Page 17

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As the afternoon wore on, a patch of bad weather moved in from the direction of the ice fields. The wind rattled the boards of The Fang and every time someone came through the door, a gust would bang it against the interior wall.

All flights in and out of Firelight Ridge were put on hold until the weather calmed down. Lila tried to hide her disappointment, but it was written all over her very expressive face. Bear knew she was counting on Molly bringing her actual information in the form of FBI reports.

To make it up to her, he agreed to drive her out to Paulina Volk’s place before The Fang opened the next morning. Paulina had limited cell service, so he couldn’t give her a heads up. But he happened to be on the very short list of people who were allowed to show up at her place unannounced—mostly because he went out there every month to bring her heart medication to her.

At eight the next morning, he pulled up outside the hardware store and honked lightly. The wind was still high. He watched it whip the treetops back and forth and spin up dust devils on the road. It buffeted his truck too, although his metal beast of a Ford F-250 was unfazed.

Lila had to struggle to open the passenger door, but managed to slip inside before it slammed shut. She wore a tight wool beanie, which was probably the only think keeping her hair in some kind of order. Her eyes shone with pure exhilaration.

“Whew! Don’t you love this weather? I hardly slept at all last night. It was like the wind was telling me a story and I didn’t want to miss anything.”

As he drove down the main road toward the eastern spur, Bear shook his head at that whimsy. Trust Lila to communicate with the damn wind. “Was it a story about how many trees got blown over onto people’s houses?”

She smiled but took his question seriously. “I think it was about lonely places deep in the mountains, places where we can never go.”

For some reason, that made him shiver. “It’s supposed to die down by the afternoon. Sam should be able to fly in by tonight or tomorrow.”

“That’s good.” She dug into her quilted tote bag and pulled out a Tupperware container filled with muffins. “When I couldn’t sleep, I decided to bake. Want a blueberry muffin? The blueberries came from that field by Smoky Lake you told me about.”

Little did she know, he’d given up one of his biggest secrets when she’d asked him about blueberry picking. Folks didn’t like to share that kind of intel.

“And don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone,” she added. “Not even Charlie or Ani or Molly. I brought Buttercup with me to warn me about bears, and also a can of bear spray. But—I think Nick might have figured it out. He really is a good investigator, isn’t he?”

Bear laughed at the image of the Chicago private eye investigating the best blueberry picking spots. “It’s okay. Plenty of blueberries for everyone.”

“Abundance mentality. I like that.”

He snorted. That sounded like a phrase right out of a self-help book. “It’s just a fact. No shortage of Vaccinium uliginosum around here.” He bit into the muffin and closed his eyes at the burst of flavor against his tongue.

When he opened them again, Lila was watching him curiously. “How did you know the Latin name for blueberries?”

“You pick up all kinds of things working at a bar. You know that. A lot of scientists come through this place.”

“How did you end up running a bar?”

Apparently Lila was in an inquisitive mood. “I told you. I bought it from Newt Delano when he retired.”

“That’s not really an answer. Why a bar? Why here? You weren’t born here. Why did you choose this place?”

“Jesus, Lila. It’s eight in the morning. Why the interrogation?”

“I’m a morning person,” she confessed. “It’s one of my most annoying qualities. I always wake up like this.”

“How did I not know this?”

“The Fang doesn’t even open until noon, that’s why. You’ve never encountered Morning Lila before.” She shone a radiant smile at him. “Sorry. I’ll try to tone it down.”

“No no,” he said quickly. The last thing he’d ever want her to do would be to diminish herself in any way. “Let me adjust, that’s all. My coffee Thermos is in the back. That’ll help.“

She reached into the back seat and rummaged around for the Thermos. She found two, because he’d brought one for her too. “Bear. You didn’t. Is it?”

“Mocha latte with sprinkles, yes,” he muttered.

“And you’re not even a morning person. I’m so touched.” She didn’t tone down her beaming smile at all, he was happy to see. “That’s pretty funny that you brought coffee and I brought muffins. No advance coordination, but it worked out perfectly.”

He just grunted. Just a coincidence that it had worked out that way. She unscrewed the cap of his Thermos and handed it to him.

They reached the edge of town, where he pointed out part of a smokestack that had blown off Gramps McGuire’s smokehouse. At the old boarding house, a woodpile tarp had come unfastened. The wind was whipping at it, working at the last remaining tiedown.

The town was going to have some cleanup in store. Nothing they hadn’t been through before. “Happens every fall. Like a wakeup call. It’s good, helps us get ready for winter.”

“Which brings me back to my original question. You didn’t grow up here, did you?” Lila asked as they turned onto the old logging road that would take them to Paulina’s place. “Now that you’ve had some coffee, maybe you can say?”

He shouldn’t be such a grump, he told himself. “I didn’t grow up here, no. But I’d been here before. My grandfather worked the mine back in the thirties. He was young, eighteen, a big strapping guy from Norway. He married an Ahtna woman who worked in the kitchens at the mining camp. They had a child, who was my mother. My mother had me when she was real young. Too young.”

