The Bears of Blackrock, Books 1 - 3: The Fenn Clan

  THE BEARS OF BLACKROCK

  Books 1 - 3

  By Alana Hart & Michaela Wright

  Copyright © 2015 Alana Hart & Michaela Wright

  All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

  Published by Hartfelt Books

  Image by Kozzi

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  - Saving Her Bear

  - Bearly Burning

  - The Unchosen Bride

  SAVING HER BEAR

  Second Chances

  By

  Alana Hart & Michaela Wright

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Just come home, honey. We can figure this all out.”

  Catherine stood just outside the rest area convenience store waiting for her cousin Bennett to return from his snack and potty run. She held the phone to her ear with a strange tension in her stomach. She hadn’t wanted to hear her mother’s voice again so soon.

  “No, I’m not coming home.”

  Her mother made a huffing sound on the other end of the line. “You’re being ridiculous! I know Charlie can get a little out of hand sometimes, but it’s all settled now. It’s all settled and – you know Grampy doesn’t need you coming up there and putting him out like that.”

  Catherine closed her eyes. This was a fear she harbored, but there was a truth she wasn’t willing to share about going back north to Maine. There was more there than just Grampy Calhoun’s potential guest bedroom.

  “Mom, if I had any other choice, believe me, I wouldn’t be looking to stay with Grampy.”

  “Does he even know you’re coming? Has Bennett asked his father if you’re even welcome? Damn it, Catie! Just come back before you upset everybody.”

  “Never. I will never set foot in that house again.”

  Linda Calhoun groaned on the other end of the line. “How am I gonna take care of the house? What am I supposed to do?”

  Catherine’s eyes were welling up. Hearing her mother try to guilt her to come home was both infuriating and heartbreaking. Why couldn’t she see what she was doing?

  “You lied! You lied for that piece of shit and I almost went to fucking jail. Your house can burn to the ground for all I care!”

  “Don’t say that, Catie. It’s not my fault -”

  Bennett appeared at her shoulder and Catherine practically deflated in relief. “We’re getting back on the road. Good bye, Mom. Good bye!”

  She hung up, turning to receive the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Bennett had snagged for her.

  She smiled up at her cousin. “Thank you.”

  Bennett nodded, then started back toward the truck. “You almost went to jail?”

  Catherine glared at him. “Don’t.”

  They piled back into the truck, and a few moments later, Catherine’s new friend Jean returned from the restroom. They were off, hauling ass out of Kennebunk the way only Bennett could, his mighty engine growling up the onramp of Route 95. Catherine had to ignore four calls from her mother by the time they were coming into Bangor.

  “You’ve never been this far north?”

  Bennett was glancing into his rearview mirror at Jean Trainor, giving her more attention than Catherine would like. She didn’t mind that he was chatting her up, what she minded was that he wouldn’t keep his damn eyes on the road.

  “Benny!” Catherine shrieked as they veered a little too close to the guardrail.

  He straightened, scoffing at her. “Calm down, cuz. I’m not gonna kill us. Jesus.”

  “Yeah, then quit acting like it.”

  “No, I’ve never been this far north. Pretty sure I’ve never been past Old Orchard Beach,” Jean said, leaning her blonde head over the front seat to be a part of the conversation. She gave Catherine’s shoulder a quick scratch to show her solidarity. Catherine wasn’t the only one hoping Bennett would keep them alive.

  Bennett whistled. “Well, then you’re in for a treat. This is what real Maine looks like.”

  Catherine laughed. They were in the no man’s land of Route 95 between Bangor and Cherryfield. There was nothing to praise here save for trees and more trees – and maybe a couple dilapidated barns.

  “It looks lovely,” Jean offered.

  Bennett shook his head. “Wait til we get to camp. Acadia’s got nothing on Blackrock.”

  Catherine didn’t disagree. Still, she’d grown up around these parts, where the nearest Target or Home Depot was at least an hour and a half drive. It was almost four hours to the nearest Trader Joe’s. Despite the sad circumstances of her family’s moving away, she couldn’t say she didn’t enjoy the convenience of living closer to civilization.

  “Did Catherine tell you the creepy shit that happened in Blackrock when we were kids?”

  Catherine groaned, rolling her eyes. “Please don’t.”

  Jean shook Bennett’s shoulder. He smiled at her touch.

  “No, please do. I love this kind of stuff,” she said.

  “You sure? It’s kinda scary, and you’re gonna be sleeping in these woods tonight with no one to protect you.”

  Catherine shook her head, but Jean pleaded with him. “I’ll have you. Come on, now. Don’t listen to Catherine. Tell me.”

  Bennett flushed at her comment, his full face turning a pretty pink. Bennett wasn’t a slender man. He was built like a rugby player, thick in every part of him, much like all of the Calhoun men in her family. His brown hair was shorn short in a buzz-cut, now growing out enough to give a full bristly texture when someone ran their hand over his head. He was a handsome guy, and Catherine thought Jean could do far worse than cuddle up to a guy like Bennett.

