Page 9

Brittany

I ’m not sure what I expected from childbirth, but what happened wasn’t it. It was more painful than I expected, and my body looks like I’ve been put through the wringer. Even now, almost three months later. For the first month or so my body was still full of aches, and any kind of movement reminded me that I had recently given birth. Nowadays, I’m getting that spring back in my step finally. I’m in awe that I managed to make another person and that she’s absolutely adorable.

The midwife assured me that my body will snap back to its original form, more or less. At first, I didn’t believe her, but now I’ve turned into a believer. I’m fully healed down below, which I didn’t think would ever happen. I’m jogging, cutting wood, and doing all the things I need to in order to survive in the wilderness. Although I’m not thrilled about it, I guess I can live with the physical changes, because my daughter was worth it. She’s the most precious thing in the world to me.

I remember the pastor talking about the miracle of birth in his sermons. As a teen, I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. I happily tuned him out in favor of whispering to my friends. It seems like ages ago, but in reality, it’s only been around six years, give or take a few months, since I ran away from all things Mormon. I rejected my parents, the marriage they wanted for me, and every single thing I thought I loved. There is still a dull ache in my chest when I think of all that I’ve lost. Of course, no amount of heartache is enough to make me go running back to my toxic family, much less the horribly controlling man my father presented as a marriage match. I can’t imagine being sealed for life to someone twice my age, particularly Silas Harper.

When my baby coos, it draws me away from my internal thoughts. I named her Victoria, after my maternal grandmother, who ran away from the church, like me. It was a mark of shame for my mother’s family, one that made it difficult for her to find a husband back in the day. The shame of having a mother who ran off was the defining feature of my mother’s childhood, which caused her to become hyper-religious and unbearably strict with her own children. That, in turn, was one of the things that pushed me away from the church. Thinking back on it, I might have run, even if it weren’t for the pressure to marry Silas Harper.

Looking down at little Victoria, I realize she looks like a mini version of me. There isn’t much of Tusk to be found in her lovely face. She has my light colored hair and eyes and pale skin tone.

Victoria sleeps an awful lot. The midwife says that’s normal for a baby and extends into the first three or four months, then they start becoming more active. I don’t mind if she sleeps a lot, whatever it takes to keep her happy and healthy is all that matters. Holding her is my new favorite thing.

Cuddling her against my chest, I can hardly believe how quiet she is. She’s absolutely perfect. With her ten little fingers and ten little toes and the way her arms sometimes flail about like she’s trying to catch herself from a fall, she’s so cute. She’s already started reaching for things and has yanked my hair a time or two. At first her fingers are always curled into tight little fists. I would sometimes put my finger in her hand to test her grasp reflex, amazed at how strong it was for such a tiny baby. Now she makes a grab for whatever passes through her line of vision. Her yawns and little baby kicks are even adorable. My Victoria is everything I always thought a baby should be—only better.

Although all she does right now is sleep, eat, poop and look for things to grab, I can’t stop cuddling her and looking at her adorable little ears or touching her baby-soft hair. Whoever thought a woman like me could make such a perfect child?

When she begins to fuss, I know what she wants. Since she’s clean and it’s been a couple of hours since she’s eaten, she wants to be fed. Before I can get my shirt open, someone knocks at the door. I get up and answer it, careful to wrap Victoria up snugly so she’s not exposed to the cold Alaskan winter air when I open the door.

I never let down my guard, even for a second. When it comes to who is on the other side of the door, there are only three real possibilities. It could be the midwife coming to check on us, it could be Clara and Tex, who are due to arrive today, or someone from my old life come to haul me back to the life I ran from six years ago. I jump onto my tiptoes to look through the peephole, hoping it’s not someone from my past.

I smile and answer the door, ushering in Clara and Tex. Of course, they have twins now. They’re wrapped tight in their daddy’s arms, a girl and a boy with wide, curious brown eyes like their father. Clara rushes them in and shuts the door. They’re all bundled up in parkas, which they clearly bought especially for the trip.

“Welcome to Alaska,” I tell them. “Come in and sit by the fire.”

Clara gushes, “Your cabin is amazing. You even have a fireplace.”

I chuckle and pad my way back over to the recliner. “I think most of the cabins in Alaska probably have fireplaces, at least in this area. Someone told me Alaska has one hundred twenty million acres of forests. Kids grow up learning to cut wood. I saw a kid using a chainsaw one day. They were wearing safety gear and had adult supervision, but it still took me by surprise.”

Tex speaks up, “And here I was thinkin’ that Alaska was a tundra, and wood was scarce.”

