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  Mountain Man’s Mail Order Bride

  Copyright © 2018 Kelsey King

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  Contents

  Newsletter

  1. Hunter

  2. Sophia

  3. Hunter

  4. Sophia

  5. Sophia

  6. Hunter

  7. Sophia

  8. Hunter

  9. Sophia

  10. Hunter

  Epilogue

  About Kelsey King

  Books by Kelsey King

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  1

  Hunter

  As I sit at my desk, staring out at the evergreen trees dripping with last night’s rain, my phone rings and when I see it’s the doctor, I know it’s going to be the news I’m dreading.

  “The tumor has spread,” she tells me. “We can look into experimental studies, but aside from that, we’ve done all we can.”

  I run a hand through my hair and close my eyes. I know what they’re going to ask me next, and I’m dreading it.

  “Hunter, your mother’s directive says she doesn’t want extreme measures. She’d like us to make her comfortable, but she gave you medical power of attorney.”

  “Do what she wants,” I say, and my voice catches. “Make her comfortable.”

  “Okay, but Hunter, you might want to see if you can get down here to see her a bit more often. She’s not going to make it more than a few months, and the medication for pain—she may not be herself for much longer.”

  “Will do. Thanks.” I hang up and pace over to the window—the floor-to-ceiling glass pane that looks out over the mountain that’s covered in cascading evergreens. This room is the reason I bought this house—this and the fact that no one in their right mind wants to drive thirty minutes up a narrow dirt road for a visit.

  Cocoa gets up from sleeping on her bed by the door, wagging her tail slowly as she sits down next to me. They say dogs can sense their owner’s emotional state, and I can’t help but feel like she’s holding space for me as she stares pensively out at the trees.

  Visit more often.

  I should.

  I know I should.

  It’s not that I don’t love my mother. I’m her only son, and she’s been nothing but supportive of me, but it’s so hard to see her hooked up to machines, no longer the person I remember. Her friends from the gardening club come by daily and have filled her hospital room with blooming orchids and forced-bulb tulips while her quilting group has brought mounds of intricate blankets. If there’s one thing my mother’s never been without, it’s people who love her.

  “Come on, Cocoa,” I say, and she looks up at me mournfully and gives her golden tail another hesitant wave.

  I can’t just stand here and mope. I’ve never been great with my emotions—another reason, besides the drive and the conditions—that I limit visits to my mother to a religious once a week.

  Cocoa trails after me as I move to the bedroom to change out of my work clothes. In the years since I left the nine-to-five behind and started my own marketing company, I still like to keep my work separate from the rest of my life. So while I could do all my work at the breakfast table in my boxers, I still put on a collared shirt and slacks, shave, and comb my hair. I consider briefly changing into my gym clothes and working out in the home gym I have set up, but decided against it.

  Cocoa whines softly by the door, and I nod to her. “You’re right. Today, we go out. I need to chop some more wood anyway.”

  I change into a long-sleeve t-shirt, a pair of tattered jeans, and my work boots, and take Cocoa downstairs. The house is filled with light from the large, unadorned windows even on this overcast day. No one comes up here, so I’ve never felt the need to hang curtains, even in the bedroom. If someone wants to climb a tree to get a look at me sleeping or naked, let it be.

  In the entryway, I pass the large photo of my parents on their wedding day, nearly ten years younger than I am now, and my stomach twists. My mother was diagnosed nearly a year ago now, and when she’d told me, we cried together.

  “I’ve lived a good life, Hunter. I only wish I’d been able to see you get married and start a family.” The look on her face nearly destroyed me.

  I push away the thoughts and open the front door, and Cocoa yips as she races ahead of me and turns quick circles under a cedar tree. I never put her on a leash unless I take her with me into town—she knows where the food is, and besides that, she never wanders out of my sight.

  She slips through the trees a little farther though, snuffling through the underbrush and following at a distance as I walk around the dirt path to the pile of logs I’m still chopping for firewood. I grab my gloves and my ax from the woodshed, and then start the work of propping up thick logs on a wide, chipped stump and splitting them cleanly down the middle, and then in halves again.

  As I chop, guilt settles in my stomach like spoiled milk. It wasn’t another baby that my mother wanted—she’d given up on that two decades ago, and turned her hopes fully toward my future marriage, which would bring her if not a birth daughter, at least a daughter-in-law. As she’d grown more attached to the idea over the years, the dream took on a bit of mother’s love.

  More than anything, my mother doesn’t want me to be alone, a fear I’ve only encouraged by deliberately moving to a place where I can go days—weeks even—without speaking to another soul.

  Besides Cocoa, that is. My golden retriever comes bounding out of the woods, drops of rain from the trees flying off her back, with a thick branch clenched between her teeth. I drop my ax and chase after her as she streaks by. She wheels around, crouches low with her front paws, and weaves back and forth, growling playfully all the while.

