Coveted by the Bear Read online

  I waited for her to tell me she was just kidding, like she’d done earlier, but she just stood there, waiting for…something.

  “Mira, that thing wasn’t a man. I think I’d know if I was clawed and bitten and tortured by a man or a bear. I spent all night with the damned thing.”

  “He was a shifter. A bear man. He maybe should’ve killed you.”

  “What are you saying?” My voice sounded harsh, even to my own ears, but so what? “You wish I was dead? Then why did you just say you wanted me to live? Why did you save me?”

  “I don’t wish you were dead.” Her voice dipped to a whisper. “You’ll wish you were dead, and maybe you’ll hate me for bringing you back.”

  There it was. That was the sign I’d been looking for. After all, the entire town couldn’t have been wrong about her. She was as crazy as her uncle. I wanted to yell at her. To tell her the things she was saying weren’t real. That she’d made them up as a coping mechanism for her loneliness or whatever else was going on in that head of hers. But when I opened my mouth to fling my angry words at her, the only thing that came out was a helpless sound.

  I was disappointed. There. I was fucking disappointed, okay? Something in me had reached out for Mira at Jake’s the other day, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since. Then I’d spent some time with her and realized she was a decent person, and I wanted her to be okay.

  But she wasn’t.

  And no amount of kindness from me was going to fix her.

  “Okay, Mira. When I start feeling different, I’ll let you know.”

  ****

  Mira

  Today had been one of the best and one of the worst days of my life. The best because I had actually had a conversation with another human being who didn’t make the devil horns at me, and the worst because Clancy Clayborn, the town sheriff, and one of his deputies I didn’t recognize, pulled up in a patrol car at almost the exact same time we reached the truck. One look at Caleb, who looked like a murder victim, and they instantaneously decided I was his assassin.

  “Hands up in the air where I can see ’em!” Clancy yelled at me, training his firearm directly at my face.

  I dropped Blue’s reins and did as he commanded. Then I was down on my knees, and then down on my belly, and then I was being frisked by a cop with some serious body odor and three too many Jake’s fried burritos in his paunch.

  I couldn’t hear what Caleb was yelling over the cop’s loud directions, but he sounded furious. Up until the point when he passed out cold and fell in a crumpled heap onto the ground beneath Blue.

  “Way to go, Nancy!” I yelled at Clancy from my vantage point in the dirt. “Now you killed him!”

  Clancy and I were old not-friends. He was notorious for running me out of town for disturbing the peace when I wasn’t doing anything but getting supplies. “Gotta keep the streets clean,” he would say, then wipe his hands like he had done his civic duty. What a canker sore.

  “Quiet, Crazy Mira,” he ordered, his face going an interesting shade of mauve-purple in his rage. “Get her in handcuffs and tie up that horse,” he told his deputy. “I’m gonna radio for backup. I have to get the McCreedy boy to the clinic.” Clancy was already dragging Caleb’s limp body toward the patrol car.

  I was pretty sure a whole lot of police bylaws were being broken here, and from the shocked look on deputy-what’s-his-name’s face, he probably felt the same.

  Clancy peeled out, throwing gravel and dust over where I lay. “You’re so lucky to have such a rock solid boss,” I sniped at the deputy. It wasn’t characteristic of me to feel so brave and mouthy, but I was pissed.

  He didn’t look amused. “You know you have the right to remain silent, don’t you?”

  I plopped my head to the side. A rock dug into my cheek, but it was bearable. “Fine.”

  We waited for our ride to arrive ten minutes later in the form of the second and only other patrol car in Bryson.

  A leisurely drive down Main Street in my snazzy ride was the cherry on top of the day. Apparently, every single person in town had already heard of my arrest and was waiting excitedly to see the crazy parade, party of one. A piece of me was surprised they weren’t selling peanuts and cotton candy. I tried to slouch down as far as I possibly could with my hands cuffed much too tightly behind my back. I’m sure everyone could still see the top of my hair. It was all they needed. They’d talk about this for the rest of my life. They’d talk about it for the rest of their lives. Perhaps I would even get a book of my own in the town history section of the library.

