Chapter 20
20
Something had changed with Lachlan, and Maura didn’t like it. Instead of greeting her with that sweet smile of his when she took her seat at the bar, he kept a “professional” expression while he took her order. He wasn’t avoiding her—quite the opposite. She noticed that he kept a watchful eye on her, hovering close but not too close, like a self-appointed bodyguard.
He was acting more like his brother Gil—the intimidating guy you didn’t want to mess with. But this was Lachlan . The curious, openminded, interested-in-everything brother. Not the badass one with the fists.
She missed the old Lachlan more than she could have imagined. Where had his easy smile gone, his dreaminess, his sunny nature? It felt as if the sun of his personality had gone behind a cloud, leaving the world more gray and sad than it had been.
Every day after school, she’d walk down to The Fang, where she’d meet Pinky to get a ride back home. Since Pinky always wanted to stay with his buddies as long as possible, she got in the habit of going over lesson plans and homework at a table in the corner of the bar.
Bear and Lila actually created a sign for her, so that everyone knew that table was hers. It read, “Teacher at Work,” which she found very endearing.
From her table, her gaze would be irresistibly drawn to Lachlan, especially when he was busy concocting his latest cocktail creations. She loved the intense focus he brought to something as mundane as a Bloody Mermaid—his version of a Bloody Mary, with blue-green algae mixed in with the horseradish. The way he’d mix and sip and test and try again…what would that experimental mindset be like in other areas of life? Like the bedroom?
She sighed and gave up on correcting the multitude of grammatical errors in Sarah Chilkoot’s essay on glaciers. Mug in hand, she wended her way past a game of checkers, a table full of knitters, and a man in a balaclava slouched over a tankard of ale muttering to himself. Typical evening at The Fang.
“I’m making meatballs again tonight, special request from Pinky,” she told Lachlan, after he refilled her tea mug with more hot water. “Want to come over?”
“No thanks, I’ve got some work to do tonight.” He stepped away from her to take someone else’s order.
Well. That stung. She’d gotten used to the warm admiration and interest that always emanated from Lachlan. Although she hadn’t pursued it—for very good reasons—it made her feel better about life in general.
He doesn’t owe you anything , she reminded herself. You turned him down, remember?
She carried her mug back to her table and got to work on poor Sarah’s essay. Whoever had taught her the basics of writing had skipped over grammar completely. She cringed as she corrected the fifth misspelling of the word “rock.” Where did Sarah get her aversion to the letter c?
“Is it that bad?” asked a soft voice. She looked up to see Ruth Chilkoot hovering tentatively next to her table. “I recognize Sarah’s handwriting,” she explained. “I feel responsible.”
“Oh, just a few spelling and grammar tweaks, that’s all. She’s actually quite a good writer in terms of imagery and ideas.”
Ruth’s face brightened. Like the other Chilkoots, she wore clothes she’d woven or made herself, in this case gray wool trousers with a bright blue sweater belted over them. Surprisingly stylish for the middle of the wilderness. Her reddish-brown braid fell over one shoulder, her hair so thick it didn’t need a tie at the end. Her eyes were wide and gray and somehow both wise and innocent, as if she’d seen it all, but still had hope.
Maura wished she had that kind of optimism.
“Would you like to join me?” She pulled a chair from a neighboring table and swung it over. “Please? I could use a break.”
Ruth sat down, though she seemed poised to take off again at a moment’s notice. “I’m sure it’s partly my fault that you have so much work to do. My excuse is that I was homeschooled myself and grammar wasn’t ever important for the farm. We learned more about math and animal husbandry.”
“That’s definitely not one of the topics I generally cover,” Maura said dryly. “In fact I know nothing about it. You should teach a module for us. I’ve been inviting people to come in and share their knowledge, I’d love to have you take a turn.”
“Oh, I probably wouldn’t have time for that. But I’ll think about it,” she said quickly, seeing Maura’s disappointment. “How are Sarah, Noah and Jeb doing so far?”
“Excellent. I hope they’re enjoying it?”
“They love it. It’s all they talk about.” She smiled wistfully. “The other day, Noah said to me, ‘Did you know there are other places where we wouldn’t be able to understand anything they say, and they wouldn’t understand us?’ He could barely sleep that night, trying to understand it. The next day he started making up his own language. He said he was going to establish his own country with its own language.”
Maura laughed with delight. “Kids are amazing, aren’t they? They’re endlessly inventive.”
Another smile from Ruth, this one also tinged with sadness. “You’re right. But I wasn’t raised that way. For us, working was the most important thing. Contributing to the farm and to the community. I’m happy the younger ones are having a different experience, but it’s strange to me.”
Maura closed her file folder of essays and shoved it to the side. “I think I’m ready for a glass of wine. Would you like one?”
“I don’t usually…” Ruth hesitated, looking at her watch, then around at the late-afternoon crowd, then back at Maura. “Okay,” she said. “Why not? Everything’s different now anyway.”
