Glacier Blooming

by Edie Claire

  She realized that Stanley was staring at her. His cheeks were flushed and his pupils had widened. “Well, you can just tell Dave, no!” he said forcefully. “I don’t want anybody else on my property!”

  Mei Lin froze. Stanley’s outburst was so unexpected she wondered if something was wrong with him. She looked for any signs of a physical problem, but saw only raw emotion — specifically, fright. “That’s fine,” she replied softly, baffled. “Do you feel all right?”

  Stanley looked away from her, his expression changing swiftly to embarrassment. “I’m fine,” he said hoarsely, but in a more normal tone. “I just… I mean it. It’s fine for you and Dave to come, but I don’t want anybody else out here. Will you tell him that?”

  “Of course,” she agreed. In addition to the flush on Stanley’s face, tiny beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead. She refilled his mug with drinking water and set it down on the makeshift table. His pale blue eyes avoided hers, and as he picked up the cup, his hand shook even worse than before. Whatever had spooked him, the effect was profound.

  Mei Lin’s mind spun with questions, but for now, she refrained from asking them. Stanley was clearly terrified. But of what? The mere thought of one more stranger coming onto his property? But he hadn’t known her or Dave either, not when they first wandered up!

  Her heart felt like lead. Thane would be so disappointed. But she was worried about Stanley, too. The seemingly fearless surgeon had voluntarily faced infectious diseases, bombing raids, and armed guerillas in some of the most hostile environments on earth. All before he’d nearly succeeded in carrying out a slow and painful suicide.

  What more could possibly frighten him?

  Chapter 19

  By early afternoon, the weather in Gustavus had become as perfect as Mei Lin had ever seen it. The sky was blue as a robin’s egg, only a few wispy clouds drifted across its vast expanse, and the sun warmed the air around her to a balmy seventy-two degrees. What better way to celebrate than an impromptu picnic with a gorgeous guy at one of her favorite spots on earth?

  She admired Thane’s muscular form as he unfolded himself from the passenger side of the Subaru and stepped out onto the graveled wide spot that passed as the trailhead’s parking lot. He’d been horribly disappointed when she broke the bad news, but he was trying hard not to mope, which she respected. “This is it!” she announced with cheer.

  The Nagoonberry Trail ambled through forest, wetland, and fields of wildflowers on its way from a residential area to the beach, and in her healthier days, Elsie had walked it regularly. After Mei Lin’s arrival the elderly shut-in had begun to enjoy her favorite walk once again, albeit vicariously. Mei Lin would return from the trek with reams of pictures and videos on her phone, and the two of them would pore through the collection together. Elsie could identify animals from their scat and tracks and birds by their song, and they had both delighted in following the progress of the wildflowers as they burst from the soggy ground and unfurled to their full splendor.

  Mei Lin could hardly wait to engage in some quality nature appreciation with Thane. She hitched her can of bear spray to the fanny pack containing her water bottle and phone, then reached over the seat to grab the gear in which she’d packed their lunches. It was gone. Thane already had the larger backpack out of the car and slung over one broad shoulder, where it dangled effortlessly next to his own lightweight drawstring pack. “Oh,” she said with surprise, unused to male gallantry in any form. “Thanks.”

  Thane didn’t seem to process her meaning. He merely smiled down at her as she joined him outside the car, his face showing enthusiasm even as his eyes still glinted with a trace of melancholy.

  She smiled back at him and led the way through the trees and down the path. The trail was beautiful as always. Everything was so green! Thick moss covered the forest floor and everything on it, sweeping across fallen tree trunks, rocks, and stumps like a living, breathing carpet. In temperate rain forests, trees fell victim not to forest fires but to the wind, which regularly toppled all sizes of trunks by tugging their roots from the saturated earth. The felled trees were quickly blanketed with both the moss and a variety of colorful lichens and fungi, ensuring the speedy return of their nutrients to the already rich soil. Mei Lin grinned as Thane paused by one of her own favorite stumps, which was capped with a moss so thick it looked like a giant head of green hair. Huge gray and white shelflike fungi protruded from the stump horizontally, giving a vague resemblance to eyes and a nose. “I call that one Hairy,” Mei Lin said.

