Lone Wolf A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  I cannot look at him, so I stare over his shoulder. The contestant on Wheel of Fortune loses her turn.

  “I know you’re hurting,” Edward says after a moment. “This time, you don’t have to go through it alone.”

  “It?”

  He glances away. “Losing someone you care about.”

  He’s wrong, though. Even with him standing three feet in front of me, I have never felt so isolated. So I do what any wolf would, if cornered. “You’re right. Because I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure Dad gets better.”

  Edward’s mouth tightens. “If you want to be taken seriously, then act like an adult,” he replies. “You heard the doctors. He’s not coming back, Cara.”

  I stare at him. “You did.”

  He tries to argue, but I pick up the remote control and turn on the sound on the television. There is a ringing as a contestant gets twelve hundred dollars for choosing a W. I push the buttons, so that the applause drowns out Edward’s voice.

  I am behaving like a two-year-old. But maybe that’s okay, because, by definition, toddlers need their parents.

  I stare at the Wheel of Fortune until Edward gives up and leaves the room. Under my breath, I solve the puzzle: Blood is thicker than water.

  The next contestant guesses a P; the buzzer sounds.

  People can be so stupid sometimes.

  The first time I came face-to-face with a wolf, I was eleven years old. My father had just opened up the first enclosure at Redmond’s. He waited until after hours and then took me past the first safety fence, and up to the second one. Inside were Wazoli, Sikwla, and Kladen, the first captive wolves he’d brought to the park. He made me crouch down, with the chain-link safely separating me from the wolves, and hold up my fists so that the knuckles just grazed the wire. This way, the wolves would get used to my scent.

  Wazoli, the alpha female, immediately darted to the far end of the enclosure. “She’s more afraid of you than you are of her,” my father said quietly.

  Sikwla was the tester, and Kladen the enforcer wolf. Big, with strong black markings down his back and tail, as if someone had taken a Sharpie marker to him, he came right up to the fence and stared at me with his wide eyes. Instinctively, I backed away into my father, who was standing behind me. “They can smell your fear,” he told me. “So don’t give an inch.”

  In a low, calm voice, he told me what was going to happen: he would open the outside gate that led into the enclosure, and then we would step into the little wire double gate and lock it behind us. Then he’d open the inside gate, and I would go in. I had to stay down low, and not move. The wolves might ignore me, or run away, but if I waited, they might also come closer.

  “They can tell if your heart rate goes up,” my father whispered. “So don’t let them know you’re afraid.”

  My mother did not want me inside the wolf enclosure, and with good reason—who would willingly put a child right smack in the middle of danger? But I had watched my father insinuate himself into this pack now for months. I might never take my position at a carcass and rip away the meat with my teeth, like he did, while two wolves snapped on either side of him—but he was hoping Wazoli would have pups, and I wanted to help raise them.

  I wasn’t afraid of Wazoli. As the alpha, she would never come near me—she had all the knowledge of the pack and she would stay as far away from an unknown entity as possible. Kladen was big, 130 pounds of muscle, but he didn’t scare me as much as Sikwla, who just a month ago had sent a park employee to the hospital after biting down on his finger all the way to the bone. The guy was a groundskeeper who had reached through the chain-link to pat Sikwla, thinking he was rubbing up against the fence for a scratch, and before he knew it the wolf had turned and bitten him. Screaming, he tried to pull away, which only made Sikwla bite down harder. Had he just stayed perfectly still, Sikwla would have probably let go.

  Every time I saw the groundskeeper walking around Redmond’s with his bandaged hand, I shuddered.

  My father said that with himself in the enclosure, too, Sikwla would most likely leave me alone.

  “Are you ready?” my father asked, and I nodded.

  He opened the second gate, and we both went inside. I crouched down where my father had told me to crouch and waited as Kladen walked past me. I held my breath, but he just continued to lope toward the copse of trees in the back of the enclosure. Then Sikwla approached. “Steady,” my father whispered, and all of a sudden Kladen came barreling at him, knocking him onto the ground in greeting.