He sure was talking a lot for someone who didn’t like to talk about himself. He cleared his throat, glancing at her to see if she was bored yet. She didn’t look bored, but rather, fascinated. “Anyway, just to say, I have a connection to this place. After the mine closed down, my grandfather was hired to help shut it down, and then he stayed as kind of a caretaker. My mother used to bring me to my Pop-Pop when she wanted to have some fun on her own. He taught me a lot about the woods, survival skills, that sort of thing.”

“Is he still here?”

“No, he died in a hunting accident when I was a teenager. But I remembered the fun times I had here. So when I was at a loose end, I came back with my camping gear and a fishing rod. I planned to spend some time in the woods. Maybe catch a few fish. I stopped at The Fang for a quick beer and ended up talking to Newt for hours. He knew my grandfather. It meant a lot to me. At the end of the night—after a lot more than one beer—he offered me a screaming deal to take over the place. He said he’d been waiting for the right guy to come along, and he knew it was me.”

He felt Lila’s fascinated gaze on him. “That sounds like destiny.”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe I was just the first sucker to show up and be interested. He made it real easy to buy, low monthly payments, no interest. He died two years later and left the whole thing to me. No strings. No more payments.”

“Wow. He really believed in you.”

Bear grunted. He didn’t often talk about these elders who had helped him. His grandfather, Newt Delano. The most kindness in his life had come from older people, which was one reason why he looked out for Firelight Ridge’s elders.

“Where does your mother live now?”

“She lives in Nome. She got married to a preacher and they seem happy together. I don’t see them much, but whenever she texts, she sounds good.” He didn’t mention that her new husband didn’t like having him around, a reminder of her previous relationship.

“And your father?” Lila asked, right on cue.

“Got me.” Did he sound like he didn’t care? Maybe once he had. Not anymore.

“You don’t know him?” she asked softly.

“Nope. Mom told me he was a college student spending the summer at a guiding outfit on the Yukon. Another time she said he was a carpenter building a lodge in Denali. My birth certificate doesn’t say one way or another. I figure whoever it was, he was a big guy. My mom’s a normal human size.”

“You’re a normal human size. You’re just on the large end of the scale.”

He glanced over at her, amused by how quickly she jumped to his defense. “When I was a kid, my grandfather used to read me bedtime stories about giants. I wondered if my mother ran into one of those and I was the result.”

Lila’s eyes went wide and she let out an excited gasp. “That’s just like me.”

“Your father’s a giant too?”

“No, I always had this idea that someone—an elf, a fairy—had switched me with the real baby my parents were supposed to have. Like a changeling. You know those stories?”

He did not. “My gramps only read stories about giants.”

She laughed. “It’s a fairy story, but fairies aren’t always good, you know. These fairies steal human babies and leave changelings in their place. Changelings look like real babies but they’re not, they’re supernatural, the offspring of fairies or elves. And in some stories, they’re actually deformed.”

That sounded more like a horror story than a fairy story to him. “What made you think you were something like that?”

“Actually, the idea came from my mother. She called me a changeling because I was so different from other babies. I hardly ever cried and would just stare really hard at everything. Everyone thought I was a very strange child, especially when I started talking. Apparently I would hold whole conversations with dust motes or a bee buzzing at the window. I would talk to people who weren’t there. I was…it was a lot for my mother. She struggled with depression and I’m sure I made it worse. She’d hole up in her room for days. That was super-hard on my father. He’d be so focused on her that he didn’t pay much attention to me. Which was better, in a way, because at least I didn’t freak him out.”

Catching herself, she snapped her mouth shut, then covered it with her hand. “Wait, we were talking about you, not me.”

“No, I like this better.” He grinned at her. “I like hearing you talk. Even if you’re conversing with a dust mote.”

“Well, thanks…” She wrinkled her nose. “But the honest truth is, life got easier for my mother after I left.”

He heard the wistfulness in her voice, and set a hand on her knee as comfort. She covered it with her much smaller, softer hand.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “You don’t have to worry about me. I came to terms with all of that a long time ago. When I go home, I stay no more than two nights. Less stress for my mom. I know she loves me, but life is hard for her.” Lila gestured at the road up ahead, where a sloping curve revealed a glimpse of Ice Falls looking like a tumble of crystals frozen for eternity. “Did we pass Paulina’s house?”

“Shit.” He’d been so wrapped up in Lila’s story that he’d missed Paulina’s driveway. Pretty impressive, considering it was marked with a metal sculpture of several leaping salmon.

He performed a three-point turn in the middle of the road.

That was when he realized why he’d missed her road. The sculpture was upended, lying on its side, as if the salmon were no longer leaping, but gasping for breath in the alien air.

It would take a lot to knock over something so heavy. Had the wind been that strong out here? Or had something else happened?

Bear jerked the truck to a stop and leaped out.