Maura wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but she smiled and went to order the wine. This time, Bear took her order while Lachlan, elbows propped on the bar, took part in an intimate conversation with Martha.
A stab of jealousy shot through her, uninvited and unwelcome. The two of them looked so interested in each other, so wrapped up in whatever they were discussing.
“Ruth wants a glass of wine?” Bear asked in surprise.
“Is that strange?”
“I didn’t think they allowed alcohol out there.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
That question brought him up short. “Good point. There is no ‘they’ out there anymore. There’s just Ruth trying to do her best. That wine is on the house. She deserves it.”
After one last glance at the oblivious Lachlan, Maura carefully carried the wine back to her table. “It’s on the house,” she told Ruth. “Courtesy of Bear.”
“What would we do without Bear?” Ruth cautiously tilted the glass to her lips. “This is only my second glass of wine ever.”
“How was the first one?”
“I don’t remember much about it,” she admitted, and they both laughed.
“Do you have a ride home, just in case?”
“I didn’t drive myself in. My truck is at Gunnar’s, getting worked on.” Her face flushed. Maura made a mental note— interesting.
“Elias told me about the strange man who was bitten by a wolf out at your place. Have you had any other incidents like that?”
“Strange men or wolf attacks?” The wine was already going to Ruth’s head. Maura wasn’t sure about the ethics of taking advantage of that, but decided asking a few questions was perfectly harmless.
“Either one.”
Ruth laughed giddily. “All of our men are strange. It’s a requirement, really.”
“Ruth!” Maura pretended to be shocked. “You’re so sassy.”
“Don’t tell them,” Ruth said in a mock-whisper. “I’m silently sassy. It’s all in my head, while they rant on and on about their bullshit.”
“Ruth!” Maura let out a squeak of laughter, then waved off the attention of the neighboring table. “You should really drink wine more often.”
Giggling, Ruth took several more sips. “Okay. But seriously, the only men who want to work at our farm are very strange. But I’d never seen that other man before. He was different, more of a business type of man. I’ve seen that sort in the past, when Luke was still here.”
Maura didn’t know the full story, but she knew that Luke, the Chilkoot patriarch, was now in prison. “Who treated his wound? Did you?”
“I helped at first. But then they shooed me away because he needed to take his pants off. The bite looked really bad. He lost a lot of blood. I hope it didn’t get infected.”
“Did you catch his name?”
“He didn’t say his name.” Ruth took refuge in her glass of wine.
“But you might have overheard it.”
“Eavesdropping is a sin. It was men’s business.” Then she dissolved into giggles, and whispered, “His name was Al Grover. I listened in. I’m silently sassy and sinful, I guess.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Maura lifted her glass in a “cheers.” “Do you know where he went? Afterwards, I mean?”
“No. As soon as he could get onto his snowmobile, he left. He went down the road, but that’s all I know. But I think he left some money behind, with the men.”
“Who are these men you keep talking about?”
“My cousins, my uncles, my brothers. Some of them were in trouble along with Luke, but some were released and came back. I make them stay in a different house from the kids because the state might take the kids away if they’re exposed to anything criminal. I don’t trust them anymore. Do you know how hard it is to say that?” She held up a hand and whispered behind it. “I feel ashamed, but it’s true.”
“Why should you feel ashamed? They should. I think ‘silently sassy and sinful Ruth’ has the right idea.”
Ruth cheered up and giggled again. “I like you. I wish we were friends.”
“We can be friends.” Maura eyed her carefully, measuring how much she could say. “I know what it’s like to find out you can’t trust the people you thought were trustworthy.”
“You do?”
“I’ll tell you sometime,” she promised. “For now, can I ask you one more question about that man, Al Grover?”
“Okay.” An uneasy frown appeared between her eyebrows. “But I don’t know him.”
“Yes, I know.” Maura decided her best approach was to be fully transparent. “Lachlan and I were trying to figure out why that wolf attacked him. When we went out to your place to follow his tracks, we found a grenade in the snow. We think that he dropped it. But we don’t know why he had a grenade with him. Then when we got back to the truck, we found a note warning us to stay away. Elias said the note was written by Jared. Do you know why Jared would want to keep us away? Does any of this make sense to you?”
Ruth’s frown grew deeper. She looked away, bit her lip, looked back at her wine, pushed it away from her. “You should probably listen to that warning.”
“Of course we’re going to. We wouldn’t go to your place unless we were invited anyway.”
Clearly struggling with something, Ruth stared into her wine glass. “They’re up to something, but I don’t know what it is. I think it might have to do with a woman.”
“A woman?” That surprised Maura. “What woman?”
“I don’t know, honestly. I’ve heard them say ‘she,’ that’s all. And they expect to make a profit. A windfall, that’s what they say. We could use it, to be honest, as long as they’re not doing anything illegal.”
“But you don’t think they are?”
“They promised me they wouldn’t.”
Which didn’t quite answer the question.