchtime usually fell on Kara’s lunch break. If Eli hadn’t chased me out of the café because we were out of hamburger buns, Kara wouldn’t have even been here. Normally, I could talk Eli into covering their table, but after letting his precious supplies run out, I’d bet he would have just laughed in my face.

Thankful that Kara was still here, I nodded in their direction. “They look like they’re ready to order now. Better go check on them and see what they want.”

She heaved a sigh. “Let me save myself a trip. I don’t need to be a menu or a mind reader to know what he wants. Darkly handsome Moony Eyes wants you. I’m not sure about the redhead. I mean, it looks like hatred, but there’s a fine line. Am I right? I’m betting there is something more than anger that he’s holding for you. As for the Viking god? Well, I’m hoping he craves a little somethin’ somethin’ off my menu.” She elbowed me and waggled her eyebrows. “You know what I mean?”

Startled at the accuracy of her assessment and thrown off guard by her quick shift to the perverted, I stuttered, “I meant—just go handle them—I mean ‘it.’ Go handle it. Er, well, go handle… There’s no way to make that sound right with your state of mind, is there?”

She flashed me a salacious wink and sauntered off to take their order. Hopefully, that was all she took.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. It was already winding up to be a long day, and it was only—I glanced at the clock rimmed with antlers—two in the afternoon.

My mind drifted to my dad, hoping that everything would be okay with the fire. I sent a quick mental prayer for angels to watch over him and all the other volunteers of the Stillwind Fire Department.

We needed all the good thoughts we could get at the moment.

I hoped they figured out why all these fires kept happening before something worse got caught in the crossfire besides people’s homes.