The Bears of Blackrock, Books 1 - 3: The Fenn Clan (33 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

“Wait, what?”

Deacon sat on the end of the phone, holding his breath as Carissa took in the news.

“You’re kidding, right?” She asked.

“No,” he said, swallowing.

Carissa took a deep breath on the other line. “You know, of all the lines of bull shit I’ve heard over the years, this one is by far the most pathetic.”

“Oh, Car. I swear to you, that’s not what this is. I’m trying to figure out a way to call it off, but I just – I haven’t quite got a handle – I’m hoping once I get there and meet her, I can convince her -”

“Don’t bother, Deedee. Just don’t bother. I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

“Carissa! Don’t say that!”

Carissa muttered to herself on the other end of the line, fuming and swearing under her breath. Then the line went dead.

Deacon sat there on his porch, listening to an autumn breeze blow through the trees as his chest grew tight. The conversation had gone just as poorly as he’d expected.

He took a breath, pulled up her contact information, and lifted the phone back up to his ear just as John’s truck pulled into the driveway.

Come on, Carissa. Pick up, he thought.

The call went straight to voicemail.

“Here comes the bride, brother.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Deacon said, barely audible.

John heard it, nonetheless. “Didn’t go over well with the Missus, I take it?”

Deacon swallowed hard. He wanted John to go away. He wanted everyone to go away – leave him alone for a god damn minute so he could try to straighten out his life.

He felt as though he’d been trying to do just that for eight months. He hadn’t had any luck yet.

“Well, come on, then. We don’t want you to be late.”

Deacon rose from his front steps, and he and John climbed into Deacon’s SUV, John quickly plugging his phone into the radio to blare Zeppelin through the speakers. Deacon wasn’t wholly in the mood to blare classic rock, but perhaps Zeppelin was better than having to speak. It wasn’t John. Deacon loved John, and if there was anyone in the world he could share his thoughts with, it was him. He just didn’t want to talk to anyone. Save for maybe Carissa, if she’d let him get a word out.

“Christ, I hope she’s nice,” Deacon said.

John patted him on the shoulder, laughing. “You resigning yourself to it, then?”

Deacon shook his head. “No. I’m still planning to try to talk her out of it.”

“Really? What if she’s the one, though?”

Deacon snorted. “Shut up.”

“Hey, I’m just sayin. You want a fated mate, it doesn’t get much more fated than someone
arranging
a marriage for you. I mean, Jesus.”

They drove toward Falkirk’s Harbor,
In The Evening
blasting from the speakers as they reached the far gate of the Fenn property. It was wide open. They both shot each other a startled look to see it so.

The reservation was a quiet place, very few houses along the outskirts of the land. Yet trailer homes and old shacks betrayed their growing close the center of the rez. Deacon drove these roads many times, either as an aimless teenager, or answering calls as an EMT. He silently contemplated calling Lara, his old work mate, and seeing if the Machias Medical Center still had any EMT openings. It didn’t sound like Carissa was inviting him back south anytime soon.

Don’t think like that, Deacon. Get this shit squared away, and then call her back. It’ll be alright. It’s all going to be alright.

An impromptu parking lot was set into one of the fields surrounding the council building, the parking area filled to capacity with cars. Patrick’s truck was there, as was his mother’s Hyundai.

“Jesus, Mum’s here?”

John smacked his shoulder again as Deacon pulled into an empty space in the field. “You think she’d miss this? Hell no!”

They climbed out of the car and both stopped. The energy of the place was strange, and the smell was almost offensive. Only bears would be able to smell each other, and the air was filled with their familiar scent, but something else permeated the very walls of the council building. As Deacon and John approached, the doors to the building burst open, and a woman with long black hair came barreling out, shrugging into a jean jacket as she stormed away. In the instant that the doors opened, the smell of conflict and agitation rushed from within.

Deacon shot John a look. “What the hell is going on?”

Deacon glanced back at the agitated woman, watching her disappear behind the cars, as the rain began to kick up. Then he followed his brother inside.

“Is it so easy for the Talbots to step away from an agreement like this?” Patrick asked, pointing at the feet of Richard White Eagle.

There were dozens of faces all around, their darks eyes turned to the floor in many cases, save for the few that stood at Richard’s shoulders – his sons.

“We have other eligible females -”

“But not bears. I worked damn hard with you, Richard. Damn hard. You hold up your end of the bargain or no deal,” Patrick said.

Deacon’s heart leapt. The marriage might be cancelled? Holy shit! He wouldn’t even have to convince his betrothed against the idea; he would be free. Deacon glanced around the room at the faces of the many females gathered there. He couldn’t help but wonder which of these women had been his intended.

Richard White Eagle puffed up his chest, but it was clear he knew himself in the wrong. “We cannot speak on it here, but perhaps we can discuss a suitable alternative when the tempest has passed.”

Patrick straightened. “A suitable alternative? Explain to me how you intend to offer a suitable alternative.”

Deacon felt someone squeeze his arm and turned to find his mother Janice at his shoulder. “Hey honey. Why don’t you head back home?”

Deacon startled at this. Her tone was strange, as though she passed vital information to the communists in the middle of a White House dinner. “What? Why? What’s going on?”

Janice Fenn stuck out like a sore thumb in the council hall. Her light brown hair was shorn short, and her face was pale as a cloud compared to the native faces around them. Though many of the tribe had married outside the rez, lightening hair and skin in many families, the Talbots had long refused to marry anyone outside the tribe, and they looked no different than their ancestors.

Janice squeezed again. “In case it gets out of hand here, I need you to be elsewhere.”

“Out of hand? No, Mom. I’m not leaving.”