“Yes, there’s the Arctic tundra on the North Slope, Bering Strait, and Aleutian Islands. My midwife is a Native American from the interior who married an Aleut from the north. She said she noticed all the women cooked with large, ornamental wooden spoons. They gifted her with one, and she asked where they got the wood from only to find out it was made from a walrus penis bone.”

Tex and Clara were quiet for a moment before they burst out laughing.

I raise one hand and tell them, “My hand to God, that’s a true story.”

Suddenly, they aren’t laughing anymore. Instead, they are staring at me with puzzled expressions. I suppose the club girl they knew wouldn’t have used that expression. When Victoria begins to fuss, I lay one of her small blankets over my shoulder and discreetly open my shirt so she can nurse.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll make you a fresh pot of coffee.”

Clara jumps to her feet. “Let me take care of that for you.”

She’s gone before I can object. Tex busies himself taking off the twins’ parkas, gloves, and hats. They’re both adorable toddlers. The whole family is wearing gray parkas with matching gloves and hats.

An uncomfortable silence spins out between us. I’d asked Clara not to tell Tex about Victoria being Tusk’s baby, but by the look on his face I wonder if she told him I have a baby at all. While Victoria is nursing, I try and make light conversation, “I’ve just got the one, I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Clara with the twins.”

Steven is sitting on the floor playing with a toss cushion, while his sister, Stephanie, leans against Tex, with one hand grasping his shirt and the other curled against her chest. I am just noticing something odd about the turn of her hand when Tex mutters, “We’re fixin’ to get that taken care of when she’s older.”

I can hear Clara speak from the kitchen. “Tex, don’t be that way. You know Brittany isn’t mean about things like that.”

His lips press into a firm line. Clara comes back and sits down, pulling off her parka as well. Her hand drifts to the side to rest on Tex’s leg. “Stephanie was born with a congenital issue, something to do with how she was positioned in the womb. The ligaments in her wrist are constricted and she’s scheduled for surgery in the spring. One of the mothers at daycare said something about it, and he’s worried she’ll get a complex. Even though she’s too young to notice anything like that.”

“She said my daughter had a deformity,” Tex says, his accent heavy as he spits the words out. “Like it made her less than. We just want what’s best for her, but the docs say they can release the ligaments and she’ll be crawling just as good as her brother.”

“Well, I can’t imagine any of the brothers or their old ladies saying anything bad about her. Some people just don’t know when to stay quiet. And doctors can fix anything these days. They make even difficult surgeries look easy. I’m sure your daughter’s surgery will be a success.”

Tex asks, “Tell me a little somethin’. If you’re such a big fan of modern medicine, why did you go and get yourself a midwife?”

I laugh, I forgot that Tex is the bluntest person I’ve ever spoken to in my entire life.

Clara shoots her husband an annoyed look. “What he means to ask is if midwives are more common in this state, or if hospitals are not conveniently located.”

I shrug and move the baby to my other breast to nurse. Deciding to just be honest instead of inventing another lie, I tell them, “Maybe it’s the Mormon in me. I’m just going with what I know.”

Clara’s eyes fly open. “You’re a Mormon?” If Clara looked shocked, Tex was doubly so.

I motion around my cozy living room with one hand. “Do you see any sister wives around here?”

Clara’s expression turns bewildered. “So, you’re not Mormon?”

Sighing, I launch into an explanation, hoping to get it out of the way as soon as possible. “I grew up Mormon. There are different sects of Mormonism. Unfortunately, my family came from a fundamentalist Mormon sect. More often than not, they used midwives.”

A short silence follows while I adjust my clothing and put my daughter on my shoulder to burp her.

I know the hard questions are coming and steel myself for them. Tex is first, “How the fuck did you go from being a fundamentalist Mormon to being a club girl for a damn biker club?”

Clara visibly cringes at his question. I look him in the eye and shoot back, “For a guy who doesn’t like the idea of people being rude to his family, you sure feel comfortable being rude to me. Want to talk about why that is?”

Clara tries to smooth things over. “What he meant to say was—”

I cut her off before she can even get started. I might have tried to reinvent myself here, but I’m still the same outspoken Brittany underneath the new mom clothes.

Gesturing from one to the other of them, I tell her, “I don’t know what kind of song and dance the two of you are playing with me, but Tex is a grown ass man. He has the capacity to be polite. I’ve watched him be polite to his club brothers since he came to the Savage Legion. So, you don’t need to keep backtracking on everything he says. If he really feels the need to be rude to me, nothing you can do will make that okay for me.”

Tex interjects, moderating his volume and tone, “I wasn’t tryin’ to be rude to you, darlin’. I’m just shocked shitless and you gotta know how strange that sounds.” He glances away and adds, “Truth be told, I feel kinda like you lied to us.”

