“I am.”
“Well, clearly you’ve forgotten one very important detail of my character.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And that is?”
Deacon pointed at himself. “Serial killer. Remember?”
Her stern expression cracked and Maggie laughed, turning her face away from him as she did. Deacon tossed the First Aid Kit back into his SUV, then returned to the steps. He knew well after a lifetime of living on the boundary of the reservation that the Talbots kept to themselves. Still, he plopped down on the stairs beside Maggie Light Foot and settled his chin in his hands.
She shot him a sarcastic look, but her expression had softened. For the first time, Deacon noticed a redness to the woman’s eyes – the kind of pink hue that comes from crying. Maggie’s black hair was braided down her back, her black tank top clinging to her figure. She wasn’t a slight girl, she was solid and tall, her arms and shoulders betraying strength. Her tank top did a nice job of betraying a large chest as well, and the black fabric clung to the subtle rolls of her belly as she sat there, hunched over, frowning as she stared out at the gray sky.
“You just gonna sit here all day, then?” She asked after several moments in silence.
Deacon shrugged. “Don’t have much else to do.”
She snorted, and they both went quiet again. It felt strange to Deacon. Despite the cold reception, he felt strangely comfortable there beside her, as though she welcomed him, even as her demeanor professed otherwise.
“Is it really bad?” She asked finally, her eyes still trained on the horizon.
“It’s sewn up now. I told him to stay pretty sedentary until it closes up. Can’t even imagine what it looked like a couple days ago.”
She flinched at this thought, pressing her forehead into her hand.
“You alright?” Deacon asked, touching his hand to her shoulder. Her skin was warm, the color a golden brown against his own pale skin.
She shot him a strange glare, as though confused by his curiosity, but again her expression softened. She glanced back at the door, checking for company. Then she stared at him again, as though coming to some decision. “We’re not great, no.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
She glared at him.
“Sorry. Sorry. White man trying to swoop in and save the day again.”
She laughed. “Apparently. No, there’s nothing that can be done. I just wish they’d settled their business with me, not my father.”
Deacon glanced back at the house. “Who? Is someone giving you trouble?”
She nodded, giving a sarcastic smirk. “You bet.”
“Who?”
“The Talbots.”
Deacon chuckled, but her expression betrayed no humor. “What’d you do now?”
“I refused to marry you.”
He feigned shock and betrayal, splaying his fingers and pressing them to his chest. “Why, I do declare. Why on earth?”
She laughed again, turning away. “Guess I just wasn’t marriage material.”
Deacon’s brow furrowed. The words, ‘I disagree’ almost flew out of his mouth, but he caught himself. Such a thing might be taken the wrong way, he thought.
“And why is that?”
She shot him a half smile, as though sizing him up somehow. “Because -” she paused, glancing from him to the skyline. Then she shrugged. “Because I’m not as advertised. Not quite Talbot material.”
She stared at Deacon, and after a moment, seemed to read the confusion on his face. Maggie shot a glance back at the door again, then crinkled her nose. “I’m not actually a Talbot. I’m a Porter.”
“Ok?”
“I was born out in Neah Bay – out in Washington State. My parents fell victim to that unfortunate side effect of low income communities with fuck all to do.”
“Drugs or booze?”
She gave a sad smile. “Both. I was two when child services stepped in and took me from my parents. And you know bears. The Fenns know the Talbots, the Talbots know the Porters out west and the Holdens up north – we all keep abreast of each other, you know?”
Deacon nodded.
“Yeah, well. Chief White Eagle wasn’t gonna let a potential breeding female be lost to the system, so strings were pulled, and I was adopted by my mum and dad out here.”
“God, when you said that, it made my skin crawl.”
“Said what?”
Deacon shuddered. “Breeding female.”
Maggie smiled. “It’s what they see me as.”
“Jesus, I wonder if that’s how Gramps refers to my cousin, Gracie.”
She shrugged. “If he’s a bear, probably.”