  I tried telling my mother that Cocoa’s the only girl I need—we’ve been together going on seven years now, more than three times longer than I’ve ever been able to hold a relationship—and that’s good enough for me.

  I think my resignation to it only makes my mother worry more.

  Cocoa barks playfully as I wrestle the branch away from her and send it spinning over into the trees. Her paws crash through leaves and dead pine needles as she scampers to retrieve it.

  I look down at my ax. My house is heated entirely with wood in the winter, and storing up enough of it is a yearlong proposition. I could order cords of wood, but I own a good portion of land and like to clear the dead trees. My mother’s accused me on more than one occasion of taking more time and care with things than I do with people, and I’m fairly certain most women I’ve dated would agree.

  When the sky grows darker, I put my tools away, stack the wood I’ve chopped in the woodshed and call Cocoa in.

  She’s ready to go, already spread out under the eaves of the house, in the only patch of dry ground around. Cocoa’s in good health, but she’s not the pup she used to be, and I’m finding more and more often that she wears out before I do.

  “Come on,” I say to her. “Let’s eat.”

  Later that night, sitting in my ergonomic office chair with only my desk lamp on, I know I should be working. There were client tasks that were supposed to get done this afternoon. I manage twice the workload I did when I was a marketing manager, and back then people used to tell me
I was doing too much. But instead of working, I reach into the bottom drawer and pull out the tall bottle of whiskey and the tumbler I keep there for emergencies.

  In two days it’ll be Sunday, and I’ll be due to visit my mother. Am I really going to tell her on her deathbed that I’m not even trying to find someone to be with, even if it’s too late for her to get to see me married and settled?

  My mother has tumors all over her body. The least I could do is make an effort.

  I pour myself a glass, open my internet browser, and pull up the dating sites I bookmarked right after her diagnosis. My message boxes have filled up with pending requests to chat, to meet, and yes, to hook up. Something about a man who lives on a mountain must appeal to primal instincts because I’ve had no shortage of women wanting to date me.

  What I have had is a shortage of things to say to them over email and in person. And those who managed to put up with that quickly realized I’m pretty much an in-shape office shirt who happens to live an hour away from the closest department store or cosmetics counter who drives thirty minutes to pick up his mail.

  I lean my elbow on my desk and put my head in my hand. The idea of going out with any of these women and trying to piece together a relationship close enough to sell to my mother makes me feel ill, but so does letting her die with the only thing she’s wanted for me left undone. I’m beginning to seriously consider hiring an escort to pretend to be my girlfriend—the doctor did say that my mother might be out of it so she might not notice anything wrong.

  Just as I’m about to close out of my internet browser, my eyes fall on an advertisement to an “international dating” site in the sidebar.

  It’s a polite way of saying mail order bride.

  I close my eyes.

  I’m not seriously considering this, am I?

  Yet it makes sense. The women who’ve left me over the years have given many different reasons, but when you look closely at them, it all boils down to the same root cause.

  I’m too distant.

  I’m too busy.

  I don’t really listen, don’t pay enough attention.

  I’m too serious, too distracted.

  Or my favorite from a woman I dated for six months when she broke up with me over text message: At first I thought you were just slow to warm up, but now I’ve realized you don’t have a romantic bone in your body.

  In the end, I decided they were right. Why even try?

  But the women who look for husbands on those kinds of sites—I’m not naive enough to think they’re looking for romance. They want someone who will take care of them, lift them out of their circumstances, and give them a comfortable lifestyle. I have all that, and really even if she didn’t want to stay with me long, if I was just married before my mother passes, everyone wins.

  I click through the descriptions of the process, the interviews, the background checks, the fees and the forms before I’m intrigued. It takes me two hours and half the bottle of whiskey, but I make myself a profile and apply.

  2

  Sophia

  I look up from straightening a pile of oranges to find a customer quite literally waving a banana in my face.

  “What is this?” she asks.

  I look over to the display from which she has plucked said banana and see the rest of the bunch—only slightly green—sitting atop the mound of other neatly-stacked bunches.

  “It’s a banana, ma’am,” I tell her.

  She narrows her eyes at me, pointing the offending banana like a revolver. I take a quick step back, wiping my hands on my apron. “It says that your produce is organic and locally grown,” she says, pointing to the sign. She brandishes the banana at me. “How is it exactly that you’re growing bananas in the middle of Dublin?”

  I take a deep breath. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this, but it’s the first time I’ve been asked at banana point. “Our produce is sourced as locally as possible,” I explain. “Our meat comes from only a few miles outside the city and our cabbage only a bit farther than that.”

  The banana draws closer, almost brushing the ends of my red hair, which hangs past my shoulders. “But the sign doesn’t list those foods. It says all of your produce is local and organic.”

  “The bananas are organic. And they’re imported from Spain and grown in the Canary Islands. Most of the bananas you see at other stores are grown in Latin America and—”

  The lady snorts. “You call that local?”

  I intentionally lower my voice, because this conversation is ridiculous. “As local as possible, ma’am.”