  “The Chronicles of Crazy Mira.”

  I feigned unbalance when they booked me. They asked less questions if I smiled and stared blankly at the wall. I even swayed and hummed off-key for good measure.

  After an hour of no response about the unfortunate happenings to Caleb McCreedy, Clancy gave up and sent his deputy in to play good cop. The deputy, Young, Clancy had called him, cleared his throat as they passed each other in the doorway. Two substantial bellies tried to fit through the frame simultaneously, like two round moons orbiting each other. I wondered how many times they had done that dance to do it so well.

  “The clinic just called. Caleb’s awake,” Young said in a low voice, just loud enough for me to catch it.

  I perked up at the new information. Caleb wasn’t dead then. A weight lifted, and I drew a long shaky breath. When I exhaled, some of the tension left my body with it. I was still in trouble up to my eyeballs, but at least Caleb would be all right.

  Young opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him. “I think I need to talk to Sam Burns now.”

  “The lawyer?” he asked, obviously surprised that I could speak civilly and drop a useful name.

  I had only met Sam Burns once before. I had gone into town with Uncle Brady on one of the rare occasions he thought it pertinent for me to be there. I liked the town lawyer’s office. He had taken the effort to invest in an old-fashioned popcorn machine with white paper baggies clipped to the side. Free to clients, the sign over the front had read. I had filled my bag three times while Uncle Brady went over his will with the statuesque lawyer. It was all I had to eat that day, and was such a delicious and unexpected treat that I would forever hold Mr. Burns in a warm place in my heart. He couldn’t have realized he’d made such a memory for me. I’d be lucky if he remembered me at all, but surely he would recall Uncle Brady. My guardian had been too loud a character to be forgotten easily.

  I made the phone call, using the number I’d memorized from Uncle Brady’s will. “Mr. Burns,” I said when he answered. “This is Mira Fletcher, Brady Fletcher’s niece. I’m being held at the police station and need your assistance.”

  His reply was simple. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I tried to be polite and say bye, but he’d already hung up.

  Twenty minutes later and Mr. Burns was as I remembered him, except for not quite so tall and a little grayer around the edges. His eyes were sharp, and he seemed to take in everything with a single glance when he entered the room. “Hello again, Mira,” he said kindly. The metal chair screeched across the tile floor, and he set a very professional looking briefcase on the table between us. It appeared downright odd against his T-shirt and worn blue jeans, but small town lawyers didn’t have to dress up.

  Without further ado, I got down to the nitty gritty of why I’d called him. “I have information regarding my uncle. First, I will need you to retrieve the satchel I had with me when I was arrested. It had paperwork pertinent to what I need from you.”

  “Yes, all right,” he said.

  His tone sounded as if he were talking to a child. I ignored it. My popcorn memory wavered, but I clutched onto it tighter.

  He returned with my worn canvas bag about five minutes later, and I pulled out my uncle’s will. “My uncle has passed,” I said.

  Burns’s face showed little surprise. “When did it happen?”

  “Almost a year ago.”

/>   His eyebrows shot up. “What? Why haven’t you told anyone, child?”

  I glared at him for the last comment. “Well, I thought you could help me explain.” I pushed my uncle’s handwritten will across the table, and Burn’s pulled out a pair of reading glasses before he opened the oversized envelope.

  “I see,” he said thoughtfully after he was finished reading the first scribbled page. “I am to assume you have done as he requested and buried him where he specified?”

  “Exactly where. He went over and over it with me.”

  “Do you understand the rest of the will he had drawn up?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I had tried to read it a few times, but all of the legal mumbo jumbo made it difficult for me to understand. Sometimes when I was tired and couldn’t sleep, I read it knowing full-well I’d pass out by section two, but I wouldn’t tell Mr. Burns how boring his writing was. I had manners, after all.

