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I stopped, sighed, scrubbed my face with my palm, and then spent a minute eating before continuing.
“Lena Dunfield was goddamned gorgeous.” I glanced at Eva. “She looked a lot like you, matter o’fact. Black hair, green eyes…” I hesitated. “The, um…the same figure.”
Eva blushed, smiling at me. “You’re sweet.”
I shrugged. “She was wearin’ a short pleated white skirt and a red sweater, black boots with weird little heels.” I was losing myself in the memory, now. “She, uh. Damn, she was so beautiful. Filled out that sweater like nobody’s business, and the skirt was just short enough to make you think you might get a glimpse of somethin’. Never did, but you’d hope and look and hope. She stopped in front of the cafe for some reason—and that was the moment it all started. She was standing just a couple inches away on the other side of the window, and she looked at us. Now, this part was the subject of argument between Liam and I for fuckin’ years, but Liam ain’t here no more so you’re getting my side of it. She looked at me first. She stopped, saw us, and her eyes went right to me. Then to Liam, and then back and forth between us. And let me tell ya, those big green eyes went wide, and she smiled, and god, right then, she was smitten. With me, with Liam, who the fuck knows anymore? We was twins, and she liked what she saw.”
“Sounds like the start of a Hallmark movie,” Claire said.
I scoffed. “Coulda been, I bet. Not that I’ve seen a Hallmark movie, mind you.” I rolled a hand. “So, she came in, pulled a chair up at the end of our booth, and that’s how the friendship started. For us, she might as well have been a fuckin’ movie star. She was from the city, drop-dead gorgeous, funny, easy to talk to, and she seemed to like us, despite us bein’ the kinda boys we were—no manners, uneducated, all kinds of rough around the edges, basically.” I finished the food on my plate and pushed it back, sipped at my water. “We kept finding all kinds of excuses to come down here, then, and we always managed to track her down. Then, one day, she talked us into letting her follow us up to the cabin.”
“From the way you’ve described things, it sounds like that took quite a lot of courage on her part,” Liv says.
I laughed. “She was a city girl, through and through. If you could call Ketchikan a city at that time but, to us, it was the big city. Never been anywhere else up to that point, so this was it.” I shook my head. “That was Lena, though. Absolutely fearless. Barely knew us at that point, but she jumped in the truck and sat between us all the way back to the cabin. Didn’t even blink at how…rustic it was, and just to be clear, rustic is bein’ generous. Dad and Gramps were shocked as hell when she climbed outta that cab, lemme tell ya. Coulda knocked Dad over with a feather.”
“I bet,” Bast said. “What was she like? Mom, I mean.”
I sighed. “Your mother was…one of a kind. Ballsy as hell, but all woman. I mean, when she got outta that truck, Dad was standing there in denim overalls and no shirt, a shotgun in one hand, a hatchet hangin’ from his belt, a dead rabbit in the other hand that was drippin blood all over his bare feet. Keep in mind, Dad was a monster of a man. Ain’t no Badd man ever been small, but Dad was probably the biggest. Stood, oh, six-six, I’d say, and was damn near four hundred pounds of mostly muscle, though by that point he’d put on some weight around the gut. Big ol’ beard, black as night, gone to gray in spots. Scary motherfucker, I’ll tell you, even to grown men. He’d go with us to town on rare occasions, and grown-ass men would cross to the other side of the road.” I couldn’t help a laugh. “Gramps wasn’t any less intimidating—he was like Dad, only older. Not quite as burly, but hard as nails and cold as ice. One of those old guys who you just knew, just lookin’ at him, that he’d seen some shit and done some shit. He had those old soldier eyes, the permanent thousand-yard stare, even fifty-some years after the war.” I shook my head. “And Lena, she just walked right up to ’em and shook their hands, never minding the blood on Dad’s hand.”
All was silent and absolutely still as I told my story. I felt everyone around me, clustered, hanging on each other, sitting on stools and chairs, and even perched on the bar. Gramps had been a storyteller, taught us history and the Bible by telling stories to us, so I guess I’d learned the art of drawing out a story from him.
