Page 8 of Return By Fire

My lips curve. Oh yeah. The sparks flew, all right.

Even before they knew each other’s name.

CHAPTER SIX

Eight Years Ago

I practice smiling in the mirror and wince when I realize my buddy Nick could have a point. Between my wild ass hair and overgrown beard, I look like a deranged lunatic. I stroke the heavy strands between my fingers and consider, “Should I shave it off?”

After all, this trip is much more than a simple vacation that will have me retreating to Alaska like I normally do after wintering on my boat in Florida. It’s a trial by fire that may alter the course of life as we know it.

Well, at least mine and the brothers of my heart.

I fall back a step and sink down onto the bed in my stateroom. Knees spread wide, my elbows brace before I sink my fingers through my hair and rasp, “God, what am I supposed to say to her?”

The she in question being my sister’s best friend and former lover of my “brother” John Jennings. A woman of incredible intellect, beauty, and inner strength. A woman, I learned through the most heinous way possible, gave birth to Jennings’s baby and never let him know.

A child my sister is godmother to.

I can hardly credit the fact Maris has kept this secret as long as she has. Over a decade and nary a word has slipped. She has easily been able to look me in the eye and lie for all these years every time I’ve directly asked her, “How’s Kara?”

Hopefully, after seeing Kara and asking her some pointed questions, the pain from that will abet a bit.

“Or maybe she’ll do exactly what Maris did—kiss you on the cheek and send you on your way,” I mutter furiously, recalling when Maris dropped me off at Juneau International Airport for my annual sabbatical to Florida. I mimic, “Kiss Kara for me. Give her extra hugs and love.”

After I first left, I believed those words were simply because the two women were thick as thieves. Now, I wonder if the ambiguous language was to send love through me to Kara’s—Jennings’s!—son.

Christ, what a fucking mess.

“Did they truly intend on secreting something away—a boy from his father for the rest of his life?”

This is one of the many questions I have for Ms. Kara Malone.

And I don’t plan on leaving Florida this time without the answers.

* * *

As the sun sets over the Atlantic, I am awed. Nature, in all her magnificence, saves different parts of her glory to display around the globe. Here, where I have my feet kicked up against the rail of my boat, the dusky rose and orange that backdrops tall palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze is so vastly different than the overwhelming sight of the Mendenhall Glacier, the picturesque backdrop of my family home in Juneau.

But nature punishes us for embracing her tranquility too long. In Alaska, we deal with earthquakes on a continual basis—not to mention snow up to an elephant’s ass. In Florida, nature sweeps through like a grand dame in a ballroom with her wicked hurricanes.

Like women, nature’s secrets have the potential to be destructive if a person isn’t prepared. That’s the real reason I’m here, but I can’t think about the details yet.

I’m too stuck in the past and the bonds of brotherhood that have never been stretched quite as far as I’ve pushed them—albeit unknowingly.

I can’t help but laugh aloud, recalling the way the five of us connected—the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show. “Christ, even now, the memories make me want to throw on a pair of fucking overalls.”

In the way some people form lifelong friendships at summer camps, we did it through axe throwing, tree climbing, log jogging, and wood chopping. We pumped up crowds in Ketchikan day after day, performance after performance. At night, in the crew quarters, we built the kind of friendship most people would sell their souls for.

That is, until that final summer when the guys came for a quick vacation to my parent’s home, and Jennings met Kara Malone—a young woman on a fast track to attain her PhD from the University of Florida who was interning at the Mendenhall Glacier.

Within the span of days, everything changed. Our crew of five brothers—well, and Brad’s long-time sweetheart Rainey—became a co-ed force in sexual frustration that was both amusing as fuck and crippling to the soul as I knew it was the beginning of our end.

Independent of all of us, Brad began flying back and forth from Ketchikan to see his Rainey.

Kody became infatuated with the unattainable Meadow.

Nick and Maris pretended to be friends.

---