by Edie Claire
She paled. “You’re the one who found his body, aren’t you?”
Ben looked at her with sympathy a moment, then heaved out a sigh.
“Listen, Haley,” he began. “Yes, I was the one who found your uncle. And I get why you think what you think. But no, I’m not the slightest bit worried about wandering around out here. That sign should have been taken down weeks ago.” He frowned, then looked at his watch. “I’m afraid it’s kind of a long story, and I’ve got to get to work…”
His forehead creased for a moment. Then his face brightened. “Hey, if you’re not doing anything else this morning, why don’t you ride along with me? I’ve got to drive up to Moose Pass to pick up a boat part from this buddy of my boss’s. It’s only about a forty minute drive up there, and you’ll love the scenery now that you can actually see it. I promise I’ll tell you everything you want to know about your uncle. Everything I know, anyway. What do you say?”
Haley smiled. She could already tell that Ben Parker was a far cry from the men she was used to spending twelve hours a day with. For one thing, he wore jeans to work. For another, she strongly suspected he wouldn’t be the least bit impressed by her tally of billable hours.
But he could answer her questions about her uncle. And he seemed genuinely eager to show her more of Alaska.
She was genuinely eager to let him.
Chapter 7
Haley jumped into Ben’s truck a few minutes later with a drawstring backpack, a fresh cup of tea, and a handful of oatmeal and flax bars.
He looked down at the snack bars with a guilty expression. “Sorry. I didn’t even think about your getting stuck out here without any breakfast. I should have offered you a frozen waffle or something.”
Haley laughed. “You’re not responsible for feeding your landlord. Hauling her suitcase out of the woods and getting her car out of a ditch is plenty sufficient.”
“Don’t forget the linen service,” he said seriously.
“I haven’t,” she returned. “You’re almost up to a five percent rent discount for the month.”
“Five percent?” he exclaimed with a mock scowl. “Man, you’re cold.”
She shrugged dismissively. “I told you already. I’m a lawyer.”
He cracked a grin. “Noted.”
The truck started down the gravel road toward the highway, and Haley’s smile faded as she pulled out her phone. “I really need to get into my email soon,” she informed him. “Will I be able to get a signal at Moose Pass?”
His lips twisted. “Probably. But if it’s important, I wouldn’t risk it. I’ll stop out by the highway; you should be able to get a signal from Seward. If not, we’ll drive closer until you can.”
“Thanks,” Haley replied, feeling uncomfortable. She owed the man enough favors already. She made a mental note to have Ed surprise him later with a free month’s rent.
Ben parked the truck on the shoulder as they reached the open valley by the highway, and Haley’s cell phone sprang immediately to life. “This is good,” she said brightly. “Just give me a second here to respond, okay? I’ll be quick.”
Her relief turned rapidly to dismay. Downloading… message 64 of 128.
“No,” she murmured miserably, not realizing she was talking aloud. “No!”
As her eyes scanned the incoming list, her stomach went into free-fall. The auto-responder message she’d left at work had accomplished nothing. Updates, questions, meeting requests, and demands for action merely poured in in duplicate, the second ones beginning with perfunctory well-wishes for her trip, then repeating the original request. “What part of vacation don’t—” Haley cut herself off.
The text messages were worse. As she scrolled through screen after screen of innocently passive-aggressive questions from her mother and nonsensical, panicked babble from her sister, Haley felt like her body was being sucked into an abyss. On impulse, she dropped the phone on her lap, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.
She could not sit here and type out responses to all of this nonsense. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t.
She opened her eyes, grabbed the phone back up, and tapped on her mother’s phone number instead.
“Haley!” Michelle’s voice answered with a quaver. “Well, thank God! Where have you been?”