I mused in silence for a minute, maybe two, and no one spoke, waiting.
“Get to the good shit, already,” Zane growled.
I gave him a hard glare. “There is no good shit, punk. We’re talking about history that turned me into a reclusive alcoholic, and resulted in my twin brother and I not speaking for the last forty years of his life.” I couldn’t help a snarl. “So have a little fuckin’ respect, would you?”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just impatient. I’ve waited my whole damn life to hear this.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? You didn’t know I existed until what, almost three years ago?”
“Whatever happened with you and him affected him, too. He turned to drinking after Mom died, but he was a pretty heavy drinker before that—Mom’s death just made him drink himself to death.” This was Bast answering. “He wrestled with somethin’, our whole lives. He’d sit out there,” he pointed at the door, “on a chair, a bottle of Jack in one hand and a rocks glass in the other, staring out at the water, drinking, clearly thinking hard about something. Never would talk about what, though.” He shrugged. “Now we understand…or at least, we’re beginning to.”
I nodded. “Alcoholism runs in the family, sad to say. Dad and Gramps, both. Great-Gramps too, but I didn’t really know him. I just remember Dad talking about Gramps in not exactly glowing terms. So all of you boys best keep a weather eye on your drinking. Just be aware, you got it in your blood to end up like me, if you ain’t careful.” I noticed the way Dru glanced at Sebastian, and gestured. “You have thoughts on that, don’t you, sweetheart?”
She palmed her belly with both hands, rubbing gently in circles, her eyes on her husband, loving and affectionate in a way that made my heart twist. “He gets…maudlin, sometimes, and turns to drinking to deal with it.”
“Don’t know what the fuck maudlin means,” I murmured.
“Means I get stuck thinking about things, and sometimes a little depressed.” Bast crossed his big tattooed arms over his chest. “Shit. If I say I don’t have a problem, it’ll sound like denial.”
Zane rumbled wordlessly, pointing at me with a thick finger. “We ain’t talking about you, Bast, we’re talking about Uncle Lucas.”
I sighed, nodded, scraping at the grains of the wood bar top. “Fair enough.” I fiddled with the fork. “Forgot where I was.”
“You were telling us what Mom was like when she was young,” Lucian said. “I’m very curious. I barely remember her.”
Lucian was the quiet one, from what I knew. His woman, wife, girlfriend, live-in significant other, whatever—I wasn’t sure—was an exotic-looking young thing with dark caramel skin and dreadlocked hair and stunning eyes. She was hanging on his shoulder, nuzzling into his neck as he sat sideways on the stool to face me, his arm slung low around her hips in a casually possessive curl.
I rubbed my jaw. “Lena…god, how do you describe an entire person?”
I felt my gut twisting, my heart hammering, my entire being reacting with a physical, mental, and emotional wrench in trying to recall Lena for all these family members, when I’ve spent every day of the last forty years trying to forget her.
“She was…” I glanced at Liv, an apology in my eyes.
She rubbed my shoulder. “Go on.”
“She was magical. No other way to put it.” I scraped my hand through my hair. “It ain’t a physical thing, either. I mean, sure, she was damned beautiful. But you kinda stop seeing that after a while, you know? That ain’t quite accurate because you don’t stop seeing how beautiful someone is, you just…get used it. She wasn’t someone you could ever take for granted, though. She was smart, smarter than just high school learnin’. She would go to the library every week and check
out as many books as they’d let her. She carried around this bag, a big old sack she’d made out of old jeans and flannel shirts and that ugly green canvas the Army uses to make rucks out of. It was always full of stuff—it was more than a purse, it was…I don’t know how to put it. She lived out of it. Didn’t register to Liam or I right off the bat because she was shy and quiet about it. But the fact was she had a terrible home life, and she was basically a runaway. And you know it had to be pretty fuckin’ terrible if she preferred to be at our log cabin, which barely had running water and electricity, rather than her own home.”