“Let’s be honest, when was the last time you asked a club girl anything about herself? No one ever asked me anything about my background. Club girls are there to entertain the brothers. I came to the Savage Legion with zero sexual experience and traded the only thing I had to offer for a chance to stay off the grid. The Legion gave me a place to live, food to eat, and took care of all my material needs. I didn’t want my family to track me down, and I wanted to experience worldly things. The brothers were more than generous in giving me worldly experiences. It was a win-win situation.”

I can see the little wheels turning in his head. “Is that why you were always so damn extra?”

I have to smile at his polite turn of phrase. “Yeah, sex was always a pleasant exchange, but the brothers liked the drama, you can say what you like, but I know they like the club girls fighting over them.” He opens his mouth to object, but I speak first. “Now, I know not all the brothers are like that, but most of them secretly love it.”

Tex closes his mouth. Then Clara states quietly, “You could have gotten off the radar any number of ways. You could have taken a job as a nanny, taught English overseas, or done any number of things. Why did you choose to become a club girl, to trade sexual favors for protection?”

I’m kind of shocked that my friend’s come out and said that. I never thought of Clara as judging me, but then I think again. I guess I never told her about my past, so she has every right to be shocked. Instead of tearing her a new asshole, I say, “Do you really want to know the answer to that question?”

She nods, so I tell her. “It was the quickest, easiest way to sully myself to the point that Silas Harper wouldn’t want to go through with the marriage my father tried to pressure me into. I’d be lying if I tried to convince you that having sex with the brothers was a sacrifice. It wasn’t, I enjoyed it. I was young, naive, and craved all the things that had been denied to me. That’s why I chose to stay with the Savage Legion.”

Tex practically growls, “Go back to the part about your old man trying to force you into marriage. ‘Cause it damn sure sounds like some dumb fucker need an ass kicking for doing shit like that to teen.”

I tell him, “Even in our strict Mormon sect, my father wasn’t allowed to marry me off against my will. Our sect was fundamentalist, but not one of those weird ones that did illegal things.”

“You said something about sister wives earlier,” Clara points out.

“Yeah, some of the men had more than one partner, so I guess we were one of those weird sects after all. Very few had more than one wife, and they weren’t legally married to them because it’s against the law. They used the term sealing, which meant they married in the eyes of God. Anyway, my father made some kind of arrangement with Silas Harper, and it involved me being sealed to him. He didn’t have a wife. Maybe he never married, or she ran off or died. I never knew why. All I knew was that he was twice my age and had the sourest personality of anyone I ever met.”

Clara just shakes her head. “So much about you as a club girl makes sense now.”

“Well, that part of my life is over. I’m a mom now.” Pausing to catch my breath, I add, “You two are the only ones I’ve ever told my story to.”

Tex frowns, “Not even Tusk?”

“He never asked. He told me all about his own past but never asked about mine.”

He glances away. I can see that he’s struggling to deal with his friend being selfish. He murmurs, “Tusk might be a damn fool sometimes, but has a right to know about his child.”

“She’s not his,” I say.

“Quit lying darlin’, I can do the math.” Stephanie starts wriggling, no doubt picking up on the tension in the room, and he pats his daughter on the head lovingly, until she settles again.

My head snaps up. “It’s cute that you think he would care. I know Clara said he hadn’t got back with his ex, and it was just a misunderstanding, but I wasn’t anything special to him. I was just a club girl keeping his bed warm until he found someone worthy of being his old lady. I doubt he’d make a trek all the way to Alaska to see me, much less Victoria. We all know the last thing he needs is to be hit with more child support. Can’t you respect my privacy and just leave well enough alone?”

Changing the subject, Clara asks, “Is that why you came all the way to Alaska?”

“Yeah, I didn’t want my family or Silas Harper finding me. My family would just harass me to come home or get other church members to put pressure on me. But Silas is different. He isn’t used to being told no. I think he’s still furious about me running away because he already had it in his mind that because the agreement was said and done, I belonged to him. He’s dirty and underhanded. I don’t trust him one little bit.”

“I would think that having another man’s baby would dissuade him from wanting to marry you after all this time,” Clara says reassuringly.

“I used to think along those lines. But the more I think about it, the more I can see him using my baby to control me. I don’t want her growing up in the church, and I definitely don’t want him having any kind of control over either of us.”

Tex hands off their daughter to Clara and lifts his son up on to the sofa. Then he leans forward in his seat. “Look, Britt, I get that you and Tusk have some shit to work out, but your gonna need to come back to the clubhouse where we can protect you, if what you say about this Harper guy is correct.”

