Crocus

by Amy Lane

  She nodded and bit her lip. Tears tracking her cheeks, but no sobs.

  “Aaron,” he said, not sure how he could make her see—it was all connected. “He… he put himself out to make sure your boy got help. Made sure you knew he was here. And this boy has parents who are worried for him. All these people… have people worried for them. And so do you. But you might as well be out in the snow, Olivia. You might as well be seven hundred miles away. Because you’re right here, and you won’t tell me anything, and you’re not eating, and it’s hurting the baby.”

  That made her sob, hard, but God, it needed to be said.

  “And I don’t know what to do for you. I don’t know how to reach you. And… and it was one thing when Aaron could say, ‘It’s okay, Larx, we’ll get to her.’ But he’s not here—he’s hurt—and I’m…. God, I’m freezing, Livvy. I’m just shaking with terror. I… I had to pray for him. I had to trust some outside force to make sure he doesn’t get infection, or start to bleed again, or that there wasn’t anything the doctor missed. I had to have faith in the universe that he’s going to be okay. I have to hope and trust that that little girl is going to be okay. But you’re right here. You need to tell me why you’re not okay!”

  She nodded, and he handed her a napkin. He wanted to cuddle her, like when she was a little kid, and just let her cry herself out. But he’d done that. He’d done that over Christmas. He’d done that when she showed up at his doorstep. The tears weren’t stopping. He needed words or there was nothing he could do.

  “I….” She took a deep breath. “I… last year, Daddy. I got really sad. And I went and saw a doctor—got assessed. And they said it was depression—but….” She took another breath. “But really bad. And they asked if my family had a history of depression, and I remembered Mom.”

  He swallowed and nodded.

  “And… and it hit me. Like when I was being treated, and when I was talking to my shrink. Oh my God! I’m just like Mom!”

  “No,” he whispered. No. Oh God, no.

  “I am! I’m selfish—I only think about what’s inside my own head. I don’t think about how it affects other people.”

  “Depression does that,” he said, panicking. “It’s not you, honey—it’s not because you’re selfish—”

  “But I am!” she cried. “I am. And I didn’t want… didn’t want to make you and Christi listen to all of it. To the therapy and the… oh God, Daddy. I hate group. I hate it. I can talk to people one-on-one, but I hate group therapy. I stopped going. I stopped, and then I stopped taking the medicine because it felt like cheating. And I came home over the summer and I was happy. I was like, ‘Hey! I just needed a new start! Like a reboot!’ But I left again and….” The sobs rocked her body. “I… I got so sad. And I met Elton. And he’s….”

  For just a moment, he saw a sunshine glimmer of the daughter he knew peeking out from the terrible storm that ravaged her. “He’s really nice,” she said on a big inhale. “He’s really nice. But I was so sad. I didn’t… I didn’t want a relationship. I told him we could try when I got my head together. And… and then… the fucking cat….”

  Thanksgiving. Alone. And the fucking cat died.

  Larx closed his eyes. “She thought her job was over,” he said, voice cracking. “You needed to tell her… tell us… you still needed our help.”

  She nodded, face crumpling, and he stood. God, so much else to say. So much to work out. But she’d told him. And he would have been an idiot to not know how hard it had been. He held out his arms and let his little girl cry.

  EVENTUALLY THEY ended up eating ice cream at five o’clock in the morning while she told him about Elton, who said his major was philosophy but seemed mostly to be majoring in whatever his friends were taking.

  “Philosophy?” Larx said skeptically, remembering his own college days. “That usually meant a BA in inhaling and a master’s of agriculture in growing your own.”

  Olivia let out a cross between a cough and a snort, then covered her mouth. The wicked expression in her eyes let him know he wasn’t far off in the slacker assessment, and the disapproving father in him wanted to knit its grizzled brows.

  In the back of his head, though, he could hear Aaron’s dry voice asking him how close Larx had gotten to getting a degree in philosophy. The answer had been a semester of slackitude and a few baggies of righteous shit.

  He asked the one question he’d always told himself would matter in this situation.

  “Is he a good person?”

  She nodded, and her hands fell away. He saw again that sunshine glimmer. “He’s the best, Dad. He deserved better than to have me just take off like that. I just….” She bit her lip. “I’ve been so lost for what to do.”