“I’ve been exactly where I told you I would be, Mom,” Haley said brusquely. “Listen, I can’t talk long. But I need you to listen to me. I am perfectly 100% fine. F-I-N-E. I am safe, I am well, and I am whole.” At least for now, she added silently. In truth, her sanity was growing more precarious by the minute. “But I’m staying at Uncle Randy’s cabin and you’re not going to be able to text me out there. So here’s what I need you to do. Tell Micah to send me one email every day, and I will send one back. I don’t know what time of day it will be, but I will send one. And only one. If she doesn’t expect anything else, she’ll be better off. Okay?”
The line went quiet. Haley had no trouble picturing her mother’s drawn, concerned face as Michelle contemplated her next question/criticism. “We almost had to take your sister to the hospital last night,” she said finally, her voice heavy.
Haley’s throat constricted. “Why?”
“Well, you know how difficult things have been between her and Tim. And you couldn’t expect that she would take your leaving very well, did you? It wasn’t a full-blown panic attack, but it was close to it. Don’t you think your sister is dealing with a little more than she can handle right now?”
Haley felt an unfamiliar pressure around her nose and eyes, and her breathing turned ragged. Good God… don’t cry!
She was not a crier. She hadn’t hauled off and sobbed since that horrible day in college when her Aunt Janie had died. Why now? One more harangue from her mother was nothing new. Neither was a near “panic attack” from Micah. Haley was all too familiar with the phenomenon, but she called it what it was: a hissy fit.
She drew in a great gulp of air. “Mom!” she said firmly. “Micah is a grown woman with plenty of other support around her. If she really cares about the—”
Haley remembered that Ben was sitting two feet to her left.
“This whole adventure is about stress reduction,” she amended. “Peace and quiet. Solitude. And that includes a break from my phone and all things digital. I am seeing green mountains and listening to birds and watching blue sky and probably for the first time in my life breathing clean air—” her voice nearly cracked again. Dammit! What was wrong with her? “I will not back off on this, Mom,” she declared, gathering steam. “It’s too important to me. We’ll email once a day or I swear I’ll chuck this phone in the ocean and you’ll not hear another word till my plane lands. Do we understand each other?”
The silence on the other end of the line was interminable. Haley could feel Ben squirming in his seat, but she was too mortified to look at him.
When her mother’s voice at last returned, it was no longer quavering. “If you think that’s the best thing,” Michelle said flatly. “For Micah and the baby?”
“Yes, I do,” Haley proclaimed. “Absolutely.”
Michelle cleared her throat. “And I suppose you want me to tell her, rather than your taking the time to explain this to her yourself?”
“Yep! Thanks for offering. I really have to go now, Mom. I’ll email you sometime tomorrow.”
“Don’t you think—”
“Tomorrow, Mom. Take care. Bye!”
Haley ended the call and tossed the phone into her bag. She stared straight ahead for several seconds, her heart thudding in her chest. The heavy sensation in her facial bones had turned into a hot, moist pounding.
No, no, no, she begged herself. Not here, not now. Maybe she shouldn’t keep fighting it. Maybe she was overdue for a long hard cry, and maybe it would do her good. But it was not going to happen in front of a virtual stranger. The poor man could be traumatized for life. She would keep it together, and she would go on with her day. She was going to have a good day. She was going
to have a great one.
Haley rolled down her window, cast a look out at the sweeping snow-tipped mountains that rose out of the landscape beyond Seward, and breathed in deeply.
The air was so crisp. So cool. So pure.
She exhaled slowly, then turned back to Ben. “All done,” she said with a smile. “Moose Pass, here we come.”
***
Ben drove up the Seward Highway at a leisurely pace, keeping one eye on the road and the other on Haley. To say that his new landlord intrigued him would be an understatement. That she was attractive, witty, and intelligent, he’d picked up in the first five minutes of knowing her, despite his being half asleep. But this morning’s interaction, rather than helping him get a clearer picture of her, had only complicated it.
Her nervousness in the woods earlier had seemed flaky at the time, but given that she had been told by the authorities to look out for a dangerous bear — the very one she thought had killed her uncle — it was understandable. In fact, for an attorney who was so obviously out of her element, she showed a good bit of moxie. He could only wonder what she was like in her element. He grinned to himself at the thought of her intimidating a roomful of stuffed suits. God help the fool who made a sexist comment!