“I already told you I’m not a club girl anymore. I’m a mother.”

A stubborn expression settles onto his face. “Look Brittany, you’re not just a club girl or a mom. You’re one of us. Hell, you’ve been with the Savage Legion longer than I have, I know we might have had our differences, but you’re good people. You’re one of us. Even if you don’t want Tusk in you and your daughter’s life, y’all need protectors.”

“Aw, that’s real sweet of you, Tex. But I prefer to stay right here, where I’m ninety-five percent sure they won’t find me. With any luck, my family has long forgotten about me, and Silas Harper has moved on to some other poor, unsuspecting woman.” After thinking for a second, I add, “Not that I would wish that man on anyone.”

“But how do you plan to survive out here without a way of supporting yourself? In order to work, you have to pay taxes, and that puts you back on the grid. If you or your daughter need health care, then you’re gonna have to get in the system. And that’s not even getting onto the subject of schooling. If it was just you living off grid, then I’d say go for it, but you can’t hide forever with your daughter.”

He’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. “To be honest, I haven’t worked that out yet. So far, I’ve been living off my savings and doing odd jobs. But my money is running out, and even if I manage to get a job, I don’t have childcare.”

Tex grabs my hand and holds it between both of his hands. “Y’all need to come back with us.”

“I can’t raise my daughter in the clubhouse. And if I’m not a club girl anymore, why would they let me stay?”

“Y’all can stay with Clara and me,” he offers quickly.” I can get you a job tending bar at the clubhouse. Siege can pay you under the table. There are lots of ways for you to earn your way without being a club girl and still stay off the radar.”

When I don’t immediately respond, Clara says in a shaky voice, “I’m terrified about leaving you here all by yourself, I hadn’t realized how remote you were. The weather here is brutal. Both doctors and daycares are too spread out for it to be feasible for you to make it on your own. Please come back with us, Brittany. If not for your sake, then for your child’s.”

Before I can answer, there’s the sound of squealing tires and glass smashing and a rock comes sailing through the window in the next room. Clara lets out a scream, startling her twins, and also Victoria, who starts to cry. I jump to my feet, my heart hammering in my chest as I look in the direction the noise came from.

Not again, this time they’re escalating.

“Stay there,” Tex barks as he rushes into the room. Ignoring him I run after him just in time to see the pick-up truck speeding away. When I look down, I notice the rock has a note wrapped around it. Tex squats down to pick it up.

Clara screeches, “What the hell was that all about? If that had hit the living room window , we could have been covered in glass.”

Tex stands up. “Clara, she didn’t even look surprised. This must not be the first time the locals have paid you a fucking visit.”

He struggles to take off multiple thick rubber bands from the baseball-sized rock and hands me the note. I say, “The teenagers here have been playing practical jokes. This is the first time they’ve done any real damage.”

“You buried the lead, Britt. Ya should have started the conversation by telling us about this when we first walked through the door.”

I turn over the piece of paper in my free hand, my other supporting my daughter. When I read it, my knees start to buckle. Within a few seconds, Clara is guiding me to the sofa.

“What does it say?”

“It basically says that I’m screwed.”

Clara’s trembling hand reaches out to take the sheet of paper from me, and she reads aloud the words scribbled carelessly across it. “Losing one’s life is better than losing one’s virtue.”

Dropping her hand, she crumples the note before pulling me to my feet. “What the hell is going on here? I thought you said it was teenagers pulling pranks—that doesn’t sound like something teenagers would say.”

No it doesn’t. Up until today I’d managed to convince myself that it was just kids playing pranks, but now I know they’ve found me. I look first to Tex and then to Clara and say, “At first, it was just strange stuff, like coming home to find things sitting on my porch. At first, I thought it was a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gesture because I found flowers, and a basket of fruit. Then things started to get weirder. I came home to find a rope hanging from my doorknob, and another day it was a bunch of white handkerchiefs neatly spaced out on my clothesline.”

“Wanna take a wild guess as to who’s telling you to surrender and what the consequences are gonna be if you don’t?” Tex’s voice is deadpan rather than disrespectful.

I close my eyes and tell them the worst of it. “Yesterday, when I went out to get firewood, an armful of my logs had been laid out to look like a stick figure with the axe splitting open what was supposed to be the head.”

He states grimly, “And since you still weren’t understanding the message, they sent you a direct written threat today.”

I swallow thickly, holding my baby close. “Yeah, I’ve been stupid for far too long. I always knew there was a chance they’d find me, but I thought I’d be safe here. I don’t think Siege is going to like me dragging back trouble of this magnitude. He’s got family to worry about too.”