  “Very appropriate,” Thane agreed.

  Catching sun above the moss was a sprinkling of forest ferns, then a variety of berry bushes and seedling trees. The mature Sitka spruce and hemlocks sported bark that was speckled with green moss and blue lichens, and their lower regions were ringed with short, spiky sticks bearing witness to limbs of the past. Up above Mei Lin’s head the branches gradually began to fill out, till at the treetops a feathery sea of green nearly blotted out the sky. The trail meandered to a small clearing, where a pond of jet-black water was covered with the flat green leaves and yellow blossoms of lily pads. Mei Lin paused long enough to a pluck a few wild blueberries from the bushes that edged the trail, and Thane wordlessly followed her lead. As she watched him select just the right berries, then savor their unique sweetness with a flicker of his eyelids, any thoughts she might have had regarding the value of a full year of celibacy evaporated.

  “Your turn to lead,” she said cheerfully, moving behind him to pluck more berries. “See if you can locate my secret bench.”

  Thane accepted the challenge with a smile and set off back down the trail, his long-legged stride confident, but unhurried. Mei Lin shamelessly appreciated her new and improved view, enjoying the play of his muscles beneath his soft jersey shirt and well-worn jeans. She enjoyed it so much, in fact, that she blindly trod straight into a pile of moose scat. They talked little, enjoying the chatter of the birds and the occasional breeze that rustled through the evergreen canopy above.

  Thane stopped suddenly. Mei Lin pulled up short; if she had been following two steps closer, she would have crashed into his backside. Darn.

  “Aha!” he crowed, looking off into the distance. He smiled at her, then stepped off the main trail and headed down a narrow path that curved toward another clearing. In a few moments they reached Mei Lin’s patently obvious “secret bench,” which sat under the spreading umbrella of a black cottonwood tree. Thane set their backpack down on the wooden seat, stretched out his arms, and admired the view. “Nice,” he approved.

  “I’ve always thought so.” Mei Lin stepped up beside him and looked out over the meadow. Her eyes drank in the beauty of the lupine flowers, their purplish-blue hues contrasting perfectly with the chorus of green that surrounded them. Beyond the wildflowers, grass, and scrubby bushes of the foreground, a line of young evergreens stretched toward the sun, silhouetted against a stunning backdrop of distant, blue-green mountains. “Shall we eat here?”

  “Most definitely,” he agreed. They settled on the bench and Mei Lin unpacked her takeout offering: the best soup and grilled paninis the Cafe Herbivore had to offer. She’d ordered twice as much food for Thane as she usually did for herself, and she was amused to watch him finish every bite. They ate while having a spirited discussion of the relative benefits of living in the US versus Canada, a conversation which, like most they’d enjoyed so far, ended up leaving them in peals of laughter. Mei Lin couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relaxed and comfortable with a man — at least not one she was attracted to. She was a pleaser by nature, and the single men of her experience were so needy and demanding that any kind of relationship meant work. Being with Thane was different. He didn’t seem to need anything from her. He was merely enjoying her company.

  “Let’s go see that beach,” he suggested when the food was gone. “Should be around low tide now. We can check out who got there before us.”

  Mei Lin knew from the gleam in hi
s eye that he didn’t mean people. “Let’s!” she agreed eagerly, rising. He seemed so much better, and she was having so much fun, she could hardly suppress her happiness. “I’m so glad to see you’re enjoying yourself,” she admitted, “even if I do make a poor substitute for a glacier cub!”

  Thane grinned at her as he collected their trash and stuffed it into his pack. “You hear me complaining?”

  “You’re not the complaining type. But I know you’re disappointed. And I’m sorry about Stanley. He’s a little unpredictable. But he did practically beg me to come out and see him again tomorrow, and I intend to appeal your case. So don’t give up!”

  Thane shrugged. “Give up? A Buchanan? Never. That cub could pop up again most anywhere. I can hardly blame the man. If he’s as keen on seeing a glacier bear as I am, the last thing he needs is more folks traipsing around his place, potentially scaring them away. That’s just good sense.”

  Mei Lin doubted that Stanley’s outburst was motivated by any kind of sense, but she didn’t say so.