  Bennett set off to tell the tale of the Blackrock swimming hole, a place she’d ventured with him many times when they were kids.

  In Blackrock, there’s this popular spot where everyone likes to go in the summer. There’s a lake and miles of woods – it’s called Parkhurst. We used to swim there, my dad likes to hunt there – just super popular. So, there’s this rope swing that hangs out over the water. You climb up this massive boulder, grab on and pray your grip is strong enough to carry you long enough to make it to the water. I’ve seen some guys just bite it after a night of drinking, thinking they could hold on, and just dropped like a stone to the beach. It’s not a huge drop, but I’ve seen some split chins.

  “Get on with it, Benny,” Catherine said.

  Sorry, sorry.

  Anyway, so Catherine and I went there all the time when we were kids. One day we get down there and a couple of my friends from school are there with their family – you remember those guys, right Catie?

  Catherine n
odded. Yes, she remembered his friends. She remembered one in particular.

  Well, they’re there, but they’re not swimming. Their parents are there taking their boats out over the water, and a couple of em are putting on goggles, swimming across the lake.

  Catherine felt a chill run down her spine remembering that day. It was one of the last times she ever went swimming there.

  “Sounds like fun!” Jean said, glancing at Catherine for explanation to Bennett’s tone.

  “That’s the thing. They weren’t having fun. They were ‘trudging’ the lake.”

  Jean gave a half gasp.

  “Apparently, a woman named Alison Fenn had gone for a walk in the woods a few nights earlier, and never came back.”

  “Did you really need to tell this story, Ben? God, you’re gonna ruin my day.”

  Bennett smiled at Catherine. “Don’t worry. You’ll feel better when you hear who might be there tonight.”

  Catherine stopped, turning to stare at him. She licked her lips, glancing at Jean’s confused expression. “Who?”

  Bennett just smiled. “She knows who.”

  Jean tapped Bennett then, egging him on. “So what happened? Did they find her?”

  “That’s the thing. See, she disappeared way off in this town called Falkirk’s Seat, but her whole family was down there in Blackrock – miles away from where she disappeared - scouring Parkhurst fucking Lake.”

  Catherine stared out the window as they passed through a small town, watching as one of the only grocery stores for a half hour in every direction passed by in a blur.

  “The cops thought they were lunatics, cause they were off searching the woods in Falkirk’s Seat, but wouldn’t you know it, they found her in that lake. Her fucking brother found her body in the damn lake.”

  Jean gasped again. “Oh my god, that’s horrible. What happened to her?”

  Bennett was relishing her rapt attention. Catherine was willing herself deaf. It was one of the worst memories of her childhood – the murder of Alison Fenn. She’d been a schoolteacher at Blackrock Elementary School, and one of the few truly sweet people Catherine had ever known. Sadly, the Calhoun family wasn’t known for their loving natures.

  “She’d been shot. Cops tried to pin it on one of the Fenn family, given they knew where to find her body and all.”

  “Did they figure out who did it?”

  Catherine shook her head, answering before Bennett could. “No. Couldn’t find the rifle to match the bullet. No one was ever charged.”

  Jean slumped back into her seat. “Jesus, that’s some harrowing shit.”

  Bennett glanced into the rearview, swerving just so as he did. Catherine slapped his arm and he returned his attention to the road.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Yeah, but you want to know the creepiest part?”

  Jean was leaning forward again, instantly. “Yes!”

  “Four years later? The body of Gregory Fenn washed up in Falkirk Seat Harbor.”

  Jean and Bennett continued this conversation, but Catherine simply couldn’t listen anymore. These were stories she knew well. Everyone from Blackrock to Machias knew about the Fenn murders. No one was ever charged. They rattled the small towns in Downeast Maine, and were part of the reason why her family moved away from Blackrock, coming to settle in North Conway, New Hampshire. Catherine finished high school in New Hampshire, ended up attending UNH. She never went back north to Blackrock. She had her reasons, and the murders weren’t one of them.

  No, she’d never come back to Blackrock because of the boy named John Fenn.

  Bennett continued talking about the murders, about how the police interrogated every member of the Fenn family, from the patriarch, Patrick Fenn; a gray haired beast of a man who owned property in all corners of the county, to John and Deacon Fenn, Patrick’s teenage grandsons. Catherine remembered sneaking out of the house to go be with John when the town was turning against his family, threatening to get into fist fights at school when other kids began teasing him, calling his family a bunch of murderers. John didn’t need defending, and the kids at school knew it. However much they teased him, there wasn’t a single kid stupid enough to try to fight John Fenn.

  Meanwhile, as the kids were making his life hell, he was trying to mourn the loss of his Great Uncle, just a few years after losing his favorite Aunt.