  Because of that, because my attention flickered, Sikwla seized his moment and went for my throat.

  I could feel the pierce of his incisors, feel the wet heat of his breath. His fur was wiry and coarse and damp. “Don’t move,” my father grunted, unable to free himself fast enough to rescue me.

  Sikwla was a tester wolf; this was his job in the family. I was a threat until proven otherwise; just because I’d come into the enclosure with my father, whom they accepted, didn’t mean they wanted me around. Sikwla set the standards for this pack; this was his way of making sure I measured up.

  At the time, though, I didn’t think of any of this. I thought: I am going to die.

  I didn’t breathe. I didn’t swallow. I tried not to let my pulse show what I felt. Sikwla’s teeth pressed into the flesh of my neck. I wanted to shove at him with all my strength. Instead, I closed my eyes.

  Sikwla let go.

  By then my father had wrestled Kladen away and grabbed me into his arms. I didn’t start to cry until I saw that he had tears in his eyes.

  This is what I am thinking of when, just after three in the morning, I crawl out of bed. It is not easy, with a single hand, and I am certain I am going to wake up my mother, who is sleeping on a pullout chair beside me. But she only rolls over and starts snoring lightly, and I slip into the hallway.

  The nurses’ station is to the right, but the elevators are to the left, which means I don’t have to pass by them and be interrogated about why I’m out of bed at this hour of the night. Keeping to the shadows, I shuffle down the corridor, careful to hold my bandaged arm tight against my stomach to keep my shoulder from being jostled.

  I already know my brother won’t be in my father’s room. My mom told me she gave him the key to our house—something that makes me feel uneasy. Most likely Edward won’t be poking around in my room—and it’s not like I have anything to hide—but still. I don’t like the thought of being here, while he is there.

  The skeleton staff in the ICU doesn’t notice the girl in the robe with the bandaged arm and shoulder who gets off the elevator. This is a blessing, since I really didn’t know how to explain my migration from the orthopedic ward to this one.

  My father is bathed in a blue light; the glow from the monitors surrounds him. He does not look any different to me than he did yesterday—surely this is a good thing? If he were, as Edward said, not coming back, wouldn’t he be getting worse?

  There is just enough space for me to sit on the bed, to lie down on my good side. It makes my bad shoulder ache like hell. I realize I can’t hug him, because of the bandage, and he can’t hug me, either. So instead I just lie next to him, my face pressed against the scratchy cotton of his hospital gown. I stare at the computer screen that shows that steady, solid beat of his heart.

  The night after I went into the wolf enclosure for the first time I woke up to find my father sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me. His face was outlined with moonlight. “When I was in the wild, I was chased by a bear. I was sure I was going to die. I didn’t think there could be anything more terrifying,” he said. “I was wrong.” He reached out one hand and tucked my hair behind my ear. “The scariest thing in the world is thinking that someone you love is going to die.”

  Now, I feel tears coming, a feather at the back of my throat. With a steady breath, I blink them away.

  They can smell your fear, he taught me. Don’t give an inch.

  LUKE

 
Two weeks went by without any sign or sound of the wolf that had come so close to me when I was sick. And then one morning, when I was drinking from a stream, I suddenly saw an image rise in the reflection beside my own. The wolf was big and gray, with strong stripes of black on the top of his head and his ears. My heart started hammering, but I didn’t turn around. Instead, I met his yellow eyes in the mirror of the water and waited to see what he would do next.

  He left.

  Any doubts I’d had about what I was doing vanished. This was what I had hoped for. If the big animal that had approached me at the stream was truly wild, he may have been just as curious about me as I was about him. And if that was the case, I might be able to get close enough to understand their behavior from within, instead of observing from outside.