And yet… there was the phone call. She had obviously been excited about seeing more of Alaska, but all signs of cheer had drained from her face at the first sight of those incoming messages. And as she continued to browse, she had transformed before his eyes from a confident, enthusiastic adventurer to a beaten-down and suffering… what? His mind searched for the appropriate word. The closest thing he could come up with was martyr.
Why? He knew he had no business asking the question. He had tried to give her at least the illusion of privacy, but that was difficult when she was sitting right beside him. And since he was neither deaf nor stupid, he was aware that whatever her problem was, family drama was making it worse.
Unfortunately for him, he could relate to that phenomenon all too well. Perhaps at some point, he would share that fact. But not now. Right now, sheer humanity dictated that he pretend he’d heard nothing at all. It also dictated that he give her a dose of his own favorite medicine.
Nature therapy. It had never failed him yet.
He was anxious to point out the highlights as they drove, but decided to wait until she asked him a question. As long as she faced away from him, he figured she wasn’t ready to talk. But as she stared out the passenger window at the scenery, her slumped shoulders began gradually to straighten, and he could tell she was feeling better.
“What are those flowers?” she asked finally, speaking for the first time since they’d left Seward. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.”
Ben smiled at the sea of pinkish-purple blossoms that swayed on tall green stems along the roadside. “Fireweed,” he answered. “It’s everywhere in Alaska. My mother keeps trying to grow it down in Seattle, but she never has any luck. For whatever reason, the flower just likes it here.”
Haley’s eyes at last turned toward him, and he was delighted to see that their sparkle of good humor had returned. “I’m with the fireweed,” she declared. She sat forward and watched out the front window, twisting around occasionally to take in every aspect of the passing vistas. Ben knew how she felt. He had grown up in the shadow of Mount Rainier and boated all over the Washington and Oregon coasts, but his first trip to Alaska had blown him away. It was like any other national park times infinity. The mountains, valleys, forests, rivers, lakes, beaches, and glaciers seemed to go on forever. And for the most part, they were still as wild and untamed as they had ever been.
This stretch of road was particularly stunning, with tall gray peaks standing on either side of rolling green meadows filled with wildflowers. Haley sat forward intently as they passed the edge of a lake, its calm surface reflecting the snowy crags of the Chugach Mountains set against the blue sky above.
“The water is so many different colors,” she commented. “This lake is turquoise, but that last one was more of an aqua. Almost chalky looking.”
Ben could barely restrain himself. “That’s caused by the glaciers. They churn up the bedrock into silt, and that silt gets carried down with the meltwater into the lakes and streams. It’s so fine and powdery that it sits suspended in the water, and the sunlight shining on it gives off the different colors.”
Haley grinned at him. “I forgot I was riding with a ‘naturalist.’”
He shrugged. “Just trying to earn a decent tip.”
“Okay,” she said playfully, pointing out over his left shoulder. “What kind of bird is that?”
He turned to look at the very large bird winging its way parallel to the truck, then blinked back at her. “Oh, come on. You have to know that one!”
She looked again, and her green eyes lit up. “It’s a bald eagle!”
“Ding, ding, ding!” he praised facetiously. “They’re like pigeons up here.”
Haley watched the eagle until it was out of sight, twisting herself backward as far as her seatbelt would stretch. “That was so cool!” she enthused. “Are they really that common here?”
“You’ll see for yourself if you stay awhile,” he replied, gratified beyond words by the glow in her eyes. He always got a rush from watching the wonder on people’s faces when they experienced a part of nature that was new to them. It was his full-time job, but he never got tired of it.
He waited anxiously for her next question, but to his dismay, it was not what he’d hoped for.
“You were going to tell me about my uncle,” she reminded him, her face suddenly serious again. “If you don’t mind talking about it, that is.”