Bast, who’d been perched on the same stool as his wife, shot to his feet. “Wait, hold on. Hold on, hold on.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
He shook his head. “I was organizing the basement the other day and…” He shook his head again. “No fuckin’ way. Hold on—I’ll be right back.”
He jogged to the very back of the bar—to a door that led into the storeroom, and down to the basement. He vanished down the steps, was gone a couple of minutes, three at most, and reappeared with something in his hands.
He stopped in front of me and tossed it on the bar in front of me.
My heart…it hurt almost as bad as when I’d had the heart attack—I felt so bad I literally clutched at my chest, unable to breathe. My eyes misted, my throat closed.
It was Lena’s bag.
My hands trembled, shaking like rusty, papery oak leaves in a fall wind. I lifted the too-familiar, long-lost shapeless bag up to my nose and inhaled—it still smelled of her. Mints, dryer sheets, and the faint scent of perfume. I smelled the woods. The ocean. The pine trees.
Lena.
The bag was not empty. I fished inside and withdrew…books, of course: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Remains of the Day, I Know This Much Is True, The Things They Carried, All the Pretty Horses.
There were bookmarks in each, along with library slips indicating the books were now decades overdue.
“Damn,” Bast murmured. “Guess we owe the library some money.”
“Sebastian,” Dru whispered. “Hush.”
There was no sound in the bar other than breathing and the occasional cough or sniffle.
“This is it,” I said, eventually. “Her bag. Her satchel of essentials, she called it. She came over one Saturday with a paper bag full of old clothes, some scissors, and an old tin box full of sewing supplies. She sat down cross-legged on the big old stump outside the front door of the cabin, and she made that bag. She didn’t look up once, didn’t speak, didn’t do nothing except cut and sew. She did accept a pull of Dad’s hooch, though. Took her maybe two hours, and then she held up this bag. Liam and I had just got back from chopping wood and digging a hole for a new outhouse.”
“She made this herself?” Dru asked, running her fingertips over the fabric.
I nodded. “This was about…oh…six months after we met. After that, she was never without it. She kept a couple changes of clothes in there, food, a canteen, a carton of cigarettes, needful girly sorts’a things like makeup and whatnot. Sewing stuff. A big ol’ hunting knife Gramps gave her. Sometimes she’d have a bottle of somethin’ in there, or a baggie of dope. You could find just about anything you needed in this bag.”
“Cigarettes? Dope?” This was Xavier. “I was not aware that Mother was a smoker of anything.”
I waved a hand. “She wasn’t, except socially. Meanin’, us three’d go hiking up the creek, catch some fish, go swimming, eat, get a little tipsy, smoke some dope or a few cigarettes. None of us were smokers in the sense that we smoked regularly. It was just…something to do. Something you did, I guess. I dunno. It was the same with the dope.”
“By dope, you mean...?” prompted Brock.
“Dope. Pot. Mary Jane. Weed.” I waved again. “I ain’t seen this thing in…god. Since the last time I saw her…that day at the park in Seattle.”
“Tell us about that?” said Corin.
I shook my head. “I’m gettin’ there, kiddo, gettin’ there.” I let out a breath. “The three of us were inseparable. We did everything together. She basically lived with us, after a while. Stopped going to town, except when we went. She’d occasionally vanish for a few days, maybe a week at most, but that was a once a year sorta thing.” I paused a moment. “Liam and I were both stupid for the girl. Head over heels in love. We didn’t ever talk about it, but for the two, three years she was with us up at the Ward Creek cabin, it was simmering between us. We knew it was gonna have to get dealt with at some point, but we were hopin’ it would sort itself out somehow. I dunno. I know I…I loved her.”
I closed my eyes and ducked my head. “Always have. Always will—she’ll always be a part of me.” I shook my head, rubbed my eyes. “We were always vying for her attention. One-upping each other. Who could get a bigger buck, skin it faster, chop more wood, run faster, jump higher, grow a bigger beard. Make her laugh. Buy her somethin’ fancy. For her part, she was careful, mostly. I think she was just as confused as we were, if not more so. Liam and I were a lot alike, but also very different. She didn’t want to choose, I don’t think. Who would, though, y’know?”
