by Terese Ramin
Yeah, right. Kate rolled her eyes at the thought. Training, my left big toe. Spoiled-rotten dog.
It didn’t take long for the llamas to respond. They enjoyed treat time. Humming and clacking they trotted over the rolling hills from their pasture, ears alert, noses twitching. Their leatherpadded, two-toed feet made soft thuds on the bare earth as they approached.
Off to the north from the direction of the tree fields, came the rough roar of a tractor jouncing up a rutted track. Tai, Risto, Grisha and the 4-H tree team were on their way in.
Across the drive, Li, Megan and another group of 4-H-ers emerged from the catch yard—a pen small enough so the Ilamas couldn’t run when you had to catch them for shearing, toenail trimming or other unwanted attention, but large enough so they could circle off their nervousness—near the females’ corral and headed for the workshop. After an afternoon spent shearing the moms’ bellies, sides and backs to ready them for the coming summer’s heat, they were laden with bags full of llama, alpaca and vicuña wool. Tomorrow they’d shear the boys and begin to brush and card the fiber, cleaning it for spinning.
Hank strode behind them, carrying the sheep clippers and the granola-bribe bucket. Distance and the sun hid the expression on his tanned face, but from the way he walked Kate guessed he was not a happy camper. An afternoon spent listening to teenage and preteen girls could do that to any man, but particularly to a father. Kate would, no doubt, hear about it after dinner. They could trade insights and information just like real adults. And if he didn’t volunteer the information, she’d ask—if she could keep herself from giggling like an eleven-year-old in his presence long enough to do so, that is.
Sheesh, what a horrible thing to contemplate. She didn’t particularly remember wanting to be eleven when she was eleven. Twenty had seemed the perfect age to her then. Once she’d gotten there, twenty had been interesting, but now was better. Lots better. Mega, stupendously, infinitely better. It was also beside the point. Which being, that at least Hank had found his daughter today—and hopefully spoken with her—which was better than Kate had managed to do.
It was the first time in memory she’d suspected Megan of avoiding her. She’d have to quiz Li about that
The first llama face hove into range, inquisitive nose thrust out to bump hers. Along the fence line llama necks stretched, noses reached for granola bags. 4-H-ers called to their favorites, offering goodies with one hand while they scratched hard, woolly necks with the other.
It was late afternoon after a hard working day. Time to feed the camelids, put the farm equipment to bed and send all non-Andens home to supper.
Except, of course. Kate allowed, for him.
Without invitation her gaze ran to Hank, who was emerging from the workshop. Dusty black jeans rode low on his hips, a stained gray T-shirt adorned with endangered rain-forest inhabitants clung to an irregular vee of sweat on his chest. Nice, very nice, one side of her brain murmured.
The other side wondered why sweat made him look even more appealing than clean had, then the two split into debate teams to analyze the issue. A free-for-all ensued over the topic of fairness—how unfair it was that men always seemed to come out looking better when they were filthy than women did—so Kate sighed and did the only thing she could think to do: told her brain to cut the comedy and concentrate on other things.
It would have been fine if her brain listened. But since she so rarely took her own advice, it didn’t.
When he leaned into the fence next to her, she started, cheeks reddened. Either he didn’t notice the blush or he ignored it. Point for him.
“They seem so serene,” he said quietly.
“Mmm.” Kate nodded. “They are, usually. Almost...” She hesitated. People who didn’t know llamas often misunderstood mention of the seemingly telepathic or sometimes spiritual connection between the animals and their humans. Hank looked at her, waiting. She shrugged. In for a penny and all that rot. “Almost mystical,” she finished.
He rested his chin on a closed fist. “Mystical?” Curious, not disbelieving.
“It’s hard to explain. Most of the time they just seem to ... understand things that people don’t.” She pointed at a pure white male in the middle of the herd; head lifted, ears forward as if probing the air, he scanned the perimeter of the yard, obviously looking for something or someone in particular. “There. That’s Harvey—I told you about him this morning.”