They sat in silence a moment, the gray clouds breaking to betray blue sky beyond. He found himself searching for something to continue this conversation. He liked hearing her speak. “So, what made you spurn me? Leaving me all heartbroken and unmarried.”
Maggie smiled, her eyes glistening with a hint of whatever tears she shed before he arrived. She took a deep breath, fidgeting with a hole in the knee of her sweatpants. “Can you keep a secret?” She asked.
For some strange reason, his heart began to race. “Of course.”
She shot him a skeptical look. He nodded, gesturing for her to continue.
“Do you Fenns have a First Hunt ceremony kind of thing? When you get old enough, I mean.”
Deacon shrugged. “Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Well, I got to the right age for mum and dad to take me out for the hunt, and -” she paused, her brow furrowing. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“I swear, your secret is safe with me, darling,” Deacon said, reaching over to squeeze her knee. They both froze in the wake of the gesture, Deacon pulling his hand away as though her sweatpants were on fire.
Wow, Deac. Nice one. Ass hat.
Maggie shook her head. “Well, that was it. That night I became the biggest disappointment in Talbot history.”
“What? Why?”
She gave a sad smile. “Because unlike my parents, I can’t turn into a bear.”
Deacon’s mouth fell open. “You’re not a shifter?”
She shrugged. “They assumed I was because they thought my biological mother was a Porter. She wasn’t. My birth dad was.”
Deacon watched her there, the breeze flitting strands of black hair at her temples. “Holy shit.”
“My parents here kept it a secret for years. That’s why I wasn’t with Candyce the night she died.”
Deacon stopped a moment. She spoke as though he should know these names, but he was lost. “Candyce?”
Maggie nodded. “My sister. She and my cousin, Beth, were the girls that disappeared a few years ago.”
Deacon stopped dead. He knew the stories that spread when the girls disappeared – tales of hermits and other nonsense. In the end, though their bodies were never found, Bodie Calhoun was named their killer. He’d attended their funeral.
His stomach turned to think he hadn’t seen Maggie there.
“Beth and Candyce invited me to hunt with them the night they disappeared. Got all hurt when I refused them, but even Candy didn’t know about me. I couldn’t go because I couldn’t let her and Beth know I wasn’t a bear. I never saw them again.”
Deacon watched her face a moment, wanting to touch her, but thinking better of it. “All this time, your parents were the only ones who knew?”
She frowned. “Yeah. They were sure something bad would happen if Chief found out they’d adopted a norm. Richard gave a great deal to get me here when I was a baby. Finding out the tribe’s youngest breeding female wasn’t actually a breeding female might be unwelcome news. But then they sprung this wedding bull shit on my dad, and we had to do something, you know? I couldn’t very well lie to you, could I?”
Deacon scratched at the stubble coming in along his jaw line, a symptom of not shaving since Carissa’s fateful text. “Didn’t go over well, I take it?”
She scoffed. “Y
eah, you’ve seen the teeth marks.”
Deacon frowned. Deacon’s former EMT partner, Lara, made mention of the last few nights’ calls, many of them coming from the rez. Lara blamed it on the moon, but Deacon was beginning to wonder if Maynard wasn’t the only one getting roughed up the past couple days – all because Maggie Light Foot wasn’t a shifter and couldn’t tell anybody.
And he thought Patrick Fenn could be difficult.
“I’m glad they didn’t try to hurt you.”
What the hell did you just say, Deacon?
Maggie shot him a sideways glance. “No. They banished me, instead.”
“Really? But you’re here.”
“Astute observation, pal,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him. Despite the weary eyes, she was still fighting to be jovial. “Yeah, I’m not exactly advertising that fact, though. This is the first time I’ve been outside in three days. If anybody catches me here, I’m fucked.”
“Jesus Christ.”
She waved his concern away. “Ah, it’s nothing. Would’ve been way worse if I’d told them the truth.”