“She picked Dad, though, obviously,” Bax said.
I nodded. “Yeah, she did. Not easily, though.” I thought a while. “Not sure what all I told you, boys,” I said to Roman, Remington, and Ramsey. “Probably only partially the truth, knowing me.”
“You said she gradually started favoring Uncle Liam, and it all came to a head when you took a trip to Seattle,” Rome answered.
I nodded. “That’s the truth, but only the vague outlines of it.” I paused again, got up to refill my plate from the kitchen with more salmon and prime rib, and I allowed myself a few French fries and a mozzarella stick. “It got complicated. She liked us both, that much was obvious. But who she liked more was…less obvious. Liam and I, by the time we were eighteen, were gettin’ antsy. We wanted to get off the Ward Creek property and see more of the world. Cast out on our own, the usual coming of age sorta shit. So we each got jobs down here, Liam at a bar, me at a lumber mill outside town. Lena would spend time with whichever of us wasn’t working, and that was when things got complicated, because before we got jobs, it was always the three of us. When it was just me and Lena, I was on top of the world. When I was working and I knew Liam was off, I knew he was with her, and I was jealous.”
I hesitated, not sure how much of this next part I should tell.
“Don’t hold out on us,” Zane rumbled, as if reading my mind, or my hesitation. “Tell it all.”
“Fine. But remember, you asked.” I ate a few bites and then continued. “Liam got sucked into the bar life, started working a lot, so I was spending a lot of time with her. I worked early mornings, so we would meet up after I got out and spend all day together, hiking, fishing, walking around town, just sitting on the dock and talking.”
I thought of those days, and a smile crossed my face. “That lasted about three months, and those were the happiest days of my life.” The grin faded. “We went hiking one day, way up off the trails. We stopped at this little pond, and we went swimming. Skinny-dipping. Things got a little…steamy. It was my dream come true. I thought that was it, she and I would be…together. That she’d chosen me.” I swallowed hard, and summoned the resolve to continue. “It happened a few times. Her and me, usually on a hike, late afternoon or early evening. She…her favorite time of day was sunset. We would hike up to a hill somewhere, and…yeah.”
Bast was sipping beer from a pint glass, and slammed the last half of it so fast he nearly choked, and then slammed the glass down on the bar hard enough to crack it. “You’re tellin’ me our mom slept with you…and our dad?”
I shrugged. “Who was first, I don’t know. Was she goin’ from one of us to the other? Don’t know that either, not for sure. I want to say no.” I couldn’t look at him, at any of them. “I…all I know for sure is me and her spent just about every single day together for three months.”
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“What changed?” Brock asked. “What happened?”
“Liam…noticed. Saw us getting closer. Saw himself getting pushed to the side a little, not being in on jokes. So he cut back his hours at the bar and started seeing her while I was working. He’d get up early and take her to breakfast, or…I dunno. Shit like that.”
“So she was messing around with both of you?” Zane asked, anger tingeing his voice.
I held up both hands palms up. “Told you, I don’t know for sure what was goin’ on with her and Liam. I know that once she and Liam started spending more time together, her and I were over. She still went hiking and stuff with me, but anything physical was over. Which is why I figured she started having feelings for Liam and stopped things with me.” I swallowed hard, staring at my plate. “I want to think the best of her as much as you boys do, but you want the truth, so I’m tellin’ it.”
“Keep going, Uncle Lucas,” Lucian said. “Good or bad, tell it.”
I nodded. “She was tryin’ to balance us both for another month or two. We’d basically moved into Ketchikan by that time, Liam and I living in a little one-room apartment. I dunno where Lena was living, to be honest. She was…she was hard to get to know. Very private. Kept her past locked down tight as a drum. All these years later, I don’t know shit about where she came from, other than I suspect her family life was rough. Brutal, even. But she never let it keep her down. She was…sunny. I dunno how else to put it. She was just…sunny.”