  I wanted nothing more than to see that wolf again, but I wasn’t sure how to make that happen. Leaving food around the area would attract not just the wolf but also bears. If I called to the wolf, he might respond—even if he was a lone wolf, having a partner is safer than being alone—but that calling would also reveal my position to other predators. And honestly, although I hadn’t seen proof of any other wolves since I’d come into the wild, I couldn’t be sure that this wolf was the only one in the area.

  I realized that if I was going to take the next step, it meant moving out of my comfort zone. Hell, it meant leaping blindfolded off the cliff of my comfort zone.

  I adjusted my schedule so that I was sleeping during the day, and waking at dusk. I would have to travel in the darkness, even though my eyes and my body were not suited to it. This was much more threatening than any night I’d spent at the zoo in the captive pack’s enclosure; for one thing, I was walking nearly ten miles in pitch darkness in a single night; for another, I didn’t have to worry about other animals when I was in the wolf enclosure at the zoo. Here, if I tripped over an exposed tree root or splashed in a puddle or even stepped loudly on a branch, I was sending up a flare alerting every other creature in the wild to my location. Even when I was trying to be quiet, I was at a disadvantage; other animals were better at seeing and hearing in the dark and were watching every move I made. If I fell down, I was as good as dead.

  What I remember about that first night was that I was sweating like mad, even though it was near freezing. I would take a step, and then hesitate to make sure I didn’t hear anything coming toward me. Although there were only a scattered handful of stars that night, and the moon had a veil draped over its face, my vision adjusted enough to register shadows. I didn’t need to see clearly. I needed to see movement, or a flash of eyes.

  Because I was effectively blind, I used my other senses to their fullest. I breathed deeply, using the breeze to identify the scents of animals that were watching me pass. I listened for rustling, for footsteps. I stayed upwind. When the long fingers of dawn cupped the horizon, I felt as if I’d run a marathon, as if I’d conquered an army. I had survived a night in the Canadian forest, surrounded by predators. I was still alive. And really, that was all that mattered.

  GEORGIE

  By the fifth day after the accident, I can tell you what the soup of the day is going to be in the cafeteria and what times the nurses change shifts and where, at the orthopedics floor coffee station, they keep the packets of sugar. I’ve memorized the extension of Dietary, so that I can get Cara extra cups of pudding. I know the names of the physical therapist’s children. I keep my toothbrush in my purse.

  Last night, the one night I’d tried to go home, Cara had spiked a fever—an infection at the incision site. Although the nurses told me it was common, and although my absence wasn’t correlative, I still felt responsible. I’ve told Joe I’m going to stay at the hospital as long as Cara does. A heavy dose of antibiotics has brought down her fever some, but she’s out of sorts, uncomfortable. Had she not faced this setback, we might have been wheeling her out of the hospital today. And although I know this isn’t possible—that you can’t will yourself to have an infection—there is a part of me that thinks Cara’s body did this in order to make sure she could stay close to Luke.

  I am pouring myself my fifth cup of coffee of the day in the small supply room that has the coffee machine in it, a godsend provided by a nurse with a kind heart. It’s amazing, really, how quickly the extraordinary can start to feel like the commonplace. A week ago I would have started my morning with a shower and a shampoo and would have packed lunch for the twins and walked them to the bus stop. Now, it feels perfectly normal to wear the same clothes for days in a row, to wait not for a bus but for a doctor doing rounds.

  A few days ago the thought of Luke’s brain injury felt like a punch in my gut. Now, I am just numb. A few days ago I had to fight to keep Cara in her bed, instead of at her father’s bedside. Now, even when the social worker asks her if she’d like to visit him, she shakes her head.

  I think Cara is afraid. Not of what she’ll see but of what she won’t.

  I reach into the little dorm-size fridge for the container of milk, but it slips through my hands and falls onto the floor. The white puddle spreads beneath my shoes, under the lip of the refrigerator. “Goddammit,” I mutter.

  “Here.”

  A man tosses me a wad of industrial brown napkins. I do my best to mop up the mess, but I’m near tears. Just once—once—I’d like something to be easy.

  “You know what they say,” the man adds, crouching down to help. “It’s not worth crying over.”

