Page 20 of Coveted By the Bear

I groaned internally. “Yes ma’am,” was all I said.

“Hmph,” the women said in unison.

After a moment of staring at the door Mira had disappeared into, the quieter one said, “Caleb McCreedy, you be careful with that one. You are a prominent figure in this town.”

How was I supposed to respond to that? I wanted to tell her my father was the prominent member in town. I was just a member. But most of all, I wanted the tell her to advise me again after she’d had an actual conversation with Mira. Instead, I said, “Y’all have a nice day,” then rolled up my window to deter any more unsolicited life advice. And so we sat, an awkward trio of semi-strangers watching the same door for the same unsuspecting girl to appear. I couldn’t help but notice when the women’s heads tipped together like a little pyramid of gossip as they whispered. For some reason, it really bothered me.

Maybe I was going crazy. A month and a half ago, I wouldn’t have given another thought to some old ladies gossiping about Mira Fletcher. Everybody did it. So what? There wasn’t much to talk about in a small town, bar the goings on of its residents, and Mira was the most interesting person to talk about. Maybe that was because people had been so creative with the stories they put out there about her over the years, or maybe because of the known truths about her sordid past that accompanied the rumors, but I was beginning to think that mostly it was because no one knew a single real thing about her. The unknown scared people. It conjured gossip. Maybe it was as simple as that for the townspeople, but it had consequences for Mira.

The door opened, and I sat up a little straighter. Whether it was because I was relieved to see her or because I was ready to drive the hell away from this awkward situation, I couldn’t tell.

I reached over and swung her door open for her, but Mira stopped when she saw something on the ground. She bent over to pick it up. It was a penny someone had dropped. The thought of that penny meaning so much to anyone put a raw feeling in my gut, but instead of pocketing it, Mira flipped it over neatly and replaced it in the exact spot she had found it.

“Why did you do that?” I asked as she climbed in and shut the door.

She stared at me in confusion.

“The penny. Why’d you flip the penny?”

“Oh,” she said. “It was on tails. It’s bad luck to pick one up on tails, so I flipped it to heads so someone else will have good luck.”

And that, I decided, wasn’t all I wanted to know about Mira Fletcher.

It was, however, all I needed to know.

****

“Why didn’t you tell me the favor you needed was for electric work on Crazy Mira’s land?” my brother, Brian, asked. He’d been grumbling since the moment we turned onto Dark Corner Road.

“Don’t call her that,” I said, shutting the door to my truck a little too soundly.

“What’s going on with you?” he demanded, slamming his own.

“Nothing’s going on.” I pulled two full plastic bags out of the bed of the truck and handed one to my sister, Sadey.

“Something’s going on,” Brian said.

“Just lay off, Brian. I asked for a favor and you said you would do it. If I would’ve known you were going to piss and moan so much, I would have just asked Drew to do it.”

“Drew is a lightning rod. My work is better.”

“Which is why I asked you. Plus, I didn’t think you were going to rag on me so much. You’re acting like Evan.” Low blow, but I was pissed with the twenty questions. “Don’t be that guy.”

He grabbed his tools, backpack, and huge duffle bag out of the back of the truck. “No, it’s cool. I feel like hiking through a haunted forest on my only day off,” he said dramatically. “Except this is the part in the horror films where the sidekick,” he said, pointing at himself, “disappears, only to be found nine scenes later hanging from a tree with his face eaten off.”

“What is wrong with you?” Sadey asked, shaking her head.

I could see the goose bumps on her arms from where I was standing.

“Finished?” I asked.

“No, I’m not. Do you like her?” He searched my face like it would hold the answer.

“Yeah, and you would too if you actually talked to her.”

“Not like that, Caleb. You know what I mean.”

I growled and rubbed my hands over my face before I unhooked the small gate to Mira’s property. I couldn’t tell him what my real problem was, or what I’d become, but I’d be damned if I started lying to my family. I’d give him as much as I could and hope it was enough. “Look, Mira saved my life. And I don’t just mean saved it. I mean she used up every last ounce of energy she had in her body to drag my carcass up to her house. She probably hadn’t eaten in days. You didn’t see her lying there, passed out, because of the effort she had put into getting me on her horse. Her stomach was rumbling so loud I thought it was the damned grizzly back to finish me off. She’s young, scared, has no family, has been through God-knows-what and she was still cool with standing over a stranger and shooting a bear.” I stopped walking and turned on Brian who was following quietly behind Sadey.