“Do you have any more of those damn cigarettes?”  Iris flops down on the bearskin rug and waves her hand at me.

“Yeah, sure.”  So, Iris smokes, too.  I definitely should have found myself some paper and a pen to take notes on all of the differences, but it’s probably a little late for that now.

I put my shirt back on—no reason to keep tempting her—and light a cigarette.  I hand it to her, and she takes a long drag, coughs once, and then takes another puff.  I light one for myself and then lean back against the chair, eyeing her.

“You’re just going to fucking stare at me until you get your answers, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”  I smile and raise my eyebrows at her.

“Fine.”  She smokes half the cigarette while glaring into the fire before finally turning back to me.  “His name is Kyle.  We were a thing for a while.”

I continue to eye her.

“I suppose I should start at the beginning or some such shit.”

“That would be helpful.”

Iris flicks ash toward the fireplace, crosses her legs, and looks at me.

“I was diagnosed with ODD as a kid,” she says.

“What’s that?”

“Oppositional Defiance Disorder.”  She lets out a long laugh.  “Basically, it’s a diagnosis given any time a kid questions the word of an adult.  I mean really, how fucking dare they, right?”

“So you were a brat.”

“Essentially.”  She grins, and her eyes sparkle.  “I liked arguing with my father.  It was fun.  He eventually figured out I just did it to get a rise out of him, and he stopped responding.  I needed a better response.  So, drinking first, then drugs, then boys—preferably boys with lots of tattoos or piercings.  You know, the dangerous-looking ones.  I’d sneak them into my room in the hope of getting caught.”

“Teen rebel.”

“Fucking right, I was!”

“You wanted the attention.”

“Attention.”  She repeats the word as she gazes up at the ceiling in contemplation.  “Yes and no.  My parents accused me of using drugs before I ever touched the shit.  I told them I didn’t do that stuff, but they didn’t believe me.  They started monitoring my every movement.  I figured if I was already paying the price, I might as well get something out of it.”

“That’s kinda fucked up.”

“Is it?”  She tilts her head as she looks at me.  “I never did much, other than smoke weed, even in the end.  It was a boy that ended up being the problem.  The thing is, most of the pierced and tattooed boys were just teddy bears inside.  I got used to that.  When I found an older guy—one I knew dad would hate—I figured he would be the same.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“Kyle is an asshole,” Iris says.  “That’s the easiest way to put it.”

“How so?”  I don’t recall any tattoos on the guy I met in Whatì, but they were probably covered up.

“You know what?  I bet he and your dear daddy would have been great friends, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do.”  A shiver runs through me.

“I’ll spare you the boring, ‘it all started out great’ details and get to the important shit.  Back then, I knew everything.  When I met Kyle, I was sure he was the best shit that was ever going to come along in my life.  He was also a dealer.  I knew that going in and even did a few side deals for him, but it wasn’t until later that I figured out just how far into it he was.  He wasn’t very high up the ladder, but he did have some pretty direct involvement with a drug cartel.  When things got nasty, I knew I had to get out.

“I wasn’t about to ask Dad for help.  I was too proud for that, you know?  I wasn’t going to admit I’d fucked up.  I also knew they’d assume I was doing the same shit he was selling—meth and heroin—but I wasn’t.  The only way to get out was to get money, and I didn’t have any.  Kyle did, though.  He had a lot of it, but he was stingy about dishing it out and careful about where he hid it.  I decided to go for the next best thing.”

“His drugs.”

“Yeah.  I figured people had bought from me before, and they’d do it again.  Junkies don’t give a fuck where it comes from.  I thought I could sell just enough on the side that he wouldn’t notice.”

“But he did.”

“Yeah, he did.  I guess I didn’t cover my tracks as well as I thought I did because he figured it out right away.  He gave me a chance to come clean and give the shit back, but when his business partner figured out what was going on…well, Kyle had to save face.”

“He couldn’t let you get away with stealing from him.”  I’m familiar with the attitude.  When it comes to career criminals, loyalty ranks up at the top.  And deception, stealing in particular, is a betrayal at the highest level.

“Exactly,” she says.  “I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but I was in over my head.  I thought I knew how to handle Kyle.  Up to that point, he never hit me that hard.  I didn’t think he would really hurt me.”

The words are all too familiar.

“It’s not his fault he’s stressed out, and he never hits me that hard,” my mother said.  “He would never really hurt me.”

“Not that hard?”  I reached up and lightly touched her left cheekbone.  She winced when I made contact with the bruise.

“I can handle your father.”