“Llama therapy, the old woman at the nursing home.” Hank nodded, grinning when Kate slanted him a sideways glance. “I heard. It only looked like I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Ah.” She nodded wisely. “I see.”
He snorted. “I bet.”
She ignored him. “Anyway, as I attempted to tell you then, Harve ... picks up on what people are feeling and...I don’t know, calms them is the simplest way to put it. People in need gravitate to him, he finds them. He’s particularly good with the kids we get out here. He’s a...special friend of Meg’s.”
“He is.” Flat and unemotional, tentative and...wistful.
Afraid to believe.
For a long moment Hank stared at her, then switched the intensity to the white llama leaning into his daughter’s embrace. Was this where she came when she skipped their appointments with the department’s psychologist? Had she instinctively sought and found her own treatment? Could he hope...no, he didn’t even want to name the wish for fear of destroying it.
He’d never heard of llamas being used in this particular capacity, but he was familiar with the concept of pet therapy and its uses with Alzheimer’s patients and the elderly, with chronic fatigue syndrome and psychiatric hospital patients, with dying children and adults. It had something to do, perhaps, with nonverbal communication, the psychic link between humans and animals and the will to live. Or, as with the Alzheimer’s victims, psych patients and those with chronic fatigue, the will to remain within the moment. Maybe...
Naw. He swallowed, looked everywhere but at Megan and Harvey. He wouldn’t think it. It was too easy to want to believe in what amounted to an experimental theory out of desperation. Sort of like believing in magic.
“So.” he said with feigned lightness. “Is Harvey named after Jimmy Stewart’s six-foot rabbit?”
Kate eyed him thoughtfully. Long experience with people who needed to doubt before they hoped made her scan his features in swift appraisal, let her see the almost masked fear, the desire to believe, the not quite hidden plea for time to digest, sort through. Empathy made it easy for her to give him what he sought.
“Very good, Mr. Mathison.” Cheeky voice, exaggerated applause, she responded in turn to the flippancy of the question. “You’re a classic-movie buff?”
“Hank. When I have a chance. You?”
“Kate.” There, that took care of the Mr., Ms. nonsense. And about time. too. “I enjoy movies, period. Good, bad, classic, whatever, as long as it’s escapism. We watched whatever we got hold of at the missions and in the camps. Funny how good even a bad movie seems after hours or weeks of trying to hold back other people’s misery.”
His expression was suddenly hooded and faraway. “I can imagine,” he said quietly.
Kate studied him, drawn to something in his voice, behind his eyes—things he’d done because he had to, things he’d seen because of things he’d done. Almost an expectation of—judgment. “Can you?”
It was his turn to look at her. There was no presumption on her face or in her voice, only genuine interest, intense curiosity and...a quality of mercy he could almost touch. Odd. Mercy was hardly a commodity he equated with this day and age, with her, but there it was written in those iceberg-blue eyes. Not quite what he expected. But then, so little about her was. He nodded. “Yeah.”
In the llama yard Harvey’s ears pricked sideways, forward. The llama cast a glance toward Kate and Hank, then touched noses with the girl. She hugged him tighter, burying her face in the long wool. He stood quietly, allowing the invasion of his space without demur
; after a moment he turned his head, his calm gaze settled once more on Hank, a speaking look. Uncomfortable as it made him, Hank stared back.
“What?” he asked Kate.
She shrugged. “He knows,” she said simply.
“Knows what?”
“About you and Megan.”
Hank turned sharply, but before the “What?!” could pass his lips, the first of the parent-collecting-kid vehicles pulled up behind the house and Kate was gone.
He turned back to the yard. Harvey stood a few feet from him, gaze calm and steady, studying him hard; the intelligence in the liquid brown eyes was palpable, undeniable.
Uneasy with the all too perceptive nonhuman scrutiny, Hank looked past the llama. Alone nearby, Megan waited, arms slack at her sides, watching them as if she hoped...what, be couldn’t tell. Not sure what was expected, Hank looked to one, then the other. The whole thing felt absurd, but he’d witnessed too many unexplainable things—both bad and good—in his life to simply dismiss this one. Whatever this one was.
