Loving the Right Brother

Some people said that the reason for his downward spiral was because he couldn’t live with the guilt of knowing that he might have been able to save his wife from a watery grave but had been too involved in saving himself to notice that she had fallen overboard, as well. The only way Eric could find to get even temporary respite from the inner pain was to anesthetize himself with alcohol. As time passed, it took more and more to achieve numbness.

He passed that lesson on to his older son. Ryan had once boasted to her that he’d had his first drink, served to him by his father, when he was nine. At the time, not wanting to be judgmental, she’d told herself that it was just Ryan’s way. That he could walk away from drinking any time he wanted to. The problem was that he didn’t want to.

But she was so blindly in love with him, so certain that he loved her back until that fateful evening. In the months that followed, she’d often wondered if Ryan wanted her to discover him with Trisha. He knew her penchant for turning up early. Did he thrive on the wild rush of getting away with it, or had he wanted to show her that he wanted to move on? He had to have known that finding him like that would devastate her. And he had still done it.

He’d been a piece of work, all right, Irena thought now, trying desperately to shut away the memories. A piece of work and she was an absolute fool for having loved him as much as she had.

And for still having feelings for him.

“Wait until you see Hades.” June suddenly spoke up, trying to fill the silence that seemed louder than the plane’s small engine.

June anticipated Irena’s reaction to the town she hadn’t seen in the last ten years as she began the plane’s slow descent.

The airstrip where their small fleet of passenger planes were housed was just up ahead. June smiled to herself. Hades really was growing, she thought fondly. And more than just a little. She and Kevin had slowly built up their business. They now had their own air taxi service as well as her original auto repair store. Kevin had encouraged her to buy it back shortly after the wedding. It was as if he’d sensed what it really meant to her. Which was why she loved him so much. He understood her.

“You won’t recognize the place.”

Irena laughed shortly. “That’s good, because I didn’t care for the old Hades.”

It was a sentiment shared by a great many of the young people in the area. The moment they turned eighteen, many left to find a life less desolate, or, as in the case of Hades, wasn’t isolated from the rest of the world for six months of the year. They all felt that Alaska was a good place to be from, but definitely not to live.

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” June told her. She herself had never experienced that urge to flee the way so many, including her older sister, April, had. “But it’s really been growing these last ten years. Ike’s turned into a real entrepreneur. He and Jean Luc have really helped build up the place.”

“Ike?” Irena echoed in surprise. “The guy who runs the Salty Dog Saloon?”

“The very same one,” June told her. There was no missing the pride in her voice. “He’s gotten things really moving around here. We’ve got a hotel now, and just last year, Ike and Jean Luc brought a movie complex to Hades. And they’ve expanded the general store. You wouldn’t recognize it.”

Irena laughed, shaking her head. June’s verbal list of changes fell woefully short of progress in her book. “Wow, that puts the town into what, the middle of the twentieth century? Only sixty more years to catch up, I guess.”

June spared her one glance before focusing back on the runway up ahead.

“Nothing that a good mall and a good lawyer can’t fix,” she told her friend. “You know, we still don’t have a really good lawyer in Hades. We would if you came back.” Her teasing tone vanished as she suddenly braced herself. “Hang on, Irena. This last patch can be a little rough.”

Irena was about to tell her there wasn’t enough money in the world to tempt her to make her return permanent. That she was more than satisfied practicing law in Seattle. Granted, she was only one of a large group of lawyers, but that was just fine. She didn’t need the pressure of being the only defense lawyer in a hundred-mile radius. The pace in Seattle was hectic, but still far more to her liking than life in Hades had ever been.

For the moment, she was too busy holding her breath and gripping the armrests to say any of that. The somewhat choppy flight ended with an even choppier landing. Irena continued clutching the armrests until the plane stopped moving. When it finally came to a halt, she realized that her legs felt rubbery. Getting out of the plane was going to be tricky.

June unbuckled her seat belt and turned around, smiling broadly and obviously pleased with herself.

“Got your money’s worth that time,” she declared. “The landing turned out better than I thought.”

“Right,” Irena murmured, more to herself than to June. “We could have crashed.”

“You’re a lot less optimistic than I remember you,” June said, only half kidding.

The next moment, a tall, handsome man with just a smattering of gray at his temples had thrown open the small plane’s door. His attention was directed to June and not the plane’s single passenger.

“That’s it, June,” he told her firmly. “No more flying for you until the baby’s here.”

“Honey, you’re not showing your best side,” June chided.

“That’s because my ‘best side’ had a heart attack, watching you land the plane,” he informed her, helping her down.

On the ground, June turned and watched Kevin help her friend down. She smiled beatifically, as if to erase the dialogue that had just transpired.

“Irena, I want you to meet my husband, Kevin. And he doesn’t always frown like this.”

“Only when June’s determined to give me a heart attack,” Kevin explained, setting the plane’s lone passenger down on the ground beside his wife. Kevin extended his hand to her. “I’m Kevin Quintano.”

Irena nodded, thinking that he had kind eyes. She took his hand and shook it. “Irena Yovich.”

“Yovich,” Kevin repeated. Surprised, he glanced at June before asking, “Any relation to Yuri Yovich?”

About to pick up her suitcase, she watched Kevin take it for her. “He’s my grandfather.”

The three of them walked to the small terminal that mostly housed his office and the tools that June used to work on the planes.

“I guess that makes us kind of related,” Kevin speculated, “Since Yuri married June’s grandmother, Ursula.”

Work, as well as a desire not to run into Ryan, had kept her from the wedding; but she’d had her grandfather and his new wife to her home, where she’d held a reception for them that included her mother and her stepfather. “Ursula isn’t still the postmistress, is she?”

“Of course she is,” June assured her. “The only way my grandmother would ever stop being Hades’s postmistress is when they carry her out of the office, feet first.”

Irena nodded. Ursula had been the postmistress in Hades for as long as she could remember. “Things really haven’t changed all that much,” she concluded.

“You’d be surprised,” June contradicted. They stopped before the terminal. “Look, if you haven’t got a place to stay, I’d love to put you up at our place.”

Irena smiled as she shook her head. “Thanks, but my grandfather said he’d never forgive me if I didn’t stay with him and his ‘bride.’”

June nodded. She knew that her step-grandfather meant it. A sense of family was very important for survival out here.

“They’re very cute together,” she confided. “And,” June added happily, “best of all, he’s not showing any sign of wearing out.”

“Wearing out?” Irena echoed, not following June’s meaning.

“My grandmother buried three husbands,” June reminded her. “She’s a very vibrant lady for someone in her late seventies.”

“Vibrant,” Kevin echoed with an amused grin. “I think the word that June is looking for is ‘lusty.’”

Irena thought about the colorful postmistress who was also the keeper of the town’s gossip. Apparently, just as she thought, despite the new coats of paint that had been applied here and there, not all that much had really changed here.

Chapter Two

Because the wind had started to pick up, Irena waited until they reached the shelter of the small terminal before she asked June, “Is there any place that I can rent a car?”

Because the Hades she knew didn’t have the simplest of amenities, she wouldn’t have even asked about a car rental agency. But since June had insisted that the small hamlet was well on its way to being a thriving city, she had nothing to lose by asking. Adequate transportation was supposed to be part of a growing city, wasn’t it?

“To rent? No,” June replied before Irena could even nod her head in response to the question. “But to borrow? Sure.”