Wicked in Winter

by Jennifer Bernard

  Several of the ladies jumped to their feet, but Gretel waved her arm in the air. “No no, it’s a bit of jelly from those amazing jam cookies. I’m okay. No blood has been shed in the making of this row of misshapen stitches. Although considering my track record when it comes to sports, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to be Lost Harbor’s first knitting victim.”

  Pretty soon she had them all laughing, and by the time conversation resumed, the topic had changed to the mystery of S.G.—the runaway girl who had hidden out in the firehouse.

  The stitch-and-bitchers threw out all kinds of theories. Was she the lone survivor of a twin-engine plane crash in Lost Souls Wilderness? Had she been kidnapped from an off-the-grid homesteading family? Smuggling came up, as did the Russian border, which was hundreds of miles away, but then again, S.G. did look Russian.

  Gretel didn’t contribute to the discussion, even though she knew more about S.G. than most, since Nate had first discovered her in the firehouse and Bethany had treated her sprained ankle.

  No, her thoughts were entirely focused on what Mrs. Holt had said about Brenda Ross. That she’d be crushed if her family was broken apart. That Zander was fulfilling his mother’s wishes by raising the boys here in Lost Harbor, on the family homestead.

  Some stranger shouldn’t interfere with that dream. And Gretel couldn’t allow her own careless words to wreck it either. Surely there had to be something she could do to help. She just had to get creative.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Susan Baker called Zander a few days after the car-pool accident.

  “How is everyone? Any injuries?”

  “Just the one—the driver’s stroke. My brothers are both fine.”

  “Jason wasn’t even there,” she pointed out.

  “Right. He was in town with me. I brought him home. But he’s fine too. We’re all fine.” Hm, awkward babble. Great. Always impressive to a caseworker.

  “Very fortunate. Not so fortunate is the fact that I had to leave Lost Harbor before I got a chance to visit. I’m in Kodiak now. I will have to reschedule.”

  “Great.” What a relief that she wasn’t right outside his door with an order to remove Jason. “Whenever you’re available, we’ll be here. If you give me a heads-up—”

  “What would be the point of that? No one gets a heads-up. That’s not how it works. But I will tell you that it probably won’t be for at least a week.”

  “Great,” he said again, then corrected himself quickly, “I mean, whenever. We will welcome you with—”

  “Rotten tomatoes,” she said dryly.

  Wow, a sense of humor. Very well-hidden up until now.

  Should he take advantage of her slightly more friendly tone? “I have a guess about what this other living situation is that you mentioned. Would you be able to confirm or deny?”

  “Nope. No point in speculating until it’s a real offer.”

  “An offer?”

  But she’d already hung up the phone. Susan Baker definitely had her own way of going about things. He heaved out a long breath and went to the big chore board. In the special notes area, he scrawled “Family Meeting tonight.”

  Then he went out to his workshop and vented his frustrations with a belt sander on a table that needed to be stripped of several decades worth of varnish.

  Between the custody question and his combustible attraction to Gretel, there was plenty of frustration to be vented.

  The family meeting got him nowhere. He told his brothers that there was a new caseworker on the scene, and that she was keeping a close eye on them. Petey promised to be on his best behavior. Jason didn’t say much, but then again, he was busy wolfing down practically an entire salmon.

  After dinner, Zander asked Jason to help him in the workshop for a minute. When Susan Baker came, she’d want to talk to the boys individually. If anything was on Jason’s mind, he wanted to know now so it didn’t bite him in the ass later.

  “How’s school going, Jason?” he asked as the two of them unpacked a case of polyurethane.

  “Good.”

  “Skiing?”

  “Good.”

  So far, so monosyllabic.

  “You excited about the high school team?”

  Jason shot him a scornful “dumb question” look, as if that one didn’t even deserve a monosyllable.

  “How about home? Anything you want to complain about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  ”I know I can be strict, but I’m just trying to keep things on track. Do you think I need to lighten up?”