A sensation shuddered through him: warmth, comfort, compassion, understanding. A thought that wasn’t his entered his mind unbidden: Don’t worry, Hank, we’ll work it out. She wants to figure it out.
Startled, he peered at Harvey; the llama blinked at him. Then its long throat made a regurgitating movement and Harvey turned away and resumed chewing his cud. Swallowing uncertainty, Hank let his gaze slide back to his daughter. For the first time in he didn’t remember when, there naked on her face, Megan’s vulnerabilities showed.
Evening crept in on shadowed feet, heavy with a symphony of free frogs and crickets, the whisper of night birds taking wing. Light that would have seemed warm and inviting on a winter’s eve showed through sheer curtains, an unreal electric yellow-pink that seemed almost garish against the soft pink-blue-violet shades of approaching night.
Voices hovered behind the light, youthful laughter stroked the shadows, mingled with the clatter of pans in the kitchen sink, the harsh, watery shurr of the elderly dishwasher. Normal life, alive and well in the countryside of mid-Michigan.
Caught by the instant, Hank leaned against the lumpy fieldstone side wall of Stone House, listening, half wishing this life belonged to him. That it didn’t was and always had been his choice, he knew. To join the DEA, to be a part of some alternate reality was a decision he’d made long ago—Gen and Megan notwithstanding. But even they had never made him quite want to be part of this, the softness of daily moments, the slow and steady progress of a life that didn’t chronically exist on the underbelly of violent death.
He understood with regret that even now a part of him resented being here, blamed Gen for leaving him here, forced to deal with day-to-day realities instead of living on extremes the way he’d done working the streets or undercover. Understood that another piece of his dissatisfaction lay in the fact that what he and Megan did could hardly be called living by any definition—often seemed hardly more than existing—was. in its own way, as extreme as any life he’d lived undercover, but without the adrenaline rush.
Without the momentary euphoria of a case closed, a job accomplished.
Living on the constant edge of a rush was easier, after a fashion, than living daily life. It was simpler—more black-and-white. You trusted yourself, your control of a situation, or that was all she wrote. You kept your eyes open, your ears sharp and slept ready for flight or whatever else might overtake you at a moment’s notice.
Here was more complicated, less distinct, grayer, harder to control. Here there wasn’t just himself to face, or be concerned about; here was Megan. He still trusted himself, his decisions, but too often that wasn’t enough; she didn’t trust him, his decisions; she made her own. And too much of the time they turned out bad.
For both of them.
He shut his eyes and again felt the strange weight of the llama’s gaze on him, the bulk of Megan’s unvoiced questions and vulnerabilities, the physical presence of compassion that flowed from Kate. The prayer inside his head remained the same as always: Bless my daughter, Megan Genevieve, take care of her. Keep her safe, well, healthy, alive, breathing and happy. Help me to understand...
“Dad. Hey, Dad, you out here?”
Hank started, as surprised by what she’d called him as he was by being hailed at all. Whoopee! zinged through his starved parent system. Dad, she’d called him Dad. Without sarcasm or ridicule, simply matter-of-fact, kid to parent, his name. It was ridiculous to revel so in the sound of a three-letter word.
He reveled all the same. Take what you can get, when you can get it, and enjoy it, he told himself. Rule number one for dealing with teenagers. “Here, Meg.”
Megan’s hair swung loose over her shoulder when she leaned over the side of the front porch to see him. “I’m going to the movies with Li and Risto, okay? We won’t be late.”
“That was a question?” Wary surprise and unintentional irony hovered in his voice. “You’re asking me?”
Something fleeting flashed across her face: anger, rebellion, resentment, animosity...pieces of the Megan who’d lived with him the past five years. Reminders that however much her personality seemed to have flip-flopped since they’d arrived at the Andens’, the problems that had brought them here were far from gone. Then her features smoothed and she was the Megan of this morning once again: disgusted teenager with the rolled-eye, let’s-humor-the-poor-benighted-parent attitude.
“Tcht, Da-ad.” Translation: say “fine” and don’t embarrass me. “Okay?”