My temples begin to throb, and I realize it’s because I’m clenching my teeth.  I force my jaw to relax as Iris continues.

“I already sold the drugs, and I thought if I gave him half of what I made, he’d let it go or at least not realize I was shorting him until I got away.  I thought I could handle whatever shit he dished out, but I was wrong.  I was fucking wrong in a big way.”

I blink a couple of times as Iris’s story begins to collide with Seri’s account of her sister’s death.  I hold my breath as she continues.

“When I handed him the money, we weren’t alone.  Kyle’s partner was there along with some junkie hooker of his.  I’d met the guy before but didn’t really know him.  He went by the name Max, but I don’t think that was his real name.  He was big, and he was fucking scary.”

“I gave Kyle half the money, and he handed it to his partner.  When Max counted it, he knew it was short.  I couldn’t talk my way out of it.”

She stops talking and finishes her cigarette, smoking it right down to the filter before she tosses the butt into the flames.  Her eyes lose their mischievous glint, and she stares at the floor as she continues.

“They took me to the basement,” she says.  “They…they tortured me, trying to get me to tell them where the rest of the money was.  I held out because I thought they would kill me if I admitted to lying.  I thought if I never admitted it, they’d think I was telling the truth and let me go.  I suppose I was stupid.”

She pauses again, and I offer her the pack of cigarettes.  She takes it, lights one, and then goes on.

“They dragged me out of the basement, right past that junkie, and threw me into the back of a car.  Kyle was driving, and Max got in the back with me.  He punched me in the face over and over again.  He held a gun to my head.  I thought he was just going to kill me right there in the car.  I was going numb, my ears were ringing, and I’d been punched in the gut so many times, I couldn’t breathe well.

“Eventually, they stopped the car on a bridge over the river.  Kyle came around and hauled me out of the back seat.  He told me I was out of chances, and then they both picked me up and tossed me over the side.  I remember hitting the water.”

Iris goes silent, and I have to prompt her to get her going again.

“Then what happened?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says.  She smashes the butt of her cigarette on the bricks near the fire.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“Then I died.”  She shrugs.

A shiver runs down the length of my spine.  I’m reminded of a book I read where the narrator died at the end, and the last line of the book used the same words: “Then I died.”  Yet this is a living, breathing person in front of me.

But she’s not the person who experienced this.

I narrow my eyes as I process all of this.  Something still doesn’t make sense to me.  If Kyle killed Iris, why is he looking for Seri?  Does she know more than she’s told me about her sister’s death?

“Why is he following you now?” I ask.  “I mean, what does he want with Seri?”

“Who knows?” she says.  “He’s crazy.”

“Iris, that’s not helping.”

“Well, he is.”

How does this surrogate person, living inside of Seri, know so much detail?  Did Seri piece together what happened to her sister?  Did she speak with the junkie who was there?  Did she do so much of her own investigation that Kyle is now looking to silence her?

“I guess that’s one way to end a marriage!”  Iris laughs loudly, but there’s no humor in the sound.

“He was your husband?” I stare at her, open-mouthed and hardly able to believe what she just said.

“It was a Vegas wedding,” she says.  “They don’t really count.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do.”

“There were divorce papers drawn up,” she says with a shrug.  “They were in our apartment, but who knows if he ever fucking found them.  I was gone by then, so maybe we are still married.”

“Shit, Iris!  Don’t you think you might have mentioned this to me before?”

“Really?  When?”  She slams her palm on the floor.  “When your dick was in me?  Oh, by the way…thump! Thump! Thump!  I’m married…thump!  Thump!  Thump!”

“You might have had one or two other opportunities!”

“What does it matter?” she yells back at me.

I open my mouth but quickly realize I don’t have an answer.  Iris is dead.  She said so herself, as screwed up as that is.  The physical body of the woman in front of me belongs to Seri.  Am I still “the other man” if the person I have an affair with is dead?

How much more fucked up could this be?

“I can’t process this.”  I push myself off the floor and walk into the kitchen just to put a little distance from the whole conversation.  I glance up at the cabinet, debating grabbing the bottle of whiskey inside of it but decide I don’t want to go down that path again.  Instead, I grab another pack of cigarettes and open it.  I can’t bring myself to walk back to the fireplace to retrieve the one next to Iris.

I lean one hand against the counter, smoke with the other, and stare out the window at the darkening sky.  Forming any kind of coherent summary of the details I have gathered from Seri, Netti, and Iris simply isn’t working.  It sits in my head in a chaotic, disjointed mess of conflicting information.

I wonder if Margot, the queen of internet searches, has found anything.