One of Richard White Eagle’s sons stepped forward as John took his own place at Patrick’s shoulder.

“What the hell is going on?” Deacon asked.

Janice took a deep breath. “Oh, a pissing contest. Naturally.”

Patrick’s voice doubled in volume suddenly, echoing off the walls with enough power to make the entire room recoil. “You have three days to sign the deeded land back over to me, or you’ll have trouble on your hands. Do I make myself clear, Richard?”

With that, Patrick Fenn turned for the door of the council hall with John at his shoulder. Deacon turned toward the door as much to get out of his grandfather’s path as to leave. Patrick didn’t speak as he plowed out of the doors and out into the cool autumn evening. He stormed around the corner of the building, handing John his keys.

“Drive my truck home, will you? I’m going to ride with Deacon.”

John agreed before Deacon could protest. He loved his grandfather, but the thought of being trapped in the tiny space of his car with the man in his current mood was about as welcome as a hangnail.

Deacon shot his mother an almost pleading look, but she just shook her head, climbing into her own Sante Fe. Deacon watched Patrick squeeze into the passenger seat of his SUV and wait for Deacon to drive. He could only imagine what was coming.

“I’m sorry that this fell through, son.”

Deacon snorted softly. Seriously? He was apologizing? “Gramps, I’m relieved. Honestly.”

Patrick shook his head, turning down the radio as the trailer homes and shacks grew scarce toward the outer edges of the rez. “They won’t give me a decent explanation for calling it off.”

“Seriously, Gramps. It’s for the best. There hasn’t been an arranged marriage in this family since -”

Deacon stopped. Generations? Decades?

No. The last arranged marriage in the Fenn family was that of Patrick Fenn to his wife, Laurel – Laurel Long tooth Allen.

Patrick scoffed, softly. “You talk like they’re indentured servitude.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Patrick shook his head. “I wasn’t keen on the idea when my father sprung it on me, either, but I went through with it because it was what was best for the clan.”

“But you didn’t marry a Talbot.”

“No. I married an Allen. And I married the last Allen to ever live. And I miss her every god damn day.”

The Allen clan had been as old as the Talbots, older than the Fenns. They’d come from further west and intermarried with Talbots to insure their bloodline continued. When the Allen name had all but died, their last living daughter was married to a Fenn, causing a rift between the Talbots and Fenns that was still felt in the council hall that very evening.

Grammy Fenn had died before Deacon was born, bleeding to death during complications while giving birth to her youngest child, Alison Fenn.

“I know it was asking a great deal of you, but I made the decision for more than just the Fenns. I made it for you. I know you can’t understand that, but you haven’t known the kind of love I’ve known. I loved your Grandmother from the moment I laid eyes on her. She was it from the day she was born until long after the day she died. I wanted that for you. I wanted you to have that kind of love.”

“And you thought you were better equipped to pick the girl for me?”

“No, but I thought fate might.”

Deacon didn’t respond. They let the silence pass, Deacon catching a glimpse of raindrops on the windshield as they pulled up to the Fenn gate.

“I can’t let the Allen line die, son. Her name might be gone, but she lives in every one of you kids. I can’t live forever, and who knows how many of your children will be bears?”

Deacon took a breath, but didn’t speak. His grandfather’s tone was softening in a manner he’d never witnessed before. Patrick so rarely spoke of Grammy Fenn. They had three children together, Grammy Fenn wanting desperately to have as many girls as she could – girls who would give birth to more bears. She got two girls, though she didn’t survive to see the second one grow up.

Deacon could only imagine how painful those memories were for his grandfather. To lose his wife to childbirth was heart-wrenching enough, but to then lose that very child to murder when she was only twenty-something – before she could have children? No one begrudged Patrick Fenn his foul temperament. No one.

Deacon wanted to get back home, call Carissa and let her know the good news – make everything right. Yet, he couldn’t make such a call with his grandfather glowering in the passenger seat of his car.

They rode along in silence to Patrick’s house. Deacon watched his grandfather climb out of the car with barely even a ‘good night,’ then watched him disappear into the house.

“You’ve reached the voicemail box of Carissa Jinoski. Please leave a message after the beep.”

“Hey, Car… I know you’re not happy with me right now, but I just wanted you to know that it’s all taken care of. The whole debacle has been called off. I’m still planning on coming home after the weekend, so – if that’s not something you want…? I’m here if you need. I’ll be here. Please call me when you get this.”

Deacon hung up the phone, clutching it in his hand as he loitered in his grandfather’s driveway, waiting for John’s return.

The rain was coming down in sheets now, tearing at his face as Deacon hopped out of the SUV to open the road gate. It was creeping into the evening, the sky an angry gray that betrayed massive thunderclouds overhead. Still, Deacon couldn’t sit still. He’d dropped John at home and taken off, barreling past his Mum and Dad’s. He caught sight of Dad’s eighteen wheeler in the back of the house, but didn’t stop to greet him. He simply wasn’t in the mood to hear familial questions about his well-being.

How is our Carissa doing?

Have you two settled into a new apartment, yet?

How’s the job hunt going?

Shite. Shite, and shite.

Only job he could find was working at a convenience store, and that didn’t pay enough to cover half of the rent on Carissa’s apartment. They hadn’t found a new apartment together, so Deacon still lived out of a suitcase in Carissa’s place, pulling his weight however he could. He did all the housework, gave her his entire paycheck, and constantly kept an eye on the local hospital job postings. How could an entire city like Boston not be hiring EMTs?

Despite feeling somewhat emasculated by the whole scenario, he was doing his best. He wasn’t sure if his best would look all that great from the outside.