Deacon stopped, realizing then that she hadn’t shared this news with her family, with her tribe, yet she’d shared it with him. He felt like a fan that catches Larry Mullen, Jr’s drumstick at a U2 concert. “Is there somewhere you can go?”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll figure out something. Just didn’t want to leave Papa while he was healing.”
“Can’t you just tell them? There must be other Talbots who aren’t bears.”
She looked at him with an air of almost pity at this. Then she shook her head. That news would be ill received. As far as their concerned, that secret would be a betrayal. My father would have betrayed them by putting his child before the needs of the tribe. And not even his real child.”
“Seriously? Jesus Christ,” Deacon said, watching Maggie Light Foot stare off at the clouds with the same pensive, unaffected air. Yet her eyes betrayed the truth – still red, swollen from weeping.
“Are you gonna be alright? Is there anything I can do -?”
He stopped short, realizing what he was saying. She just shot him a feigned stern look. Her rough exterior was cracking though, peeling away with each minute they spent together, revealing a vulnerability just beneath.
He found it surprisingly endearing.
“Well, you patched up my dad. What are you hanging around for?” She asked. Though there was a jovial hint to the question, Deacon couldn’t help but feel out of place. What was he doing there? Other than simply trying to spend time with Maggie Light Foot.
“Sorry. I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, hopping up from the stairs. He took a few steps, feeling strangely pulled back toward the tiny fisherman’s cottage where Maggie lived with her aging father. He scolded himself, softly. He had no place there, no right to stay. What the hell was he doing driving all the way to the rez to see why an old man was limping?
“Here,” Deacon said finally, turning back to Maggie as he pulled a business card from his wallet. It read his name, his cell number, and Fenn Construction Group. Despite not working for his uncle Terry for several years, he still carried the cards.
“What’s this?”
Deacon shrugged. “In case you need it. If he has any – I don’t know. Just have it, yeah?”
Maggie stared at him, her expression softening in a way that almost unnerved him. Stop looking at me like that, Maggie. Or more aptly, stop looking back at her, Deacon! You twit.
Then Deacon piled into his SUV and fought with every ounce of his being not to glance back at Maggie as he pulled out of her driveway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You know what he will do when he finds out!”
Maggie lay in her bed, staring up at the open beams of her ceiling as she replayed the night her mother left.
“You know what he will do when he finds out!” Her mother had said. She referred to Maggie’s uncle, Richard White Eagle.
Maggie had managed to go unseen for four days in her home, feeling the comfort of waking in her own bed stripped away each morning as memory poured over her, turning her stomach before she’d even the chance to open her eyes. Tension hung over the house as though waiting for bad news. Still, Papa wasn’t well, and his state seemed to deteriorate rather than improve as the days passed. Now she knew why, Deacon Fenn having followed the man home and patched him up properly. Now she knew his injuries weren’t simple accident. He’d been attacked, and he’d been attacked by a bear.
“It has to look like any other day, girl! I’m going to get my damn breakfast, and you’re not stopping me!” He’d said again that morning as he stumbled out to his car.
Maggie fought with him for half an hour before relenting. Though he wasn’t wrong in his proclamations, he also wasn’t in the best shape to be going anywhere. Even Deacon asked that he stay put until his leg wound healed.
“I’m sure a few days at home won’t seem so strange with you injured.”
He furrowed his brow at this. “What makes you think anyone knows I’m injured?”
He still hadn’t confessed the source of his unseen hurts to her the day before, but now she knew. Despite her concern for her father, she also knew better than to press.
Talbot men liked to keep to themselves. Even from those they loved most.
Maggie was now curled up in her bed, replaying the day her mother left, over and over again – in between random thoughts of old Blue Eyes.
“What would you have me do, then?” Maynard had asked, watching helplessly as Maggie’s mother packed her things. Maggie had sat perched at her bedroom door, watching through a hairline crack as her parents argued in hushed conspiracy.