“Who’s driving?” She let him parent her so infrequently he was almost out of practice. He had to keep his hand in while he could.
“Tai’s gonna drop us off on his way to pick up his girlfriend and take Grisha and Ilya to the Comic Pit and the little guys for ice cream—”
“Hey, who you callin’ tittle, shorty?” Mike asked, towering above her on the porch wall.
Megan didn’t blink. “And he’ll pick us up when the movie’s over. Okay?” She grabbed Mike’s legs and hoisted him down. “I’m callin’ you little, wise guy, now get off there before you kill yourself.” Then she turned back to her father, the epitome of an impatient, normal, well-adjusted kid living a normal, well-adjusted life. “Okay? Dad?”
“Okay.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She blew him a kiss. “See ya.”
A kiss? A kiss? He hadn’t gotten one of those from her, blown or otherwise, in longer than he wanted to recall. “Don’t be late,” he said, for the sake of saying something.
Again there was a flash of hostility quickly covered, another lurking reminder of her apparent ability to dissemble at will. But all she said was “Da-ad,” in two syllables drawn out through tight teeth, annoyed. Then she was flying off the porch with the rest of the kids, piling into the van, and they were gone in a sputter of gravel and dust.
Thoughtful and more than a little unnerved by his daughter’s mercurial moods, Hank jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and watched them go. Was this Megan a fluke, a mirage, or had he done something almost right for a change? Maybe? Possibly? Naw, probably didn’t have anything to do with him. Right? Jeez, what was wrong with a guy holding out hope?
What was wrong with a guy pleading to see only the best for his child?
The aluminum screen door onto the porch whined open, soughed shut. Kate stepped onto the porch.
“Is it safe?” she asked warily. “Are they gone?”
“Is it safe?” Eyebrows cocked in mock astonishment, Hank stepped around the edge of the porch and looked up at her, the fuzzy apricot-gold halo of hair that framed her face caped out around her shoulders and arms. Sensation, recognition churned in his belly; he tamped it down. Not the time, not the place, not the woman, echoed hollowly through the halls of his psyche like some unfriendly specter on a rampage. He did his best to listen. “You, oh great queen of all mothers, slayer of dragons, font of all wisdom, are asking me, the devil dad from hell, if it’s safe? As opposed to what?”
“Don�
��t be sarcastic,” Kate advised him. “I deal with sarcasm all day. It doesn’t impress me and I’m too tired for it tonight.”
“Sorry.” Grinning, Hank mounted the steps to slouch against a support pillar. Stupid to go closer, his conscience whispered when scent coiled in his nostrils, slunk into the back of his throat; salt, musk and woman. She’ll bewitch you. Better to stay clear. “You’re the one with the endless patience, a gazillion kids and all the answers. I couldn’t resist.”
“Try,” Kate suggested. “And it’s strictly blind luck, you know.” She slumped onto the porch swing on a sigh and pulled her feet up, trying to ignore the unfamiliar warmth that constricted her chest, curled into her toes when he smiled. “Man, that feels good. You know, I love that bunch of hooligans and I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but they’re exhausting and it’s a relief to have them gone sometimes.”
“You wouldn’t say that if they were gone all the time.” A statement flat and quiet, full of the conviction of experience.
“Nope.” She shook her head, watching him while her pulse fizzed and jigged restlessly in her veins. Seemed she’d spent a lot of time watching him today. But what else did you do with an untamed, uncaged, exciting but potentially dangerous beast with which you were not familiar? She’d watched the communist sotdiers who came through the refugee camps with a similar degree of wariness. ’Course, the only tattoo that had beaten in her chest when she’d seen them was fear, not this ... nervy anticipation and...crush. “You’re probably right. But they’re not gone all the time, so I can say it and mean it.”
“Lucky you.”
She nodded complacently, choosing sincerity over irony. “You betcha.”
Disbelieving laughter chuckled through him. “Jeez Louise, woman, you’d be easy to hate.”
“Mmm.” Kate stretched her neck and settled more comfortably into the swing, observing him. Enjoying the view. No harm in looking, right? “So I hear.”