  Catherine knew the Fenn’s had nothing to do with the murders, but no one in town knew them like she did. She’d had dinner at John’s dinner table numerous times, and was beloved of his mother Janice and his father Carl. When her parents discovered that she was sneaking out at night to have supper at the murderer’s house, they packed her up in their Toyota and hauled her to North Conway.

  She’d never heard a word about John Fenn again.

  “Have they found anything new? Any new leads?” Jean asked. Her morbid curiosity wasn’t so strange. She and Catherine met while working at the local Haunted Hayride theme park that the ski lodge put on every year.

  Bennett was enjoying holding court, drawing these stories out as much as he could. “No new suspects or anything. They did come out a couple years ago and say that both victims were found very shortly after death.”

  Catherine perked up at this. “But Alison Fenn was missing for almost a week when they found her.”

  “Yup,” Bennett said, nodding with a satisfied smile. “Apparently she’d been alive until the night before they found her in the lake. Where she was for those four days -”

  “Stop, Bennett. Please. I don’t want to hear anymore about it, right now.”

  Bennett paused, exhaling through his nose. Then he tapped her thigh. “Alright, cuz. Sorry to upset you. Just thought it would be a good story, since you guys will be sleeping in those very woods tonight.”

  He glanced in the rear view at Jean and she squealed in excited terror. “Man, I’m not gonna sleep at all tonight!”

  Though Bennett didn’t say a word, she knew him well, and would bet any amount of money that he was silently offering to give her another reason to stay up all night.

  What a jackass? She thought.

  They turned up the main road of Cherryfield, passing the beautiful mansions that lined either side of the road. Catherine smiled. She hadn’t seen these houses in over ten years.

  The rest of the drive consisted of Catherine picking the music and Bennett making small talk with Jean. She was a lovely woman, and Catherine didn’t begrudge him his efforts, but Bennett had a way of grandstanding when he was trying to get a girl’s attention. She didn’t mind it on most occasions, but as they were driving along these old familiar roads, Catherine wanted desperately to ride in silence, letting AC/DC blast through the speakers – the way John Fenn did when he finally got his license and demanded she go for a three hour drive with him across the Canadian border.

  She smiled to herself.

  They arrived at the gravel road around six in the evening, turning into the woods that stretched along the border of Falkirk’s Seat. Twenty minutes later, they’d reach the camp. Bennett wasted no time hopping out of his truck to start assembling their tents, making a point to show Jean just how rugged and manly he was. Catherine sauntered over to the forest edge and began collecting brush to start the evening’s fire. Jean was giggling and flipping her hair for Bennett’s benefit, and Catherine rolled her eyes. She might be sleeping in her tent alone tonight.

  “Don’t get lost over there, girly!”

  Catherine startled around to find the source of the voice. Bennett charged forward to offer a back slapping embrace to his old friend, Paul Merlotte.

  Paul was one of Bennett’s good friends from Blackrock High School. He’d been a staple of the Calhoun compound when she was young; riding ATVs and going clamming on warm days with Bennett and Bennett’s dad, Bodie Calhoun. Sadly, Catherine hadn’t been a part of those rugged afternoons. After all, as the Calhoun men often reminded her, she was just a girl.

  “Catherine, you remember Paulie, yeah?” Bennett asked />
  Catherine stepped forward to shake Paul’s hand. He took it, smiling politely. As she recalled, Paul wasn’t one of her favorite people as a young man. He’d been brash, rude, and often made fun of her for being a little overweight when they were in school. She was still ‘a little overweight,’ but Paul gave her an appraising look, his eyebrows shooting up.

  “Geez Catie, you look great! God, it’s been ten years, hasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yes it has.”

  And yes she did, she thought. And I weigh the exact same amount I did in high school, you prick.

  Paul was soon joined by another familiar face – Jason Twomey, yet another of Bennett’s high school friends. Catherine gave Jason a wave as a truck pulled into the camp road, its windows rattling with the sound of Classic Rock. The familiar faces weren’t at all surprising. The whole weekend was planned around a booze laden camping trip of Blackrock’s finest. They did this several times every summer. Catherine only agreed to join the shenanigans as a tradeoff for a ride north. Grampy Calhoun was getting old, and as her mother assured her many times, if she wanted to remain in the will, she might want to say Hello before he died.

  Catherine couldn’t give two shits about Grampy Calhoun’s will. Still, her mother’s current life choice became rather persuasive.

  Catherine turned her attention back to the woods, losing Jean’s interest completely to the crowd of burly men. She drowned out the sounds of their sailor talk and back patting, collecting another six or seven long sticks before venturing back to the fire pit.

  She dumped them into the pile and dropped to her knees. A moment later, they had a roaring fire.

  “Damn, Catie’s got the skills!”

  She glanced up, acknowledging Paul’s compliment. He tried to hold her gaze a little longer. She turned her eyes back to the fire.

  Not today, Paul. Not fucking ever.