by Holley Trent
“Hello?” came the woman’s voice.
Maria let out a breath and opened her eyes. She sat up, putting the phone to the other ear. “Um. He-hello.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Maria. My name is Maria Weisz. I think you might have been expecting my call.” She pressed her elbows against her thighs and leaned over them, waiting for the sick feeling to pass.
Just disconnect.
She fought the temptation of her thumb sliding across that screen and just ending the call as if it’d been a bad connection all along.”
“Ma—Wait. Hold on. Just wait!”
There was muffled shouting, and some static—probably caused by the lady putting her hand against the mic. “You still there?” she asked when she returned.
“I’m here,” Maria said.
“I’m putting you on speaker if I can figure it out.”
“Just hit the button that says speaker,” came a man’s faraway voice.
“Well, where is it?”
“It’s the big gray one. You should be able to see that even with your glasses off. Come on, Matty. You’ve had the phone for a year. You should know it by now.”
“Oh, because I spend so much time on it. Go on and say it since you’re thinking it.”
Her volume had changed about halfway through and became suddenly loud, so Maria suspected the lady Matty had found that speaker button.
“I wasn’t gonna say nothin’. Stop putting words in my mouth. See if she’s still there. She probably got bored and hung up.”
Maria cleared her throat. “I’m here.”
“She sounds like Rachel!” Matty said. “Doesn’t she sound like Rachel? Don’t tell me I’m remembering it wrong, either.”
The man laughed low. “Nah, you’re not remembering it wrong. She does sound like our Rachel.”
My mother. I must remind them of a ghost.
The sofa cushion to her left sank, and she looked over to find Eric settling next her, brow furrowed. He mouthed, “You all right?”
She started, just out of habit, to nod, but stopped halfway into it to shake her head. She didn’t know if she was all right. She had no idea what she was doing or what she was supposed to be doing.
“Send us a picture,” Matty said.
“Matty,” her husband scolded.
“What?”
“You can’t just launch right into a conversation with someone asking for a picture.”
“Well, I want to know if she looks like Rachel.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Strong genes.”
“Maybe her father has strong genes, too.”
“Don’t know what he looks like, either.”
“Well, aren’t we just a sorry pair.”
I should say something. What, though, she had no idea. Maria looked to Eric again as if he had some words to loan her, and he whispered, “Who are you talking to?”
She covered the phone’s mic and said, “My grandparents. They’re talking amongst themselves, which is fine, because I don’t know what to say.”
“Start with the basics. Ask them where they live and go from there.”
“Oh.” She nodded and uncovered the phone. “Um, so…where do you live? My associate didn’t relay all that much about you.”
“Oh, Cape Cod for the moment,” Matty said. “We’re thinking about moving down to Boca. These cold winters are a killer. I’m not built for them. Rachel loved them, though. She used to love the winters in Boston and looked forward to that first snow every year.”
Maria hated snow, but she figured that was her heat-seeking Jamaican half dominating her body’s temperature preferences. “Well…I’m in North Carolina now. I mean, I plan to stay there. That’s where I work and live.”
“How the hell did you end up there of all places?”
“My mo—um.” She closed her eyes tight and gave her head a shake. She didn’t know what to call the woman she’d thought was her mother. And that was another thing she had to ask her grandparents about. What had happened? Why did she take Maria? “We lived in communes. There was one in Rhode Island we were at as early as I could remember and then we moved to the Midwest for while. We ended up in the North Carolina Sandhills, and I was there until I left for college.”
“Communes!” her grandfather spat. “I don’t get her. I don’t get her one bit.”
“Explain, please. You have to understand that up until this week, I thought she was my mother.”
“She told you that?” Matty shouted.
“Yes. She never said anything about my real mother being dead. She even had a story about how my father met her, which he did corroborate. But he never said anything about her having a sister.”
“Well, they looked a lot alike. Not identical, though. We could certainly tell them apart. Rachel was older by a few minutes. A little taller, a little heavier. Had the brightest smile you’d ever see in your life…until she got sick, I mean. Took us all for a ride, that.”
“How did she…you know.”
“Die?” Maria’s grandfather asked.
“Yes. How did she die?”
“Cancer. It was aggressive. Chemo might have kept her around a little longer, but she didn’t want to risk you. She thought it was serendipitous, you know. She said that if she had to go out, she was going to go out with a bang and leave something behind, and she kept her promise. Held on just long enough, and she was so happy. She couldn’t even hold you, but she was so happy.”
Maria didn’t catch the first few tears that fell, but she did get her hand over her eyes before the gushing streams started.
Eric wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He chafed her arm and set his chin atop her head. “Go ahead,” he said.
Whether he meant for her to talk to them more, or to lean on him, or to just cry, she was going to take him up on all three. She didn’t see where she had a choice, and she was so tired of holding things in. She had to let go of some things.
“W-why did she take me? My aunt, I mean.”
