Page 48 of Bear My Heart

"No, it's okay, I think I'm kind of fascinated to see old bears up close?"

He ducked his head over hers, breathed, "You really are perfect," and aloud, said, "Okay, everybody out to the back yard, then, Mom will literally kill us if she has to deal with eight bears in her living room."

Everyone rushed, meandered, or ambled, according to their age, toward the kitchen, which was off to the left of the living room. Peter and Shanti took up the rear except for Brenda, who followed them with mutters and shooing motions as she actually went into the kitchen while everybody else turned right and headed for a back deck door that was off the dining room. "You do not have to go out and watch them all be furries," Brenda told Shanti, who let out a startled laugh.

"Do you suppose many furries are also shifters? That would be amazing. But I don't mind. This is all still pretty new and fascinating to me. And that smells so good." The frying fish and huge pile of golden, hand-cut, homemade french fries growing beside the fryer made Shanti's stomach rumble, and Brenda looked pleased.

"Please remember they're all greedy bears and don't hesitate to stab somebody in the hand with your fork if you're not getting your fair share. My mother included."

"Wait, Nan? I thought she wasn't a bear?"

"She's not," Brenda said with a wicked grin. "But she is greedy."

"I heard that!" Nan yelled from the living room, and Shanti was laughing again as she went onto the back deck.

The whole bear side of the family had already shifted, although Peter stayed on the deck with her. They were all in the yard below, visible because the living room light shone on the back yard. The three youngest bears were batting snow at each other like children, even if they were all in their twenties as humans. The one she guessed was Carl, due to the lack of grey in his fur, was watching with visible amusement as his parents sat in the snow like kings and queens, then toppled over as the snow gave way to their weight. One of the younger ones stood up, making themselves as large as possible, and another of them rammed right into the first, knocking them both over. The next thing Shanti knew, Lynn and Jack were lying in the snow, howling with laughter and pummeling each other feebly.

"So this is my family," Peter said wryly, and Shanti smiled up at him.

"I love them already. Almost as much as I love you."

CHAPTER 24

If hearts could take wing and fly the way they did in cartoons, Pete was pretty sure his just had. He'd dreamed of fate striking for his whole life, but he hadn't realized how joyful it would be. He whispered, "I love you too," and then with a glance at his family, added, "They're a bunch of goofs. But they're my goofs."

"They're great. And I'm going to go help your mom set the table, because it's freezing out here!"

"Oh, you don't have to do that. I⁠—"

"I know," Shanti said firmly and with a very sweet smile. "But if I do, I bet I'll be able to steal a couple of those pieces of halibut, or some of the fries."

"Oh! Oh, I see! You're cunning, that's what it is!"

"Honestly, Peter, I think I'm about the least cunning person in the world," Shanti said wryly as they went inside. "I'm quiet and straight-forward and not at all sneaky."

"Except in the case of halibut and home fries."

She laughed. "Right. Except in the case of halibut and home fries. Can I help set the table?" she asked his mom, who waved metal tongs in the air.

"No, you don't know where anything is. Pete can do it while you taste-test the fries for me. Are they salty enough?"

Shanti beamed as Pete made a sound of protest and snaked a hand past his mother to grab some fries. She smacked the back of his hand with the tongs and he yanked it back, clutching it to his chest and giving her his best big-eyed mournful puppy dog look. As the mother of four, she was completely unmoved, even though he had vague memories of that kind of thing working when he'd been very small and his younger siblings hadn't been around yet. Shanti, in the meanwhile, said, "Oh, they're so good," and was rewarded with a piece of halibut straight out of the fryer. His mom even broke it in half so it would cool down faster, but Shanti still hissed and gasped and burned her mouth on the hot fish, mumbling, "Oh, oh wow, okay, now I understand why you said it's the best whitefish, wow…"

Pete said, "Moooom!" plaintively and his mother laughed at him.

"Go set the table and you can have some."

He scurried to do as he was told, as if he wasn't thirty-two entire years old, and was back at the fryer as the rest of the family tramped in, shaking snow off their shoulders and feet. Everybody tried crowding into the kitchen to steal fish and chips themselves, and his mom shouted good-naturedly again, sending them to the table to eat like civilized people. By the time they all got settled, the food was done, and Pete carried a couple of heaping platters of shrimp and halibut to the table while his mom carried bowls of fries. It looked like an impossible amount of food, but experience told Pete that there would be little-to-no leftovers.

He noticed that Shanti listened more than spoke during the meal, although to be fair, everybody was eager to tell her stories about his childhood misadventures, so she didn't necessarily need to talk all that much. She did look increasingly dismayed as his siblings cheerfully recounted the several-year period in his life where he'd run his face into a variety of objects much harder than his face on a bi-annual basis: the grocery store floor, after he'd specifically been told to stop spinning himself around the grocery cart-holding frame, then the frozen concrete playground, then running under the bleachers, then a mailbox⁠—

"A mailbox?" Shanti interrupted incredulously.

"He was riding his bike," Aaron announced gleefully. "He looked over his shoulder to say something and looked back and wham!"

Shanti winced from her bones out, which made Pete's embarrassment a little less than it might otherwise have been. "And then I tried to split a boat prow with my face," he said with a sigh. "Strangely enough it worked the other way around."

"Why don't you have a bunch of scars?" Shanti asked, her tone caught between horrified and fascinated.