  Jason brushed aside a shank of hair that kept falling in his face. “I don’t know.”

  Not much of an answer. Jason didn’t like to talk, not the way Petey did. Not that Zander was much better.

  “So you’re happy? Everything’s good?”

  “I miss Mom,” Jason said abruptly. “And Dad. I wish they knew I made the ski team.”

  “Mom probably would have welded you a trophy by now. Or a ski rack.”

  A smile split Jason’s face. Zander noticed pimples on his chin. Poor kid.

  “Yeah, probably.” Jason pulled his ski hat out of his pocket and put it on. “Are we good? I want to do a quick run through the woods before bed.”

  “Homework done?”

  “Yeah.” Jason aimed his long body toward the door of the workshop. The kid was almost as tall as Zander, though still not as muscular. Give him time.

  “If something’s bothering you, will you tell me?” Zander called after him.

  “Yeah, Z. Something’s bothering me. Begins with the letter Z.”

  “Oh, real funny. Nice one.”

  With a smirk, Jason vanished out the door. Zander quickly put away the remaining cans of poly.

  He still got the feeling that Jason wasn’t telling him everything. But he was thirteen, after all. What thirteen-year-old boy wanted to talk about his problems? Look how long it had taken Zander to tell Gretel about this situation—and he was twenty-seven.

  All he could hope was that Jason knew he could talk to him if something really bad came up.

  In the meantime, he needed to know if his wild theory about Stern and Sterner was correct.

  The next day after school, while Jason was stretching out with the others on the snowy field behind the high school, Zander approached Doug Stern. He was in his forties, extremely fit, with a clean-shaven face and the look of a Viking invader.

  Or maybe that was just Zander’s paranoia talking. He was perfectly courteous as he greeted Zander.

  “So, uh…” Now that he had the man’s attention, he wasn’t exactly sure how to put this. Are you planning to steal my brother? “How’s Jason doing with the practice sessions?”

  “Good, good. I knew he would. He’s a real talent. Eager to learn, too.”

  Really? Zander almost said. Stubborn, know-it-all Jason? Eager to learn? Maybe from his ski coaches, but not from his big brother.

  He kept all that to himself. “Good to hear.”

  “I have high hopes for him next year. This team could really dominate. I wish we had him this year, but—” The coach shrugged. “Rules and regs.”

  “Right. So when you say that you wish you had him…”

  “Nothing against the current crew, but there’s no one else with Jason’s potential. An athlete like him can be a kind of tentpole. Everyone else tries to keep up and so they level up their own game. It’s a coach’s dream.”

  “He’s that good, huh?”

  “He is.”

  So far, Zander wasn’t hearing anything about Jason going to live with the coach. He drew in a breath for courage.

  “I’ve heard that you foster students sometimes.”

  He was quite proud of that one. Direct and yet indirect.

  The coach gave him a cryptic look, then turned to answer a shouted question from one of the students. “Sometimes,” he told Zander when he was done. “We have a lot to offer, my wife and I. A stable family environment, extra training if the studen
t wants it. It’s worked out well for us in the past. We may well do it again. Why, do you have someone to suggest?”

  Was Stern angling for information now? “Not really. Seems like it would be a tough thing for a kid to leave home. I know it happens, but there’s got to be a really good reason.”

  “Oh sure. A student has to be very serious about skiing for us to take him or her on. We’re very choosy. But if someone has real talent and we think we can help, we consider it.”

  Zander studied the coach’s expression, trying to read between the lines. Was he saying that he wanted to foster Jason or didn’t want to? If they wanted to, why didn’t they come out and say so directly, to Zander?

  Maybe his theory was completely off-base. He didn’t know what to think anymore.

  Coach Sandy Stern blew the whistle and the students jogged across the snow to huddle together.

  “Gotta get to it,” said the coach. “Good to talk to you, Zander. Keep up the good work with Jason.”

