style="font-size:15px;"> Even now, as she waited for June to finally land the small passenger plane, Irena could feel her eyes beginning to sting once more as the impact of the loss struck her again.
Get angry, idiot. In the end, he treated you like dirt. You know that. He’s not worth your tears.
But it wasn’t in her to be angry—not anymore. Time and distance had allowed her to view the past in a calmer frame of mind. She wasn’t that heartbroken eighteen-year-old. She was twenty-eight and, having dealt with a larger cross-section of humanity in Seattle than she ever could have if she’d remained in Hades, she viewed things differently now. She could see why Ryan had been the way he had, at least in part.
When it came to the reasons for Ryan’s wanton, misguided behavior, there was an incredible amount of blame to lay at more than just one doorstep. For starters, nothing was expected of him. Born to wealth, he had none of the pressures that the average person in Hades was faced with. Ryan didn’t have to hustle, didn’t have to try to help support his family, or even himself for that matter. Life didn’t present him with any challenges, other than seeing just how many women he could bed.
In addition, he had no immediate role models to turn to. Certainly not his father. Eric Hayes had moved to Alaska, specifically to Hades, with his two young sons when he’d lost his wife in a freak boating accident. At the time, Hades was as far away from humanity as he could go without literally moving into a cave.
Some people said that the reason for his downward spiral was because he couldn’t live with the guilt of knowing that he might have been able to save his wife from a watery grave but had been too involved in saving himself to notice that she had fallen overboard, as well. The only way Eric could find to get even temporary respite from the inner pain was to anesthetize himself with alcohol. As time passed, it took more and more to achieve numbness.
He passed that lesson on to his older son. Ryan had once boasted to her that he’d had his first drink, served to him by his father, when he was nine. At the time, not wanting to be judgmental, she’d told herself that it was just Ryan’s way. That he could walk away from drinking any time he wanted to. The problem was that he didn’t want to.
But she was so blindly in love with him, so certain that he loved her back until that fateful evening. In the months that followed, she’d often wondered if Ryan wanted her to discover him with Trisha. He knew her penchant for turning up early. Did he thrive on the wild rush of getting away with it, or had he wanted to show her that he wanted to move on? He had to have known that finding him like that would devastate her. And he had still done it.
He’d been a piece of work, all right, Irena thought now, trying desperately to shut away the memories. A piece of work and she was an absolute fool for having loved him as much as she had.
And for still having feelings for him.
“Wait until you see Hades.” June suddenly spoke up, trying to fill the silence that seemed louder than the plane’s small engine.
June anticipated Irena’s reaction to the town she hadn’t seen in the last ten years as she began the plane’s slow descent.
The airstrip where their small fleet of passenger planes were housed was just up ahead. June smiled to herself. Hades really was growing, she thought fondly. And more than just a little. She and Kevin had slowly built up their business. They now had their own air taxi service as well as her original auto repair store. Kevin had encouraged her to buy it back shortly after the wedding. It was as if he’d sensed what it really meant to her. Which was why she loved him so much. He understood her.
“You won’t recognize the place.”
Irena laughed shortly. “That’s good, because I didn’t care for the old Hades.”
It was a sentiment shared by a great many of the young people in the area. The moment they turned eighteen, many left to find a life less desolate, or, as in the case of Hades, wasn’t isolated from the rest of the world for six months of the year. They all felt that Alaska was a good place to be from, but definitely not to live.
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” June told her. She herself had never experienced that urge to flee the way so many, including her older sister, April, had. “But it’s really been growing these last ten years. Ike’s turned into a real entrepreneur. He and Jean Luc have really helped build up the place.”
“Ike?” Irena echoed in surprise. “The guy who runs the Salty Dog Saloon?”
“The very same one,” June told her. There was no missing the pride in her voice. “He’s gotten things really moving around here. We’ve got a hotel now, and just last year, Ike and Jean Luc brought a movie complex to Hades. And they’ve expanded the general store. You wouldn’t recognize it.”
Irena laughed, shaking her head. June’s verbal list of changes fell woefully short of progress in her book. “Wow, that puts the town into what, the middle of the twentieth century? Only sixty more years to catch up, I guess.”
June spared her one glance before focusing back on the runway up ahead.
“Nothing that a good mall and a good lawyer can’t fix,” she told her friend. “You know, we still don’t have a really good lawyer in Hades. We would if you came back.” Her teasing tone vanished as she suddenly braced herself. “Hang on, Irena. This last patch can be a little rough.”
Irena was about to tell her there wasn’t enough money in the world to tempt her to make her return permanent. That she was more than satisfied practicing law in Seattle. Granted, she was only one of a large group of lawyers, but that was just fine. She didn’t need the pressure of being the only defense lawyer in a hundred-mile radius. The pace in Seattle was hectic, but still far more to her liking than life in Hades had ever been.
For the moment, she was too busy holding her breath and gripping the armrests to say any of that. The somewhat choppy flight ended with an even choppier landing. Irena continued clutching the armrests until the plane stopped moving. When it finally came to a halt, she realized that her legs felt rubbery. Getting out of the plane was going to be tricky.
June unbuckled her seat belt and turned around, smiling broadly and obviously pleased with herself.
“Got your money’s worth that time,” she declared. “The landing turned out better than I thought.”
“Right,” Irena murmured, more to herself than to June. “We could have crashed.”
“You’re a lot less optimistic than I remember you,” June said, only half kidding.
The next moment, a tall, handsome man with just a smattering of gray at his temples had thrown open the small plane’s door. His attention was directed to June and not the plane’s single passenger.
“That’s it, June,” he told her firmly. “No more flying for you until the baby’s here.”
“Honey, you’re not showing your best side,” June chided.
“That’s because my ‘best side’ had a heart attack, watching you land the plane,” he informed her, helping her down.
On the ground, June turned and watched Kevin help her friend down. She smiled beatifically, as if to erase the dialogue that had just transpired.
“Irena, I want you to meet my husband, Kevin. And he
