Her Beary Fresh Start (Welcome to Bear Mountain #4)

Chapter 1

i count my blessings. yes, i do

BELL

“Mom, before you go, let me just say this. You have got to trade in that jacket for a real coat before Christmas.”

Guess I hadn’t done all that great a job of pretending I wasn’t cold during my two-day Thanksgiving visit. We’d just pulled up to “Babe Station,” as Gemidgee locals called the building-sized statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox that served as the university town’s trans-city bus stop.

My youngest daughter, Noelle, unloaded my roller board from the back of her Ford Focus and scowled at the old leather jacket I’d been wearing since before I dropped out of the University of Minnesota-Gemidgee.

“That ancient relic is not going to be enough to protect you against a Minneapolis winter.”

She had a point. Even with gloves, a scarf, and my thick Minnesota Museum of Black Heritage hoodie underneath, the jacket hadn’t been enough to protect me from a Gemidgee late fall.

Still…

“Hey, I’ve had this jacket for longer than you’ve been alive,” I answered with a defensive huff.

One that would’ve been way more convincing if my breath hadn’t turned white in the freezing air.

“I’m never trading it in. Do you know how hard it is to find well-made leather jackets with gold zippers these days? ”

“I’m not saying you have to get rid of it, but what happened to that gray coat Holly and I got you two Christmases ago?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Well, Linda said gray wasn’t doing my warm undertones any favors.”

“Linda?” Noelle squinted. “Are you talking about that unhoused lady who’s always hanging outside the museum you work at?”

“She gives great fashion advice,” I insisted. “Before the voices started up, she interned at Teen Vogue.”

Instead of looking impressed, Noelle’s eyes narrowed even more. “Mom. Is Linda what happened to your winter coat?”

I grimaced. “The thing is, she has cooler undertones, and yeah, it’s only fall, but it’s been really cold this Novem—”

“Okay, let’s reopen the conversation about you moving back to Gemidgee.” Noelle cut me off before I could finish explaining about November’s record lows. “You’re way too nice, Mom. Always letting people take advantage of you. First, my dad, now this Linda woman.”

I took the handle of my roller board from her. “Linda’s nothing like your father.” I didn’t mean to snap, but I had a hard time keeping the anger out of my voice.

Linda was an older woman whose dreams had been railroaded by mental illness. Dennis was a narcissist who took and took until you were bled dry.

Noelle’s expression softened. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know that was a really painful time for you. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t,” I lied. It wasn’t her fault I was so sensitive around the subject of her father. “It’s just, Linda doesn’t have anyone.”

“That’s why I’m trying to get you to move back to Gemidgee.

Holly’s in Vancouver. And Cousin Merry shocked everybody by turning out not to be in a long-term lesbian relationship and moving to Germany.

Now that Aunt Joy moved there to join her, you’re the only family I have nearby.

Aren’t you lonely down there in that apartment all by yourself? ”

Yes, a little. But that didn’t mean I wanted to move back to my hometown, where all my dreams of becoming an artist had graveyarded.

Luckily, the Brandt Motor Coach chose that moment to pull up with a Minnesota Express sign rolling across its digital window screen.

“Hey, I’m fine—but I’m not going to lie anymore, I am a little cold.” I opened my arms. “So, give me a big hug so I can get on this warm bus.”

Noelle, who was a few inches taller and much heavier than me, bent down to envelop me in a warm hug without any further argument.

“I’m going to miss you,” I told her. “But I’m okay. I like my life in Minneapolis. It’s little, but it’s mine.”

“I get that. But…” Noelle pulled back from the hug. “I worry about you.”

I worried about her, too. Her and Holly.

My oldest daughter hadn’t been back to visit Minnesota since her divorce, and now she was working herself to the bone to pay an outrageous amount of alimony to her deadbeat street-artist ex.

And even though Noelle was a surgical nurse who’d moved in with her surgeon boyfriend a few months ago, I didn’t like that relationship for her, either. Dr. Bradford Tate was arrogant and patronizing. I hated how he treated my daughter like an assistant, even outside of the OR.

I also didn’t like that he’d sat around taking calls instead of helping with Thanksgiving dinner prep on Wednesday night.

Or that dig he’d made about Noelle needing to watch her weight when he told us this morning that he’d been called to the hospital for an emergency surgery. It reminded me of how Dennis used to pick at me for not losing the weight fast enough after Noelle was born.

Bradford had insisted that we wait for him to eat but hadn’t ended up getting back until four, which meant I had to scarf everything down so I could make my six o’clock bus back to Minneapolis.

Sure, Bradford was a doctor who’d just been promoted to head of surgery, but that didn’t mean the pompous jerk actually deserved my sweet and brilliant daughter.

Still, I was the last person to give anyone relationship advice after the way things had ended with Noelle’s father.

A chill went up my spine, thinking of that dark time.

I’d had plenty of money, a big house, and a husband who everyone on the outside assumed was Prince Charming.

But after Noelle’s birth, my dream life had become a nightmare of resigned humiliation and carefully hidden bruises—one I never fully told my youngest daughter about.

Then or now.

“Not everyone’s like my dad, you know.”