“Meow!”  Solo puts his front paws against my leg.

I reach down to pat his head, but he darts from my touch and runs to the far side of the cabin.  As soon as he reaches the wall, he spins around, jumps up on top of a pile of firewood, leaps across the room to land on the bed, completely misses, and then wipes out on the floor.  He sits up immediately, looks from Iris to me, and then begins to lick his tail as if everything has gone as planned.

Iris covers her mouth and giggles.  The sound is deep and throaty compared to Seri’s laughter.

“You’re nuts,” I say to the cat.

Solo looks at me and struts back into the kitchen to rub against my ankle.  Appreciating the distraction, I reach down to pick him up.  He scrambles from my hand to my shoulder, digging his claws in for balance as I gather up some previously cooked fish for him to eat.

I glance over my shoulder at the woman in front of the fire, trying to figure out how, in such a short time, I could have gone from a loner in the wilderness with no responsibility to anyone other than myself to where I am now.

“Are you going to kick us out now?”  Iris stares at me with dark eyes, but I can see a flicker of fear inside of them.

“No,” I tell her.  “I’m not kicking you out.  You can stay as long as you want.”

Feeling emotionally exhausted, I walk back into the main area and lean my hands on the back of the chair.  Iris looks up at me, her expression curious.

“Does Seri know?” Iris asks.

“Does she know what?”

“That you’re in love with her.”

Her tone catches me off guard as much as the question.  She’s not being snarky and doesn’t sound jealous.  In fact, if she hadn’t used Seri’s name in the question, I would have thought it was Seri herself speaking.

As far as the question goes, I have no idea how to respond.  The only person I have ever loved is my mother, and she turned on me.

“Am I?”  My throat feels tight, and there is pressure behind my eyes.

“It’s pretty fucking obvious.”  Iris folds her arms across her chest.  “Tell me something, Bish.  How many women have you allowed to spend the night here?”

I can only shake my head.

“None?  Am I right?”

“That’s hardly the same thing.  She was…you all were sitting in the snow with a storm coming.  I couldn’t just leave you there to die.”

“And since then?  How long has it been since you could have taken us somewhere else?”

“It would have been risky,” I mutter.

“Bullshit.  When we needed medicine, you managed to get to civilization pretty quickly.  You want her to stay here.”

Iris is right—I probably could get Seri to Yellowknife at this point.  Maybe not Fort Providence, but if I can get the Jeep to Whatì, I can get to the all-weather road that leads to Yellowknife. The trip would still have its dangers, and storms could still pop up without much warning, but I honestly haven’t thought about sending Seri on her way for several days.

“You don’t have to admit it,” Iris says.

“It’s still risky,” I say even though I know my position isn’t as strong as it once was.  “Seri needed medicine for survival.  Getting to Whatì to acquire something necessary for survival isn’t the same as trying to make it to a city.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“You want to leave now?” I ask.  “You want to get your shit together and have me take you away?  On a good day, it’s three hours to Yellowknife.  We might make it in six.  Another storm could come up at any time and leave us stranded, but if you want to risk your life, I’m game.”

Iris glares at me with gritted teeth, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far.  What am I going to say if she takes me up on the offer?

“We want to stay,” she finally says.  “Netti says we are safe with you.”

“I said I would protect you, and I meant it.”

Iris’s expression softens.  I walk around the chair and sit next to her, and when I hold out my arms, she climbs into my lap and leans against my chest.  I wrap my arms around her.

“I will keep you safe,” I say again.

I hold her for a while with my lips pressed to the top of her head.  I’ve spent time thinking about the differences between Seri and Iris but not much on their similarities.  It occurs to me that they are both vulnerable in their own ways.  They both have an internal strength as well.

“I don’t blame you for loving her,” Iris says after a while.  “Everyone always loved Seri.  She was the sweet one, the special one.  I was the troublemaker who made her look like a saint.”

“You resented her.”

“Fuck you.”  Iris gives my arm a squeeze.  “I did not.  She was my sister.  I loved her.”

“You weren’t jealous?”

“Not in the way you probably think,” Iris says.  “She was always more controlled, more centered.  She was selfless whereas I was more likely to put myself first.  I wanted to be like her even though I was the older one.  I wasn’t always there for her when she needed me.  If I had been…well, things might have ended up differently.”

She sighs and leans her head back against my shoulder.  I hug her against my chest and kiss her temple.

“You better be planning to make all this talking shit worth my while.”

“Huh?”

Iris turns around in my lap and grabs the bottom of my shirt.

“Get those clothes off, Bishop.  Let me see that beautiful cock.”