“I don’t mind,” he lied. He would, in fact, rather talk about almost anything else. The last thing he wanted to do was bring her down again. But she was Randy’s next of kin. She had a right to know.
He cleared his throat. “I hadn’t heard what the medical examiner found, but it doesn’t surprise me. Your uncle wasn’t in the best of health. He was overweight, he smoked, he drank, and he used to complain about how much it cost him to stay on his medication. I got the impression he didn’t always take it, and I know he didn’t stick to whatever diet he was supposed to. At least not while he was at Seward. All I ever saw him eat was grilled meat and potato chips.”
Haley said nothing. Her face had gone blank again.
Ben fought a sigh and moved on. “A couple weeks before he died, he drove up to the cabin and asked me if I’d seen a black bear around. I told him no, I hadn’t, but I wasn’t home much, especially during the day. He said he’d seen the same bear twice, rummaging around the stuff behind his house. The night before he came over, he’d nearly run into it when he was coming out of the outhouse. He turned and ran back in and then got stuck there waiting for the bear to go away.”
Haley’s eyes widened. Still, she didn’t comment.
“I told him that he shouldn’t be surprised a bear was attracted to his yard, the way he left his trash lying around. It wasn’t the first time I’d warned him that he was pretty much inviting a visitor. He cleaned it up a little after that, I think. But your uncle wasn’t the most… energetic guy.”
Ben paused a moment, remembering her uncle’s colorful, yet tedious retelling of the outhouse incident. Randy was the kind of guy who would talk constantly to anyone, regardless of whether or not they were actually listening. He’d once invited Ben over to grill some steaks, and after Ben left the bonfire to use the outhouse, he’d come back to find Randy still talking to the place he’d been sitting.
“The bear he ran into wasn’t acting aggressive,” Ben continued. “I suspect it was just after the bad ground meat Randy admitted he’d thrown out in a trash bag earlier in the day. But seeing the animal so close to the house freaked the man out. He called Fish and Game to complain about it, and they told him the same thing I did — take care of your trash. That made him mad. He wanted them to come out and shoot the bear because it was bothering him.”
Ben blew out a breath. He hardly relished the rest of the tale. It would be hard for Haley to hear, even if she and her uncle weren’t close. But there was no way to sugarcoat it. “He was complaining to me about their response the morning of the day he died. I explained to him that Fish and Game would only remove a bear if it was a clear threat — if it was acting aggressively or if it kept trying to break into his buildings even after he’d stored his trash right. He listened to what I said, drove straight into town, and called them back to report an aggressive bear. He told them it had charged him.”
Haley’s eyebrows perked. “He made it up, then?”
Ben nodded. “I think it was probably later that same day that he had the heart attack. He might have seen the bear again and was running from it. He could have been running from a moose. He might have just been walking back from the outhouse in no hurry whatsoever. However it happened, I didn’t find his body until the next evening, after his partner called me. By then it had obviously been…” he struggled for appropriate words. “Molested by some animal or other. I’m no pathologist, but nothing about it looked like a bear mauling to me. There was no blood. He was obviously dead before whatever it was got to him.”
He paused to see how Haley was handling the gore factor. She looked okay. He pressed on.
“It looked to me like a combination of ravens and some small mammal. A coyote or a fox, maybe even a wolverine. I couldn’t find any tracks because of the rain. But it wasn’t a bear.”
Haley’s face remained stony. “Then why the danger sign?”
“Because I wasn’t there when Fish and Game came out,” he explained. “All they knew was that they had a suspicious death right on the heels of that same person reporting an aggressive bear — a case they hadn’t investigated yet, most likely because they’d dealt with him before and didn’t believe him. So they erred on the side of caution and posted signs all around the property. When I came back and found one on my own cabin door, I went down to talk to them and told them about my conversations with Randy. It was obvious to all of us then what had and hadn’t happened. They took down the other signs pretty quick, but I guess they missed the one up by his house. I’m sorry you had to see it.”