  Burns thumbed through the copy of the paperwork he’d drawn up. “Basically, your uncle has left the two hundred acres of your family’s land in your name, claimable upon your eighteenth birthday. Which is when? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Two years ago today.”

  His eyes went round. “We will have paperwork to sign back at my office then. I have to tell you one odd request he had. You will be unable to sell the land for a minimum of one decade, or ten years.”

  A lump swelled in my throat, making it hard to swallow, much less breathe. I would be stuck in that haunted house for another ten years of my life. I wasn’t finishing my sentence there. I was only beginning it. I clenched my hands together under the table. My uncle had been kind enough to give me a home, and then cruel enough to drown me with it.

  “The police will have questions about his passing. How did he go?”

  “In a pool of vomit on his bathroom floor. He drank himself to death, sir,” I said, void of emotion. I had tried so hard to say the sentence without reliving the horrific scene on the cold morning I had found him.

  The sharp inhale of breath from the lawyer told me my reaction to the question wasn’t normal. But then again, what about me was?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He opened his mouth to say more but couldn’t seem to find the words he wanted.

  Trying to avoid thinking of the morning Uncle Brady had died proved fruitless. After Burns talked privately with Clancy and Young, they grilled me for every detail of the day my uncle had passed. I was raw and vulnerable after having to share so much of such a terrifying and private experience. It was the first time I had said the words out loud or talked to anyone about it, and the admission hurt more than I thought it would.

  “You’re free to go,” Clancy said ungraciously after I had worn my voice thin talking.

  “I am?”

  “Caleb woke up and explained that you were trying to save him. The doctor confirmed it was a bear attack,” Young explained.

  I stood to leave, and Burns opened the door for me.

  Clancy’s voice sounded harassed behind me. “Don’t leave town, Miss Fletcher. We’ll still be investigating your uncle’s death and the reasons you waited a year to tell us.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, sounding tired and sad, even to myself. “It seems I’ll be stuck here forever.”

  Clancy didn’t look any happier about it than I was, and I thought of Bora Bora for the hundredth time tonight.

  “I don’t have much money, Mr. Burns. What do I owe you for everything?” I asked as we stopped by the front door to the small police station.

  “Absolutely nothing. Your uncle already paid me to set up his will and make sure it was carried out. You have done most of the work for me.” He started to leave but turned back around. “Mira, I think I should be present if the police question you about your uncle. Please call me if they do.”

  The clinic where Caleb was being treated was just down the street, but it might as well have been a million miles away. I stepped out into the dark. Clouds blocked out the moon and stars and cast shadows over everything. Fitting for my mood. I began the long walk alone, and when the streetlights ended, I pressed the sad memories of Uncle Brady’s death back where they belonged.

  ****

  Caleb

  A hundred people and no one came to visit me in the clinic.

  Nearly the entire town had turned out, and it left me exhausted. Humbled and appreciative, but by the time the last of the visitors left on the third day, I needed a vacation from bed rest. Everyone visited, but I didn’t feel any connection as I received their well-wishes and thoughtful cards.

  Sure, I smiled, shook hands, and laughed at jokes, but my eyes were drawn to the door and my mind distracted. I could lie to myself and say I sought escape, but what my searching eyes really wanted was the silhouette of someone I knew would never—could never—visit me here.

  A hundred people and no one came.

  Chapter Six

  Mira

  Desperation and weakness was going to send me scuttling back into town for the second time in as many days.

  Metal and paper flopped into the palm of my hand as I upended Uncle Brady’s coffee can. He hadn’t believed in the integrity of banks. Every penny he made, he stuffed in the can.

  I had learned my lesson last week, and I wasn’t going to take any chances at a repeat experience. I would get to Jake’s Quickstop at ten in the morning after most were at work and before many were on a break for lunch. There would still be people. That was unavoidable as there were always people at Jake’s Quickstop, but I could limit my risks. I looked at my list with a critical eye. The total cost should be well below what I was bringing, but I marked eggs off just to be certain.

