Chapter 9

Harmony’s eyes fluttered open. Instead of pine boughs swaying overhead, she looked up at an ornate, carved, plaster ceiling with angels holding ribbons and roses around a central rosette pattern. She stared at it before a subtle breeze brushed across her brow.

White curtains billowed out of an open window. Green lawns rolled away to the dark woods beyond, and bird song floated on the breeze. Downy softness surrounded her on all sides. She ran her hand over an eider down quilt covered with blue patterned satin, and fresh cotton sheets enfolded her above and below.

She blinked to clear her head, and the rest of the room came into focus. Elaborately carved bedposts rose from the bed corners to a draped canopy overhead, and antique Victorian furniture decorated the room on all sides. Even an old fashioned wash basin and pitcher stood ready and waiting on the sideboard.

She turned her head the other way and started up. “Aiken! Where am I?” Splitting pain stabbed through her chest and knocked her back on the pillows.

Aiken straightened up in an arm chair. He wore the same bright white T-shirt she admired so much, but no baseball cap. He wore sneakers instead of his work boots. “You’re at my house. This is Dunlap Homestead. I brought you here after Bain shot you.”

Harmony tried again to sit up. She gritted her teeth against the pain and propped her torso on her elbow. The events in the woods swam into her consciousness. “What happened?”

“You jumped in front of the gun, and Bain shot you by accident. He ran away, and I brought you here.”

“How did you find me so fast? How did you know Bain shot me?”

“I found you in the woods and brought you here. My family and I stopped the bleeding. The bullet hit you in the side and deflected off your ribs. It might hurt a lot, but it’s not dangerous. You’ll get better in no time. You just need rest.”

Harmony sank back on the bed. Its magnificent softness carried the pain away, and her eyes drifted closed. “I don’t understand this, but thank you for helping me. You didn’t have to bring me here. You could have taken me into town.”

“Town was too far away, and I didn’t have a car to take you in. I had to stop the bleeding, and bringing you here was faster. You would have died if I hadn’t.”

“I suppose it was my fault for letting Bain come anywhere near me with a gun. He is a loose cannon at the best of times, and I got hit.”

“Don’t blame yourself. You risked your life to save somebody else, and that counts for a lot.”

Her eyes snapped open. “What do you mean?”

He cocked his head to one side. He kept tearing his eyes away from her face, but he always drifted back. “Why did you throw yourself in front of that gun?”

“The bear… he would have shot that bear. The bear was about to attack him. Maybe they both would have been dead. I suppose you think I tried to save Bain from the bear, but it was really the other way around. I didn’t care if the bear ripped Bain’s face off, but I couldn’t stand by and watch him shoot the bear.”

“Is that the bear you met before?”

“There’s something special about it. I can’t explain it, but that bear means more to me than any person, especially Bain Campbell. Isn’t that pathetic? That’s how alone and isolated I am. I care more about an animal than a person.” She turned her head away to hide her feelings.

Aiken moved over to sit next to her on the bed. “Hey, don’t talk about yourself like that. It’s not pathetic at all. You feel something for that bear you haven’t felt for the people you’ve met so far. Plus, if we’re talking about people like Bain, I don’t blame you. Besides, that bear is so much more than an animal.”

She peered up into his face. “What do you mean?”

“I just mean he’s so much more than an animal to you.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “I thought maybe you knew the bear I’m talking about. I thought he might be tame, and the people on Bruins’ Peak knew him. Maybe they’re feeding him or something, and he’s become used to people.”

A secret smile crept over his face. “I do know the bear you’re talking about; the rest of the people on the Peak know him, too. He’s not exactly tame, but I can tell he sure thinks a lot of you.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, he let you pet him, didn’t he? He came back a second time to see you, and he walked right up to you with no fear. He must think you’re pretty special.”

“Great. A bear who thinks I’m special. That’s just what I need when I can’t even get a boyfriend.”

“I think you’re pretty special, too.”

“You said there could never be a “you and me,” so you must not think I’m special enough.”

Aiken stood up with a shake of his head. He went to the window and gazed out at the green and blue. “Let’s not talk about that. What do you want for breakfast? My mother cooked up a storm trying to prepare everything you could possibly want. You should see the kitchen. It looks like Grant’s Army is coming for snack time.”

“I don’t want to talk about Grant’s Army or your mother cooking breakfast. I want some answers. Why do you keep running hot and cold on me? First you say I’m pretty special, and then you say there can never be anything between us. First you hug me outside the supermarket, and now you’re pulling away again. I don’t understand you.”

He turned around to face her, but he didn’t come back near the bed. He skirted around the very outside limit of the room to stay as far away from her as he could. “I never should have hugged you outside the supermarket. That was a mistake. I told you the truth when I said there could never be anything between you and me. You need to understand that right now. That will clear up any confusion in the future. I think you must be pretty special to get that bear to come near you like that, and I’m glad I could help you when you got hurt; but that’s as far as it can ever go. Do you understand?”

He inched all the way around to the door and backed over the threshold. Harmony floundered in confusion. “Why won’t you answer my questions?”

He backed into the hall with the door balanced in one hand. “I’m sorry, Harmony. That’s all I can tell you. I’ll bring you some breakfast, and then you need to rest so your ribs heal.”

He slammed the door in her face, and his footsteps receded down the stairs. Harmony opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again with a heavy heart. She didn’t understand men at all, but one thing was beyond clear. Aiken Dunlap wanted nothing to do with her, at least nothing beyond the official duties of a social worker. She meant nothing to him. That hug outside the supermarket, all his remarks about feeling the same thing in the woods on Bruins’ Peak, telling her she was special to him – none of it meant a thing.

She rested her eyes on the beautiful combination of colors surrounding the window. The golden sunshine, the white curtains, the blue of the sky framed with chlorophyll green all worked together to relax her tired brain and heal her battered body. What good was she to this old world? She never had a mother or a father or siblings to teach her how to deal with people.

An insurmountable barrier separated her from other people, especially the people she cared about most and that she wanted to care about her. She would never find love. Every man she met ran screaming in the opposite direction just when she started getting close to him. People she wanted to connect with held her at a distance and wouldn’t explain why.

She must be truly repulsive. She might look all right on the outside. Everyone told her she was good-looking, but that didn’t help her when no one wanted to get near her.

Underneath it all, underneath her groomed, college-educated exterior, she understood why they recoiled. Something dangerous, something wild and untamed lurked in her deepest soul. It clawed at her insides to get out, and she had to fight with all her strength to keep it under control.

Sometimes she thought she would explode in spitting, tearing rage. Sometimes she thought she would run away and disappear in the trackless forest. Bruins’ Peak spoke to that part of her, but it spoke in soothing tones. It told her these urges and longings were right and good, that it would welcome her when the time came to break out.

In the distance, outside her window, above the dark outline of forest, beyond the manicured lawns, that rocky jagged Peak scraped the sky with its angular fingernails. It stared back at her as she laid in the bed. It sensed her close to it, and it drew her toward it on gossamer tendrils. She couldn’t resist its call. She closed her eyes and turned her head away so she wouldn’t see Bruins’ Peak anymore.