  “Besides,” Thane continued, “near misses have always been a part of the quest. It’s a family tradition; my father and grandfather were even more obsessed than I am, if you can believe it!”

  “I cannot,” Mei Lin chuckled as they resumed walking down the trail. “But I am getting the idea that this particular disease runs in families.”

  “Oh, for sure. My dad used to tell us bedtime stories about glacier bears.” His tone of voice changed suddenly. The shift was subtle, but Mei Lin could feel it — an undercurrent of sorrow. “He was a fabulous storyteller. When you told me about the bears you saw, it reminded me of his stories.”

  “All these bear stories!” she exclaimed with a chuckle. “You make me jealous. The only bedtime stories I remember my mom reading were politically correct children’s books about multicultural families — which were about as exciting as they sound. My dad was better, though. He’d read us princess tales on the sly.”

  Thane laughed. “My mom read us books. But my Dad could tell stories straight off the cuff. Crazy stuff, and so funny… he never told any story the same way twice.”

  Mei Lin could hear the slightest of hitches in his voice, even as he smiled. Clearly, the pain of his father’s loss must still be raw. “Your dad passed away?” she asked softly.

  “He did,” Thane confirmed. “A long time ago. When I was thirteen.”

  Mei Lin was surprised. She could not imagine the horror a child would feel at losing a parent, but still… twenty years seemed a long time to grieve. Perhaps the family quest had brought up memories he hadn’t processed in a while. “I’m sorry,” she empathized. “What happened to him?” Her sister’s voice, which at some point had become a permanent adjunct to her conscience, immediately berated her for asking such a personal question. Mei Lin ignored it. Ri had always been so guarded that it took her forever to get to know someone, much less trust them. But Mei Lin was an open book. She’d always believed that making herself vulnerable made others feel more comfortable sharing.

  “He was murdered,” Thane answered flatly. He stopped, reached down to grab a stick, then poked at another pile of scat, this one half hidden beneath the broad leaves of a devil’s club. “Looks like black bear, maybe a day old. Been eating blueberries.”

  Mei Lin’s voice was faint. “Murdered?” she repeated, horrified.

  Thane straightened up and tossed the stick. “Yep,” he replied, not looking at her. “It was a fluke kind of thing. He was at a medical conference in Chicago, and he was kidnapped by some career criminals. One of their buddies had a gunshot wound, but couldn’t go to an ER without getting arrested. They found out the conference center was swarming with surgeons, so they plucked a likely candidate off the curb and tried to force him to treat their friend. The police tracked them down and raided the place, but my dad was shot in the crossfire.”

  “That’s… awful,” Mei Lin sputtered. If anyone else had told her such a made-for-television story, she’d think they were lying. But she knew that Thane was not. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged and started walking again. “It was a long time ago. It wasn’t easy. But we dealt.” After a few more paces, he dropped to a squat and examined something else on the trail. “You’ve got wolves here,” he said more matter-of-factly. “Ever hear them howl at night?”

  Mei Lin didn’t know what he was looking at. Her focus was entirely on his face, which looked normal from this angle, but didn’t deceive her. He was still deeply affected by his father’s murder.

  What question had he just asked her? She had to replay the last few seconds in her mind. “I’ve never heard any howling, no,” she replied finally. “But I’ve seen wolf tracks on the beach.”

  “Awesome,” he said more jovially, getting to his feet again. “Let’s go find some more.”

  Mei Lin wanted desperately to hug him. He needed a hug, even if he wasn’t asking for one. Many people, her sister most definitely included, considered uninvited hugs to be a violation of personal space. But Mei Lin didn’t think Thane was one of those people.

  She closed the distance between them and clasped him around his waist. I’m so sorry, she attempted to convey. I can’t do much, but I hope this will make you feel a little better. For now. Thane’s arms enfolded her reflexively, but she was careful not to overstay her purpose. After a few seconds she took a step back and smiled at him. A happy distraction was now in order. Her voice turned mischievous. “We’ve got a ways to walk before we get there. But I bet I can find wolf tracks before you do.”

  Thane’s lips twisted into a grin, and his still-moist eyes sparkled devilishly. “Like hell you can.”