  She finally withdraws the banana, but eyes it warily. “I hear they’re growing bananas in Iceland now. Maybe you should look into it?” And then she tucks the banana—the single banana—into her basket and strolls away.

  I let out a long, slow breath. Managing this market looked a lot easier when it was my mother who handled these kinds of questions. I wrap my hand around the pewter star charm at the end of the chain around my neck. Miss you, Ma.

  I look up at the clock then walk over to Anna, one of the cashiers who has been here for years.

  “The shipment from Walsh’s is late again, and when I call them, I already know they’re going to tell me they lost my order. How did my mother manage all of this?”

  Anna shrugs. “With a grace only a few people possess,” she answers.

  It’s true about my mom. I don’t think I fully realized how hard it was for her to raise me on her own until she was gone. We’d never been wealthy, but after I came of age and started working, at least we had two incomes to pay for the rent and bills.

  Anna comes over and puts an arm around me. “Take off early,” she says. “I can close up.”

  I shake my head. When my mom had this job, she was on salary, but the owner switched it to hourly when I took the position.

  Let’s just say I desperately need the hours.

  “It’s fine, Anna,” I say. “But it’s been so slow, you go home and take some weight off your legs. I can handle things from here.”

  Anna looks skeptical. “I wouldn’t want to leave you alone with the banana guard again.”

  I smile. “I don’t think she’ll be back. And if she returns, I’ll just ask her for her Iceland banana contacts, since she knows so much about it.”

  Anna smiles and rubs my shoulder. “Alright. But next time, it’s your turn to relax.”

  She heads into the back to put her apron away and then heads home to her husband and kids. Better for her to go anyway because there’s no one waiting at home for me.

  I’m just about to start my closing process when the phone rings.

  “O’Sullivan’s market,” I answer.

  “Sophia Kelly, if you please,” says a clipped man’s voice on the other end.

  My stomach sinks. I already know what this is, but I can’t exactly hang up. “This is she.”

  “Ms. Kelly, I’m calling on behalf of your landlord, Mr. Murphy. He’s hired me to mediate in your dispute over your back rent.”

  I fiddle with a thread hanging loosely from my apron. I can’t believe they called so late in hopes to get a hold of me, but I guess it worked.

  “There’s no dispute. I know I owe him. My mother died this last year and had dementia. I had to stay home with her, so neither of us were working and—”

  “I understand,” the collector says, and to his credit, he manages to sound like he does. “Mr. Murphy has been patient with you, but now that you’re working again and back on your feet, he’s told you several times he expects you to begin making double payments.”

  I close my eyes. “And I’ve told him, I can barely cover the rent as is. When my mother was alive, we had two incomes, and now I’m down to one, and—”

  “Ms. Kelly, if you can no longer afford the flat, and don’t intend to reimburse Mr. Murphy for his kindness during your mother’s illness, I unfortunately, have to inform you that you’ll need to vacate the premises. Your debt will then be forwarded to a
collection agency.”

  My hands begin to shake. “I do intend to repay him,” I say. “It’s just I’ve gotten behind on other bills as well, and—”

  “You’ll receive written notice within a few days, and the eviction will proceed unless you can pay in full. Good day to you, Ms. Kelly.”

  “Good day to you,” I respond. And then the line goes dead.

  I stand behind the register, looking out at the empty store. I can almost see my mother shuffling down the aisles, sweeping up the day’s dust and whistling to herself.

  When she was here, working at this store was a dream. She made the place light up, and then, more than a year ago, that light slowly began to dim. The whistling stopped, as she forgot the tunes to her favorite songs. The smiles faded, replaced by a dark look of confusion as she stopped being able to understand what was happening around her.

  I’d never regretted staying home, working with Mama at the market when my friends went off to Uni. I knew we couldn’t afford it, and besides, I loved being here with her. I suppose I’d always thought we’d have more time.

  “What am I going to do now, Mama?” I ask the empty store and am not surprised I don’t receive an answer.

  After I lock up, I begin my walk home. Being close to work is one of the advantages of the flat. It’s also in a safe neighborhood, unlike so many terrible one’s Mama and I lived in over the years. When we only had my mother’s income, we’d often shared a one-room place, or had neighbors who were always getting in drunken fights or dealing drugs—and sometimes, in the worst places, all three. When Mama would go to work she’d walk me across the city to Aunt Izzy’s house—she wasn’t really my aunt, as my mother was my only family, but she was my mother’s best friend from childhood, and practically helped raise me.

  But now Izzy’s moved overseas, and there’s not much left for me here.

  My mind wanders, and if I‘m forced to leave, I have no idea where I would go. The idea of moving back to a neighborhood on the West side—where our last neighbor shot his son on his own front porch while Mama and I were both home in bed—makes my skin crawl. I’m not sure how my mother survived those places with a young daughter, and I’m not in a hurry to find out what might happen to me living there alone.