  We used to have chickens. Red and brown mottled things that kept us with fresh eggs every morning. They would stay close to the house in hopes of food, a continuous cluck deep in their throats. It was a soft sound that had become a part of my daily soundtrack. The oldest stopped producing, and the eggs dwindled to nothing. When there were no more to be had, I had cooked the chickens. Desperate times and measures and all. The rooster had been the last to go. He was mean as sin, but I had liked him. Silence had replaced their music and made the place feel too quiet. Too lonely.

  I had tried to buy new chickens from one of the local farmers. He had refused me because his wife thought I would bring bad luck on their home and crops if he did business with me. It was the first and last time I tried to purchase anything outside of Jake’s Quickstop. Bernard wasn’t a Mira-fan, but he didn’t make the sign of the cross when I entered his store, and he charged me fairly. That was good enough for me.

  I shoved the money in my pocket and headed for the barn. I liked to call it a barn, but it was really just a rough half-room with a partial roof to shelter the horses at the edge of their corral. Once Bobby was saddled, we headed down the trail that would lead us to the truck.

  The truck was called the Green Monster, and rightly so. It was a Ford, and old, and had originally been purchased by my grandfather to help with work on the acreage that had been passed down from his father and his father’s father before him. My grandfather had been well-liked in town. The crazy didn’t start seeping through the limbs of our family tree until Uncle Brady’s generation.

  It had been my uncle’s bright idea to fence in the gates and make our land impassible by vehicle. He did it right after the adoption officials started arriving regularly, and his plan worked. Hiking out to Narnia wasn’t an attractive option for most underpaid social workers with stacks of paperwork, sketchy cell phone reception, too many kids to keep up with, and high heels. So to go into town, I had to get creative and stash the truck just outside our property line.

  The places that weren’t rusted on the truck were colored an attractive pastel green. I loved it, even with all of its imperfections. No one in the world could get it started but me. There were nine tricks to getting that old engine to turn over, and I could do them all without even thinking.

  I tied off the ho
rse and hopped into the unlocked truck. I never worried about someone stealing it. They wouldn’t be able to start it, and if they did get the idea to hotwire the beast, The Green Monster would still demand five more tricks be performed before it graced them with first gear.

  I rolled down the window as I hit the edge of the dirt road to better flip off the green sign that identified my street. Who in their right mind would name a street Dark Corner Road besides the devil himself? I was pretty sure it’s where the witch rumors had originated.

  To keep my hands from shaking, I clenched the wheel until my knuckles were white. Every mile that brought me closer to town terrified me a little more. It was always like this. I tried to talk to myself to calm my nerves, but the tremble in my voice annoyed me and made me feel weaker than I already did. Caleb’s face flickered across my mind, and my hands relaxed. He was in town. I was sure of it. He’d have to stay at the clinic for a while with injuries as bad as his. That was if they hadn’t shipped him off to a fancy hospital in the city. The thought made me nervous again. It wasn’t like I would get to see him. The thought of visiting him in the clinic with all of those people around was terror-inducing.

  I pushed the gas down with the tips of my toes. I just wanted to get this over with.

  I’d always loathed the bell above the door at Jake’s Quickstop. Pushing the door open as softly as I could never helped. If anything, it made it louder, but I always tried, anyway. Bernard glared at me as I slid through the barely open door. Still mad, then.

  I glanced up to see two small groups of people sitting near the dining area. I puffed a little sigh of relief and grabbed a shopping basket.

  I could hear everything they said. Not on purpose. I hated eavesdropping, but in an ironic twist of fate, I had been born with superior hearing. Sometimes, I wished I couldn’t hear at all. Nobody talked to me, anyway.

  “I heard she cooked old man Fletcher up for dinner and saved his bones for soup,” a girl around my age said to her two friends in a whisper-yell.