Tex takes out his phone and dials Siege, who answers right away. He puts the call on speaker.

“How’s the second honeymoon going, brother?”

“We’re with Brittany. Her life’s in danger. What do you want to do?”

“Shit! That girl causing trouble in Alaska now?” Siege says. I’m a bit upset that he thinks of me in that way, as a troublemaker. But I guess when I was a club girl I was.

Surprisingly, it’s Tex who jumps to my defense, “No, it’s not Miss Brittany causing trouble this time. There’s a bunch we don’t know about her past, but long story short, she’s got fundamentalist crazies on her tail.”

Siege’s voice turns serious, “Bring her back to the clubhouse. I’ll call in the other club officers. We’ll sort it out like we always do.”

I speak up, trying to let him know how serious it is. “This man’s got power and money. He could raise an army of God-fearing men who believe whatever he does is right.”

Siege’s voice turns rueful. “Yeah, the syndicate thought they were the shit right up until we took every single one of them down. This is no different. Come home, Brittany. We’ll protect you, like we always have. We always protect our own.”

I am almost too choked up to speak, but I manage to get out, “Thank you, Siege. Can you do me a favor and not tell Tusk what’s happened? I want to talk to him myself.”

“I’ll consider that. No promises, though. He’s a brother, and my first loyalty is to him.”

I don’t like that answer very much, so I don’t mention the baby. I just murmur, “Okay, I suppose.”

The call ends, and Tex gives me an amused look. “Any other silly questions, Britt?”

My anxiety is off the charts, but I manage a wan smile. “I guess not.”

“Pack a bag. I want us on the first flight we can get back to California.”

I open my mouth to object, but he cuts me off. “I don’t wanna hear about how that puts you on their radar. You’re already on their damn radar or else they wouldn’t be sending you threatening messages. We’re gonna need to move double-quick to stay ahead of them until I can get some reinforcements in place.”

Clara takes out her phone and starts looking for tickets. I put Victoria down in her bassinet and head back to pack our clothing. I hear Clara’s voice when she speaks because my cabin is small, and sound carries.

“Tex, babe, you’re not going to like this. The next commercial flight to California is in three days.”

“Three days?” he growls. “That can’t be right.”

“It’s true, babe. There are incoming flights every day. Outgoing flights are much less frequent. I don’t know why.”

“Dammit! Okay get us two suites in town. A large hotel will be a lot more defensible than a tiny, isolated cabin in the wilderness.”

I roll my eyes. My cabin isn’t in the wilderness exactly. Tex is being a bit melodramatic, in my opinion. But what happens next blows my mind. Tex gets on his phone, and I can hear him say, “It’s so much worse than we anticipated, Tusk. Get your ass here right away.”

I can’t hear Tusk’s reply all the way in the bedroom, but Tex replies, “Thirty minutes will be fine. I’ll hold down the fort until you get here.”

I sit down on the bed, and before I realize it, tears are streaming down my face. I’ve been betrayed. They brought Tusk with them. Then Clara explodes on her husband. “You invited him to come as well? How could you do that? We talked about this.”

“He wanted to see her, and what do you know? She’s had his baby. Now sweetheart, I ain’t getting angry at you for not telling me, I know you women like to have your secrets. But they’re both in danger. If we’re gonna be stuck here for three days, then it’s a good thing another brother’s in town. Did you honestly think after seeing how he’s been crying into his beer almost every damn night since she left, that I ain’t gonna tell him we’re visiting his woman? You gotta know me better than that.”

It bothers me more than I care to admit that I inadvertently dragged Clara into my mess, and now it’s causing arguments between her and Tex. The last thing I want is for my problems to spill over onto the people I care about. I can’t imagine how Silas’ men found me. What I thought was teenagers pranking me has been going on for a month or two.

It worries me that the church has been playing games with me, and I was too stupid to see it. Now that I’ve gotten my brain off pregnancy and babies and back on survival, I can see that the flowers and the fruit basket were probably Silas Harper’s version of extending an olive branch. The white handkerchiefs were more like white flags, clearly his way of asking me to surrender to his will. The logs were meant to be intimidating. I don’t think it was a death threat exactly—more like his way of saying he would knock some sense into me.

I get up and begin fast-packing because I have to do something proactive to keep from breaking down. Tusk is the last person I want to see, and he’s going to be here in thirty minutes. That can only mean he’s been waiting at the diner down the road. It’s the only place for miles in every direction.

One glance in the mirror tells me that I look almost nothing like the sexy, biker babe I pretended to be at the clubhouse. If I’m going to town, I need to get myself cleaned up. I get into the shower, resolving to make the best of this situation for my daughter’s sake.