  “Thanks,” Zander said to his back, as he hurried toward the group. The coach skied over to his wife, who smiled at him without interrupting the flow of her instructions to the kids. The two coaches looked so comfortable together, so solid, so respectable and trustworthy in their high-performance ski jackets and ultra-pricey skis. The perfect couple. The perfect ski coaches. The perfect parents. The perfect family.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next time Aimee called, Gretel was somewhere she’d never imagined she’d be. An outhouse.

  “Hello, darling, how does a cabana on the beach at Baja sound?”

  Pretty fricking great, she had to admit. But not out loud. “Been there, got the sand rash.”

  “Oh come on, sweetie. How cold is it there?”

  “The thermometer outside the outhouse says five-point-two degrees.”

  “In Baja it’s seventy, so—wait, what did you say?”

  Gretel laughed quietly to herself. “Outhouse. It’s like an outdoor shed plopped over a hole in the ground. But don’t worry, there’s a kind of toilet you can sit on and plenty of toilet paper.”

  Nothing but shocked silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Mom?”

  “Are you in one right now?”

  “Yes! Ironically, it’s one of the few places with decent cell service. Wanna FaceTime?”

  “No!” Aimee shrieked. “I will not FaceTime with an outhouse. Is there 911 there? Should I call for help?”

  “Mom, calm down.” Oddly enough, her mother’s over-the-top reaction made Gretel decide she didn’t mind the outhouse. “We had a plumbing issue in the bathroom, so we have to use the outhouse until Earl fixes it. It won’t be long.”

  “Honey, every word you utter is like a stake through my heart. You’re supposed to be an ornament to society, not some kind of pioneer mother’s helper. All you have to do is find the right man with the right bank account.”

  Gretel put down the phone and let her mother vent while she finished her business.

  When she picked the phone up again, her mother was saying, “This Alaska whim isn’t funny anymore. Have I taught you nothing?”

  Gretel squirted hand sanitizer on her hands. “The bit about always carrying sanitizer has come in handy. The part about men, I’m trying to block out.”

  “Gretel, darling, I’m begging you. Just come with me to Baja for one week. There’s a lovely man I want you meet. He’s a little less wealthy but also a little younger and you could always use your honeymoon fund to make up the difference.”

  “How much is in that fund by now, anyway?” Her mother had started it years ago as a kind of incentive for Gretel to get married. She’d forgotten about it until now.

  “Oh lord, I don’t know. It must be almost a hundred. If I check, will you come? A little sunshine will open your eyes. You’re on some strange trip right now…oh! Is that it? Have you been drinking?”

  “Well, they say strange things happen around Lost Souls Wilderness. But as a matter of fact, I haven’t had a drink for weeks now.”

  “Weed? Molly? Ecstasy?”

  “Oh my God, Mom. I’m not doing drugs. I’m doing my job. And it feels good.”

  Sure, using an outhouse at five-point-three degrees didn’t necessarily feel good. Or maybe it did, in a “I survived so I must be a capable human being” kind of way.

  “Job.” Her mother said the words with disgust. “Jobs are for people who don’t have your advantages. Why did I work so hard to make sure you had everything for you to just throw it away?”

  “By ‘work so hard,’ do you mean marry rich and get good prenups?”

  “Yes,” Aimee said simply.

  “Kinda sounds like getting married was your job, if it was so much work.”

  “But that’s my whole point, it’s better than a job.”

  Gretel tugged on her gloves and pushed open the door of the outhouse. It had an open window shaped like a crescent moon, meant for venting. Apparently it was a common design for Alaska. But it meant that inside the outhouse was only a few degrees warmer than outside the outhouse.

  “Did you know there’s such a thing as outhouse races? You put the outhouse on wheels and race while you’re—”

  “Goodbye, cruel child. Call me when you’ve come to your senses.”

  “Love you, Mom. Oh, quick point of clarification. Does ‘come to your senses’ mean ‘get married’ in Aimee Morrison Brandt Tartikoff language?”

  Her mother clicked off the call.