  The next few minutes found the two of them frolicking through field and forest like a couple of ten-year-olds on a sugar high. They met no other humans on the trail, which was fortunate, since their ringing laughter and occasional shrieks would have thoroughly wrecked anyone else’s quiet reflection. They agreed that sprinting anywhere with enough underbrush to conceal a bear was verboten, but when it came to halting, delaying, or otherwise interfering with each other’s progress toward the beach, Mei Lin soon discovered that Thane’s criminal creativeness was equal to her own. They made up rules as they went, debating the specifics, but when Mei Lin’s use of secret off-trail shortcuts was finally ruled out of bounds, she realized more desperate tactics would be needed. Stealing a piggy back ride seemed the perfect way to cut her losses — besides being all sorts of fun — until they drew within sight of the beach and she noticed that Thane had untied both her shoes. In a flash, he tugged the low-heeled boots from her feet, shrugged her from his back, and took off toward the sand with an evil cackle.

  “No fair!” she protested hopelessly, shoving her feet back in the boots and retying them. Soaking her socks in wet sand was not an option, nor was picking her way through gravel and prickly plants in bare feet. When she looked ahead and saw him studying the ground, then sidestepping with a grand flourish of his hand, she knew her bet was lost.

  “Gray wolf!” he announced proudly.

  Mei Lin panted her way through the rest of the grass and brush and onto the soft sand of the intertidal zone. The difference between high and low tides was dramatic in Maine, but the Alaskan coast took the prize for having the greatest area of beach regularly revealed and concealed by the shifting saltwater. From where Mei Lin stood at the edge of the high water mark, hundreds of yards of temporarily exposed sand stretched between her and the lapping edge of low tide. Each time the water withdrew, it left behind a fresh array of colorful plants and stranded sea life, providing a happy smorgasbord for waiting land creatures.

  “Big one, probably a male,” Thane elaborated, pointing. The wet sand made good impressions of animal paws and human shoes alike, providing a clear record of anything that had traveled the beach since the last high tide — provided no heavy rains had intervened. The tracks at which Thane pointed looked much like dog prints, except for their impressive size and near-linear pattern
. Wild wolves, unlike domestic dogs, did not waste energy with aimless meandering. “Looks like he was moving at a good clip,” Thane said confidently.

  “No way,” she protested with equal aplomb. Never mind that she would stake her life on pretty much any professional judgment he made. She was feeling playful. “It was clearly a female dachshund. Long haired. Blind in one eye.”

  Thane raised an eyebrow. “Ha! Look at that stride length. No human tracks traveling with them, either.”

  “So she was off leash,” Mei Lin insisted.

  “In bear country? With one good eye?”

  Mei Lin pretended to frown. “Fine! So it was a wolf.”

  “Thank you. Now what’s my prize?”

  Mei Lin could envision several options, and from the look on Thane’s face, she could tell he was envisioning similar ones. They were standing close, but not close enough. The pull between them was palpable: a primal, compulsive force…

  Warning signals assaulted her brain. Had she not sworn she would never do this again? Jump into yet another relationship based purely on superficial attraction? She had only known Thane a matter of hours! Her next relationship was supposed to be based on cold, hard facts. She was to ease into it one slow, deliberate step at a time. Like her now happily married sister Ri, she was to guard her heart until the man in question had been thoroughly, completely vetted. Then, and only then, would she allow herself to smile her most heartfelt smile, to reach her eager hands up to a pair of well-muscled shoulders, to lean her whole stupidly vulnerable self into an embrace that was warm… and masculine… and completely intoxicating…

  Oh, to hell with it.

  Chapter 20

  Thane’s day had improved dramatically. Never mind that the most pleasant time he had ever spent on an intertidal beach had just been interrupted by a couple with two young children and one energetic, poorly behaved labradoodle. As he and Mei Lin turned away from the chaos and began to trek the backside loop of the Nagoonberry Trail, he had to seriously wonder — again — if he was dreaming. Everything that was happening in Gustavus seemed surreal. The potential sighting of a glacier cub was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but the discovery of a woman like Mei Lin was its own kind of miracle.