Ironically, Noelle’s assertion pulled me out of my worried thoughts about her current boyfriend being a little too much like her father.

“You’re only fifty-five. If you’re not going to move back to Gemidgee, maybe it’s time for you to start getting out there.

Find someone to settle down with. You could even get married again—like that one woman from Enjenue and the lead singer of Death Buddha.

I mean, the dating pool in Minneapolis has got to be better than the one in Gemidgee. ”

Not necessarily. A few of my fellow divorcees at the Black Heritage Museum had warned me off dating. Apparently, the guys around our age who weren’t trying to turn you into a side piece were either looking for a nurse or a purse.

Besides, even though it had been ten years since the divorce, just the thought of a man touching me filled my stomach with nausea.

Still, for Noelle’s sake, I said, “Maybe. Maybe next year will be a fresh start for me.”

The bus driver honked, signaling final boarding.

“Sorry, honey, I’ve got to get on this bus.”

“Okay. I’ll call you next week to make plans for Christmas.” Noelle gave me another quick hug. “Text me when you get home safely.”

“I will,” I promised, scurrying toward the bus.

Little did I know that would be my first lie to her of many in the coming months.

After the city bus dropped me off a few blocks from my two-story apartment building, I put on my Walking Home playlist, which was mostly a boatload of Tina Turner and Joni Mitchell songs.

But in another fit of irony, the random shuffle chose “I Count My Blessings,” that first collaboration between West Nygard and Reina Smith, one of the singers from Enjenue—a ’90s girl group whose single album I listened to nonstop back when I’d been a UMG senior majoring in Fine Arts.

I’d focused on sculpting, and I’d already convinced the music department to place my thesis project, Purple Reign—a life-sized, purple-veined soapstone depiction of Prince, with angel wings made of music notes—in their lobby when I was done.

The only thing was, I’d never finished that sculpture.

I’d discovered I was pregnant with Holly when I began throwing up nonstop halfway through my chiseling efforts.

The voice that had told me the Prince statue was hidden inside that block of soapstone went silent and was replaced with more practical concerns. Like the cost of formula and diapers.

Costs I’d mostly had to bear alone after Holly’s bartender father, Naheem, died in a motorcycle accident shortly after she was born, without so much as a life insurance policy to his name.

Leaving me wide open and vulnerable to the aspiring politician who’d strolled into the department store where I was working while struggling to get by as a single mother.

Dennis had seemed like a dream come true when he asked me out. I’d just helped him pick an emergency replacement shirt after he spilled coffee on himself right before a big speech about financial preparedness he was supposed to give at UMG.

I’d warned him against asking me out. “This is a rare super-normal-looking season for me. I’m growing my hair back out after an unfortunate home dye job.”

“What color were you going for?” he’d asked.

“Hot pink.”

He’d just given me a smooth smile. “Well, lucky, I caught you when I did. In my opinion, your natural color suits you way better.”

Back then, I’d thought his acceptance of me looking what I felt was my opposite-of-a-cool-artist worst was a sign of his innate goodness.

I eventually found out that was the first red flag. He hadn’t accepted me. He’d selected me. A single mother, broke and desperate, who’d be grateful for his “stability.”

His opinions soon turned into nagging demands to conform to a conservative aesthetic while he was running to become mayor of Saint Everette Park—a small Minnesota city he’d eventually end up bankrupting with a string of money-laundering schemes for the Del Gotti mafia family.

Then, after Noelle was born, his opinions became my new laws. Ones I was punished for disobeying.

A familiar nausea churned in my stomach, remembering the years that followed me naively falling for Dennis’s “I’m such a nice and stable guy” act.

But that was a long time ago. I’d turned my life around in the ten years since my hard-won divorce.

I had my freedom, my dreadlocks—a hairstyle Dennis’s opinion would never have allowed—my gallery assistant job at the small-but-important Black Heritage Museum, and a tiny apartment within walking distance.

Sure, I lived paycheck to paycheck, and no, that art voice never came back. And yes, I felt lonely sometimes, but like West Nygard and Reina Smith were currently singing for one last chorus…“I count my blessings. Yes, I do.”

I unlocked the building door and pulled out my phone to text Noelle as “I Count My Blessings” faded into Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”

The first lie to Noelle was unintentional.

“Home safely!” I texted her before I’d even made it to the stairs leading up to my second-floor apartment. “Thanks for hosting me. Love you so much!”

I wasn’t trying to lie to her. I was so tired after a day of making Thanksgiving dinner and traveling by bus back to Minneapolis, I knew all I’d be doing would be falling into my own bed with my suitcase still unpacked as soon as I walked through the door.

But I was wrong—both about getting home safely and falling asleep right away.

When I opened my door, still humming along to Joni Mitchell, I froze.

My apartment was dark, but the expensive cologne I hadn’t smelled in years hit me before my eyes could adjust.

Dennis.

I found the ex, who still had five years left on his sentence for embezzlement and money laundering, waiting at the cute round yellow table I’d thrifted. A black gun with a silencer attached to its long barrel rested in front of him.

Just as Joni Mitchell reminded me, you don’t know what you’ve got…

Until it’s gone.