“We can only guess,” Matty said. “Anastasia and Rachel weren’t exactly best buds, you know what I mean? They disagreed on a lot of things. Rachel was a lot more grounded, I guess. She knew what she wanted out of life and was the kind of lady who liked to make plans. That’s why she got everything all set up for you. I guess there were contingencies even she couldn’t have predicted. Maybe Anastasia thought she was doing what Rachel would have wanted by taking you.”
“Or maybe she thought we were going to screw you up just like we did her,” Maria’s grandfather said.
Matty sighed. “Frank.”
“What? That’s what she said, right? Before Rachel’s C-section? Anastasia said we were going to stifle and crush her and that we weren’t fit to raise her.”
“I could have done with a little stifling,” Maria said softly. “That free range childhood thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Oh, honey. If you want a little stifling, we’ll hop on the first plane and come down and give it to you.”
“You can’t.” Maria groaned and gave her head a hard shake. Her brain was clogged with cobwebs and cotton balls and she was having the hardest damn time forming cogent thoughts. “I mean, not right now. I would love for you to come visit, but my job is messy and it’s just a bad time.”
Eric gave her a squeeze. “They could stay at the lodge, if you want.”
Oh. “Um, I…have a…”
“Friend,” he whispered.
Friend. She cringed. “A friend who could put you up out in the mountains once things settle down. My roommate left me to get married, and I’m in the process of trying to figure out where to move, and my apartment in Durham is kind of a mess right now. I—”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Her grandfather chuckled. “Just tell us when.”
Maria let out a strained laugh. She was too wound up, and when she was wound up, sh
e rambled. Often, to the point of embarrassment. “Soon, I hope. Really soon.”
“What is it that you do for a living, anyway?” Matty asked.
“I’m a private investigator. I guess I’m good at it because I don’t look like one.”
“If you look like Rachel, that’s an understatement. Send us a picture.”
“Matty,” Frank scolded again.
Maria laughed, this time unreserved. They were a little nuts, but maybe that was a good thing for her. She didn’t need more depressingly serious people around her. “I’ll send you a picture. I’ll see what I can find on my phone.”
“Are we driving straight through, or do y’all want to stop to eat and sleep?” Benny called back from the driver’s seat.
“Um. I’ve got to go,” Maria said. “I guess I’m technically on the clock right now.”
“Send the picture!” Matty exclaimed.
“I will. Right now.”
“And call back and let us know when we can come. Or we’ll find you and come anyway.”
Maria laughed. “Okay. I will. Um. Bye.” She hit the End button and sat still, staring at the darkening screen.
“We’ll rotate drivers and keep it moving,” Eric said to Benny. “I’ll take next shift. We could stop to get something to eat, though. I’m starving.”
“Are you sure you’re all right to drive?”
“I’m fine.”
“Man, that’s weird. Did you talk to Bryan about that?”
“I’ll get around to it. I’m sure it’s just from adrenaline. It’ll come down eventually.”
“Okay. I’ll stop at the halfway point.”
Hands shaking, Maria scrolled through the albums on her phone, assessing every picture and rejecting each. None of them were good enough for a first impression. She didn’t know what they expected of her, but she didn’t want to disappoint them already with one of those unimpressive snapshots.
“Here,” Eric said softly. After a few flicks of his thumb across his phone screen, a few images of Maria appeared on her phone.
She didn’t recognize them, but they’d obviously been taken at the lodge. On the sofa with hair pulled up into a messy topknot, she had her legs curled up under her long skirt. With an elbow propped on the armrest, she was facing forward but her gaze was off to the side, as if someone had pulled at her attention. That was probably how Eric had been able to take the pictures without her noticing.
Without anyone noticing, obviously.
If anyone had, they would have asked what he was up to. Shrews didn’t tend to hold their tongues.
The memories of that day opened slowly in Maria’s mind like a tight blossom unfurling in the morning. It’d been the day Sarah went into labor, and they had all been trying to figure out where everyone needed to be. After coming off a long case, Maria had been in a volatile mental space that day, but she looked calm and serene in that picture. She might have thought she looked pretty if it weren’t for knowing how broken she’d felt.
She looked up at Eric, and his expression was tender.
“That wasn’t a good day for you,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I keep telling you.” He put his large hand against the back of her neck and dragged the thumb along the nape. “I know you better than anyone.”
Rubbing down the top of her spine to the knot at the apex of her back, he said, “They won’t know how upset you were from those pictures. They’ll just see a beautiful woman who looks like she’s thinking, and they’ll be proud because they’ll believe they had a hand in making you. Send the pictures so they can rest tonight.”
He gave her shoulder a squeeze, and then left her alone on the sofa.
She watched him walk up to the passenger’s seat and strap himself in. Then she looked down at her phone once more.
Do it.
They’d asked, and it was easy, but she worried she’d disappoint them and that she wouldn’t be what they were hoping for.
She dropped the three photos into a message and added the note, Three months ago. I guess I look the same now.
She sent it, wedged her phone between the sofa cushions, and curled up against the arm.
For a while, she just watched Eric chat quietly with Benny about Bear things and life in general, and she balled her hands into fists and held them under her loose shirt.
