A Bear Tale

By Christi Killien

A bear, a 25-year-old nursing student and her dog, and one autumn week that changes a small rural community in the Pacific Northwest. This novella is about love and death and a bear trap full of doughnuts. Diana O'Neil is the fierce heroine who wants to fall in love, but is trapped herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christi Killien
• Release date: Feb 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458128485

Christi Killien

Christi Killien's fiction publication includes six children's and young adults novels with Houghton Mifflin and Scholastic. Her nonfiction publication includes numerous essays and the book WRITING IN A NEW CONVERTIBLE WITH THE TOP DOWN, co-authored with Sheila Bender and published by Warner and Blue Heron. Christi lives in Olalla, Washington with her husband.

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A Bear Tale

by Christi Killien

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support.

All rights reserved

Copyright 2011 Christi Killien

Cover photo copyright 1997 Dennis Widman

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Chapter 1

Diana O'Neil walked very fast up Berry Road, and not only because it was four in the afternoon and getting dark, but because she always walked fast.  Even when she didn't know exactly where she was going.

She was tall, just under five-eight, with long legs, fingers, and hair, the latter which she straightened with expensive products, and at this extremely casual moment had pulled into a high ponytail.  Her ensemble -- gray sweatpants from Seattle's Roosevelt High School class of 2005, saggy lime green chenille sweater, hot pink neck scarf and running shoes -- she would wear only here in the backwoods of Salal, Washington where she would never be recognized, much less meet her long-awaited true love. 

Salal is halfway between heaven and hell, a glorious retreat in the Cascadia forest, Snow Falling on Cedars territory, as well as a solitary outpost in a deep valley with one bar of cell phone reception and no cable.  Weather people call it the Convergent Zone, and several neighbors agreed that the O'Neil property seemed to be at the center.  The clouds never blew in one direction and it was always chillier.

The summer had been the coolest in decades.  Just fifteen days above eighty degrees and every growing thing had been stunted, from the blackberry, huckleberry and salal lining the road to the potatoes, carrots, strawberries and beans in the O'Neil's gardens.  Early rains had brought the potholes back before the annual grading and graveling; there was one in front of the O'Neil's place the size of a tire, right in the middle of the 3/4-mile-long road.  Like a navel.

Diana reached the dead end, checked her pulse, and waited while Jake the golden retriever left several pee-mails.  Then she slapped her thigh and said, Come on, Jake!  Let's go home! 

Jake looked up and gazed at Diana, his true love.  He was getting old and couldn't hear as well as a pup could, but his nose still told him everything he needed to know.  He bolted past her, heading north, winding his way up through the dark forest tunnel.

An evening fog began to gather.  It was dusky, a car would have turned on its lights.  Diana saw a huge, red maple leaf, as big as she had ever seen, picked it up by its stem-tail, and swished it as she walked.

It was not too wet, not too dry, not too cold, not too hot.  Swish.  Swish.  There was the big white house where the dog Chester lived.  What she knew of households out here was mainly the dogs. If Diana's parents had come on this walk, there would be talk about all the neighbors, stories of the Great Paving War which had ended just three years earlier.  Diana did not care.  She was here in the backwoods for one month doing her nursing practicum at Providence Hospital, fifteen minutes away on Highway 16.  Then she would graduate, land a fabulous well-paying job, and meet Mr. Right.  She was almost 25-years-old.  The big picture was clear.  The little day-to-day picture was what needed fine tuning, for