“I don’t know! Send her away. Send her back to her family.”
“We are her family!”
Maggie fought to be quiet despite tears streaming down her face. Her mother had changed the night of their hunt, going several days without saying a word to anyone. It was as though Maggie had somehow betrayed her, simply by being what she was. How could she have known she wasn’t a bear? How could she fix something as out of her control as the marrow in her bones?
“Maynard, if you don’t do something and he finds out -”
“I’m well aware of the consequences.”
“I don’t think you are,” her mother had said.
Maggie watched her mother come into view, watched her expression as she shot one parting glance toward Maggie’s door. Karen Talbot didn’t approach, didn’t come to say goodbye. She shook her head. “You’re making a mistake, Maynard Keeps His Word.”
With that, she turned for the door and was gone.
Maggie lay on her bed, the curtain of her bedroom window pulled aside to allow the gray light to pour in. She wasn’t unaccustomed to being cooped up for days on end, but somehow being cooped up by choice was far easier than being so by force. And to top it all off, she had a number that she desperately wanted to call.
As a form of distraction, she mulled over old contacts for her biological family out west – a grandmother was still alive, as was an uncle, but her mother and father were nowhere to be found.
Options were slim, as Maggie realized, and she had little to build a life on her own. How far could a single, unemployed female get with only two hundred bucks in her pocket?
Two hundred bucks her father handed her the day before.
Well, at least that’s a bus ticket, she thought.
Or…
This thought crossed her mind many times over the past twenty four hours. What if she told Richard she’d reconsidered; let the marriage agreement play itself out? Richard would get what he wanted, the Fenn land grant could be divvied as planned, and she could be engaged to old Blue Eyes.
Damn it, Maggie. Just stop thinking about it. No one comes out a winner in that scenario. Not even you. The poor bastard is hung up on a break up texter. Let that shit lie right where it is.
The familiar sound of her father’s car announced his ar
rival home from breakfast. She half hoped he’d brought her something, but knowing his cautious nature, Maynard Talbot wouldn’t take the chance.
She lay there for another moment or two, listening. The day before, there’d been a second set of wheels coming down the drive. The day before, Old Blue Eyes had followed her father home. She’d nearly lost her mind.
Oh god, oh god, oh god. He’s coming. They’re coming. They know.
She’d grabbed her sweater from the chair and hurried out into the front room, seeing her father hobbling toward the house as a black SUV rolled into the drive.
Her heart shot into her throat. It wasn’t Richard’s car. She remembered the moment of realization; the way it made her chest grow tight.
She’d almost fell over at the sight of him.
Now she lay in her bed again, the tiny scrap of paper pressed between her fingers. She stared up at it, letting it block the light of the window from view.
Deacon Fenn
Fenn Contracting
You’re not calling, Light Foot. You’re never calling this number, she thought, over and over. Yet there she lay, staring at the words with a smile glued to her face.
Why had he come all the way out to the rez? Could he really have just been checking on Maynard? Or was there another reason?
Yes, Mag. There’s another reason. The poor bastard is heartbroken and trying to distract himself. Stop reading into it.
Papa hobbled through the front door, groaning and grumbling as he sloughed off his coat.
“Got you some blueberry pancakes here, if you’re interested.”
What?! She thought, launching out of bed to greet her father. “Did you get me any sausage? Bacon? Tell me you brought meat!”
Maynard glared at her, then offered up the take out bag. “Ingrate.”
She snatched the bag, smelling the sweet and savory mix from within. Maple bacon, her favorite. She took to the breakfast like a starved animal, her father ignoring her as he settled into his recliner to watch Fox News.
She was halfway through her breakfast when wheels began tearing up the dirt driveway, announcing an incoming car – an incoming car with frightening speed. Before Maggie and Maynard could even respond, the sound of car door slamming sent Maggie running through the house, heading for the back door.
The Bears of Blackrock, Books 1 - 3: The Fenn Clan Page 34
