Midlife's a Bear by Renee Hewett

Author:Renee Hewett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eighth Ripple Press

7

Jeanie turned. Behind her stood a woman who looked to be of similar age to Glynis, if the number of wrinkles on her face was any indication. However, where Glynis had looked like a vibrant, rugged older lady, this woman seemed faded—wilted even—from her limp white bob to her sunken dull eyes.

“Hello, Edda. Come, sit down,” Bliss invited, patting the edge of the bench beside her.

“All right,” Edda said, though she acted like she’d rather be anywhere else.

Bliss turned back to Jeanie. “Bliss is our oldest sleuth member and the only one still around who was an adult back then and who knew the sleuth’s leadership.”

“And the records don’t tell the whole story,” Edda said, nodding and digging in after a young man placed a plate of food in front of her. “So they think they can pry into my brain for the missing information.”

“Can they?” Jeanie asked, and Edda snapped her head over to look at her, assessing Jeanie.

After a moment of judgmental staring, Edda finally spoke again. “I met your mother.”

A wave of shock hit Jeanie. Suddenly, everything became more real, as though until that moment, she’d just been play-acting a member of the Bearstins, but someone who’d really known her mother—and by extension, her father too? It was real.

“You did?” Jeanie asked, finding it hard to breathe.

“Yes,” Edda confirmed. “She was a human who had a fling with a Bearstin member. Everyone talked about it. But like they”—Edda waved her hand in Bliss and then Dan’s direction, a disrespectful gesture that shocked Jeanie— “said, we weren’t as… open about humans coming into our sleuth back then.”

Jeanie pressed her lips together and cast a glance at Oscar. Elders were highly esteemed in shifter communities, but that didn’t mean the alpha and matriarch wouldn’t be slighted by Edda’s attitude. Jeanie noted to tread lightly so as not to insult any of the bears. “So what happened?”

“Your father had to leave the sleuth if he was going to be with your mother,” Edda replied, her mouth full of soft foods the man had served her.

“Was he going to do it?” Jeanie asked.

“Yes.” Edda shrugged, and then darkness passed over her face. “At least, that’s what the consensus was—what we all thought he would do. We never really found out because then he was in that terrible construction accident that killed him.”

Jeanie nodded. That much matched what her mother had told her. At least not everything she’d been told had been a lie.

“Then your mother left,” Edda continued. “We never heard from her again.”

“She never told anyone she was pregnant? Not even my grandparents?”

Dan piped up. “The records indicate that members of the sleuth checked in with your mother for a year after your father's death. If those in charge knew she was pregnant at that time, they would have noted that, but there are no notes about a child.”

“They knew about the child,” Edda spat angrily, making little pieces of chewed-up barbecue fly and causing Bliss to discretely wipe her arm.

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