  Just in time, because Gretel was chilling down and needed to get back inside the toasty-warm house. She snapped a photo of the outhouse with its cute little window and sent it to her mother, then tucked her phone in her pocket.

  Not that she didn’t love her mother—she did. But Aimee had always seen Gretel as a miniature version of herself. When Gretel was little, Aimee would dress her in matching mother-daughter outfits. The two of them had competed in mother-daughter beauty pageants until Gretel had rebelled. It had taken literal years for Gretel to realize that she wasn’t a carbon copy of her jet-setting, glamorous, light-as-air mother.

  Sometimes she still wasn’t sure about that either. She loved to travel, after all. She and her mother had that in common. Gretel loved seeing new places and meeting the people who lived there. She loved chatting and making new friends.

  The difference was that Aimee’s idea of traveling was finding the best restaurant in each new city and ordering the most expensive bottle of champagne. Also, she was hyperaware of everyone’s social status, and factored it into every relationship.

  Gretel puffed out a breath, creating a cloud in the cold air. She’d been working on making a ring, like a smoke ring. As soon as she mastered it, she’d show it off to the kids. Her father, who loved his cigars, had taught her how to make smoke rings.

  Weird thing to teach a kid.

  Here, children learned more basic survival skills—how to chop wood, how to start a fire, how to keep a fire going, how to change tires, how to fish, how to do basic carpentry, how to drive on icy roads.

  She’d learned her own survival skills—how to shift between two completely different households, how to be adorable and make people smile, how to flirt, how to tell if someone had money, how to dress to showcase her looks, how to be the life of the party, how to get invited to the right parties.

  What wasn’t on that list: how to rely on herself, how to manage her money, how to earn money that wasn’t given to her by her father, how to pay her debts, how to feel confident in her own abilities, her own self.

  That part was a work in progress.

  Aimee’s words came back to her. It must be almost a hundred. It wouldn’t be much of a honeymoon if it was a hundred dollars. Did that mean that it was more like a hundred thousand? That seemed like an outrageously expensive honeymoon, but probably not to her mother.

  She shoved open the door to the arctic entry and Groovy came tumbling out, as if she’d been penned up just inside. She leaped out the door and da
rted straight for the nearest tree, sniffing wildly.

  “I guess we all have our survival strategies,” she told Groovy. “Marriage or sniffing trees, whatever works, amirite?”

  And just like that, the idea came to her. A survival strategy that might work for everyone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As car-pool driver of the day, Zander’s purpose for stopping at the Noonans’ was only to drop off Eli. He wasn’t supposed to be scanning every inch of the property looking for Gretel. But he couldn’t quite stop himself.

  Eli dashed inside, his backpack bumping up and down, and a second later, Gretel emerged. Instead of actually putting on a coat, she’d wrapped her blue fake fur around her shoulders. She must be in a hurry, because she hadn’t bothered to fasten her snow boots either.

  She hopped across the yard toward his Suburban, so adorable it set his teeth on edge.

  “Hi Zander, hi Petey. Zander, can I speak to you in private? Do you have a few minutes? Actually, it might take more than a few minutes.”

  His eyebrows climbed. Was this some sort of come-on? “Um…now?”

  “Doesn’t have to be in a bedroom,” she said quickly. “It doesn’t even have to be today. I’m working at the Wicked Brew tomorrow, maybe you could swing by.”

  “Okay, that should work. I need to get Petey home, he’s got a science project.”

  “And it sucks!” called Petey from the backseat.

  “Also, we have to discuss his vocabulary,” Zander said dryly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She nodded and waved them off, smiling as he performed a turnaround.

  Wild with curiosity, he swung through the usual evening routine of dinner and homework and chores. Jason got dropped off late by a friend from the ski team and dove right into his homework, with barely a grunt of greeting.

  What would it take to get Jason to actually communicate?

  Then again, who was he to complain? It had taken him so long to tell someone about the new caseworker.

  Don’t be like me, kid, he wanted to tell Jason. You might miss your shot.