  I see his black shoes first, and his blue uniform pants. Officer Whigby takes the sopping napkins from my hands and tosses them into the trash. “There must be something else you need to do,” I say stiffly. “Surely someone’s speeding, somewhere? Or an old lady needs help crossing the street?”

  He smiles. “You’d be surprised at how many old ladies are self-sufficient these days. Ms. Ng, honestly, the last thing I want to do is bother you at a time when you’re already under a lot of stress, but—”

  “Then don’t,” I beg. “Let us get through this. Let me get my daughter out of the hospital and let my ex-husband . . .” I find I can’t finish the sentence. “Just give us a little space.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, ma’am. If your daughter was driving drunk, then she could be looking at a negligent homicide charge.”

  If Joe were here, he’d know what to say. But Joe is back in my old life, making lunches for the twins and walking them to the bus stop. I straighten my spine and, with a confidence I didn’t know I still had, turn my full gaze on the policeman. “First of all, Luke isn’t dead. Which means your charge is irrelevant. Second, my ex may be many things, Officer, but he’s not a fool, and he wouldn’t have let Cara drive home if she was drunk. So unless you have hard facts and evidence that can prove to me my daughter was responsible for that accident, then she’s just a minor who made a bad choice and got drunk and needed to be picked up by her dad. If you’re going to arrest her for underage drinking, I will assume you’ve already arrested every other teenager who was at that party. And if you haven’t, then it turns out I was right the first time around: you’ve got something else you need to do.”

  I push past him, sailing back to Cara’s room with my chin held high. Joe would be proud of me, but then again, he’s a defense attorney, and anything that sticks it to The Man is a mark of honor in his book. What I find myself thinking about is Luke, instead. There’s a fire in you, he used to say. It was why he wanted to marry me. Underneath my reporter’s silk blouse and my graduate degree in journalism, he said, was someone who always came up swinging. I think he believed that someone with a spark like that could understand a man who lived on the edge of death every day. It truly took him by surprise to find out that I wanted the house, the garden, the kids, the dog. I may have had a spark inside me, but I needed sturdy, solid walls to keep it from being snuffed out.

  When I get back to Cara’s room, I realize that I’ve left my coffee with Officer Whigby, and that my daughter is wide awake and sitting up. Her cheeks are flushed, and her hair
line is damp, which suggests that the fever’s broken. “Mom,” she says, her words tumbling, “I know how to save Dad.”

  LUKE

  Three weeks later, I was walking northeast when a wolf suddenly stepped out from behind a tree in front of me. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you if it was the same gray wolf that had come to the stream before, or a new one. His golden eyes locked on mine for nearly half a minute, which feels like forever when you are facing a wild animal. He didn’t bare his teeth or growl or show any fear, which led me to believe that he’d known of my presence much longer than I’d known of his.

  The wolf turned away and walked into the woods.

  After that, I saw the wolf every few days when I least expected it. I’d be springing fresh kill from a trap and would feel myself being watched—only to turn and find him there. I would open my eyes from a catnap and catch him staring, a distance away. I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t want the wolf to see me as a human. Instead, every time he appeared, I lay on the ground or rolled onto my back, offering up my throat and my belly, the universal sign of trust. By exposing my weakest areas, I was acknowledging that he could kill me—quickly or slowly, whatever he wished—and asking, How balanced an individual are you? What would happen then—what should happen then—was that the dominant wolf would change his energy level, squeezing my throat with his muzzle and then letting go as if to say, I could hurt you . . . but I choose not to. And just like that, our hierarchy of roles would be established.

  One evening, when I was sitting under a tree and wondering if I smelled snow in the air, the wolf stepped into the clearing before me. But then a second wolf stepped out. A third. Three more. They began to dart in and out of the trees, sewing up the space around me. There were four males and two females, and from the looks of it, the wolf that had been visiting me was one of the younger ones. He had probably been sent by the alpha female to learn more about me.