She wanted to touch him. Demand that he come back so he could hold her, because just being held for the sole purpose of comforting or being comforted really wasn’t all that bad.
Actually, it helped, and she wanted to let him do it.
But she worried it might have been too late—that she’d said no too many times already.
Her phone buzzed, and fearfully, she pulled it out and forced herself to look at the screen.
You’ve got Rachel’s eyes!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Eric had barely been in Bryan’s vicinity for two minutes before the alpha’s fangs descended and a growl rumbled in his broad chest.
Shit.
“Hold on, baby.” Tamara got in front of Bryan as if her compact form could really hold a man of his size back. Bryan was barely restraining himself.
“What’s going on?” Astrid asked.
Obviously, she’d heard the snarling from the back door and ran out of the lodge drying her hands on a dishtowel.
“He seeks to challenge me,” Bryan snarls.
Eric threw up his hands. “What the hell are you talking about, man? I just got back here. I’ve barely had a chance to park my fuckin’ truck. Are you on crack?”
“You smell like a challenger,” Soren said calmly.
“I’m not challenging anyone. I was going into the lodge to start bread dough, and then perhaps take a nap. Is there something in the air besides mating fever that I should be aware of? I know I’ve been out of the loop for the past few days.”
Bryan snarled again.
“What happened?” Soren asked. “When you were gone, I mean?”
“You know everything that happened.”
Benny pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell ’em about how you got up after that shift.”
“What difference does that make?”
“What do you mean he got up?”
Benny shrugged. “Up at Jim’s. Eric went for a run as a bear, went back to the RV to shift back, and got up, like, five minutes later.”
“It was just a fluke,” Eric said.
Bryan started cracking knuckles.
“What the fuck did I just walk into?”
Soren rubbed his chin and looked from Eric to Bryan back to Eric again. “Shift,” he said.
“What?”
“Shift.”
“I don’t have time for that shit right now. I’ve got work to do.”
“Shift,” Bryan said through clenched teeth, “or I’ll force you do. That ain’t gonna feel so good, innkeeper.”
“What the hell is wrong with y’all?” Eric threw up his hands. “Know what? Doesn’t matter. Whatever. The sooner I squelch your unfounded curiosity, the sooner I can get back to work. We’ve got eight guests checking in tomorrow.”
He stepped through the kitchen door and quickly discarded his shoes, clothes, and jewelry.
Holding a hand over his junk, he shouldered the door open and stepped back out into the brisk spring air. Rolling his shoulders and laying his head to both sides, he invited the pain of a non-full moon shift.
He breathed through all the pain—of walking through fire and atop broken glass—and pulled forth the beast that elongated his body, pushed his bones out wider, and enlarged his skull.
Soren had once explained to the Shrews that shapeshifting for him felt like his body was being chopped up and boiled to make soup, and Eric thought the simile was a good one.
On all fours, he took a moment to recenter and reorient himself—to push his man’s sense into the front of the beast’s mind and to quickly assess threats.
Still the same people around him.
Benny. Tamara. Astrid. Soren.
And his alpha, who shifted, too.
Bryan’s low growl as he stalked forward unhinged rumblings from Eric’s chest, too. Eric would never have bared his teeth at his alpha without cause or snarled at him like he was, but he felt threatened. Bryan was picking a fight and Eric didn’t understand why.
Heavy and lumbering, but so fast, Bryan charged at him, and Eric didn’t think. He just moved.
He met the clash without flinching, and he and Bryan became a tangle of teeth in fur, of swiping claws, and some blood.
Eric felt the pain as he writhed and tried to get his blows in, but he pushed it aside. That wasn’t important. Survival was important, and apparently Bryan wanted to kill him.
Eric charged at him and knocked the big bear onto his back, and giant beast or not, Bryan quickly rolled and pinned Eric beneath him. His gaping mouth with all those sharp teeth shot down toward Eric’s chest, and somehow Eric managed to get his feet beneath Bryan’s belly to kick him away.
More wrestling. More biting.
More struggling.
“Fuck this,” came Soren’s voice. “Enough.”
There was a gunshot, and Eric backed off—not because he worried about getting shot—in his bear form, a single bullet wasn’t going to slow him down unless it was silver, and Soren being a shifter himself rarely carried those. Eric backed off because his pregnant sister was standing out there somewhere. She could probably take care of herself, but he needed to be concerned about collateral damage. After all, there were the only the two of them left to continue the Falk legacy, such as it was.
Tamara scrambled into the fray and threw her arms around Bryan’s thick neck, and muttered soothing words to him.
Soren put his big body between them and Eric. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down at Eric. “Shift back.”
Eric growled at him.
“That was the point of this, Bear. You shifting, not the fight. You take that up with Bryan later. Shift back.”
Eric forced some air through his nose and sat back on his haunches.
Fuck. This. Shit.
All that damn fuss—that pain—in such a short time.
Motherfuckers are gonna owe me.
He closed his eyes and cleaned up his inner house, putting all the bear stuff away and inviting the man back home to his space.