  Larx took a deep breath, and for a moment he really thought he was going to put together a game plan for how to fix his daughter’s life at five o’clock in the morning after a really fucked-up day.

  Then his phone buzzed—he looked at it and grimaced, and not just because the battery was at 10 percent.

  “Kirby woke up—Christi says he’s crying.”

  Olivia’s lower lip wobbled. “Sorry, Daddy. This… this isn’t the best time—”

  He waved away her apology. “We’ll pick up later,” he promised, standing up and taking his dishes to the bus tub. “Right now, we both have people who need to see us.”

  She nodded. “Oh! Daddy, do you need a power pack? I’ve been charging mine all night.” She reached into her jacket pocket and produced a little charger with a cord, and for some reason… for some reason, it gave Larx hope.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, his voice thick. “This… seriously. Give me the plug and I’ll charge it when I’m through.”

  She fished that out of her pocket too, and they went back to the elevators. She got off on her floor, but not before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He plugged his phone in and walked wearily to the waiting room, appreciating the dimmed lights like he hadn’t before. When she was sixteen and had first gotten the cell phone, she’d once lost it for a month and pretended it was just never charged. They’d worked on her habits—putting the phone in her backpack every time. Charging it every night. Having a charger ready for emergencies and checking on it every week. For a while they’d even had a calendar, like they had when she’d been a kid.

  And now, in the middle of all this other stuff—this painful, grown-up, terrifying other stuff—she’d produced evidence that things could get better.

  It was like she’d pulled a bunny out of her pocket, but even more astounding.

  It was magic.

  AWAKENINGS

  OH GOD.

  Aaron kept his eyes closed, but he recognized the sound, the smell, the discomfort.

  He was in the hospital.

  He’d gotten himself shot.

  He remembered being in recovery, the kids visiting, the few quiet moments of just knowing Larx had fallen asleep with his head on Aaron’s mattress.

  That had been nice. Just having him there, no angry words, no recrimination. Not that Larx had ever done that—or Caroline, his late wife, either.

  But there was the fear of it—the fear of knowing that he’d let somebody down.

  Aaron couldn’t remember much about the visit with Larx, but he knew Larx saying “I’m not okay” didn’t equal them being not okay. Good.

  Aaron thirsted, suddenly, for a permanence to them. Yes, they were living together—they could live together happily for the rest of their lives, and nobody would blink.

  But he could easily move into his old house, just a few miles away on the forestry road—he and Larx passed it almost every day when they went running. One day he and Larx could come to an impasse, and Aaron would simply have to leave, heartbroken, and not be a part of his life anymore.

  The thought made him gasp aloud from pain.

  “Oh, hey!” The chirp of the cheery nurse told him that shift change had happened and it was probably after six. “You look like you’re in serio
us need of some morphine.”

  “I wouldn’t argue that,” he mumbled after doing a quick internal assessment. Yes, things hurt. Yes, he was going to have to put a cap on that if he was supposed to think. “This isn’t recovery.”

  “Nope—this is ICU, and you’re here for another forty-eight hours before you get shifted to Critical Care. But you know what the bennies are here, right?”

  Aaron saw the cots already made up. “Sleepover visitors.”

  “Yeah, but no kinky stuff. Your boyfriend looks like a screamer.” The nurse—in her sixties and old enough to be his mother—gave him a bawdy wink, and he had to chuckle. His mother never would have told a joke like that, and he wondered loopily if this woman would adopt him.

  “He’s just naturally loud,” Aaron told her, trying to be stolid and loyal. Truth was, if they were in a house, alone, with no kids in sight, sound, or phone distance, Aaron was the loud one—but it had taken them a couple of tries to figure out how much louder. Larx had accused him of trying to summon moose by the herd.

  “Not tonight he’s not,” the nurse said gently. “He took the kids to go get ice cream for breakfast—one look at the roads, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere until the plows get here.”

  Aaron puffed softly. “Oh God. The girl. In the house. I gotta talk to Sheriff Mills….”

  His eyes struggled to open, and he tried hard to stick to that one thought. They’d been working on a faulty assumption—that Candace Furman’s stepfather had sexually assaulted her. When Aaron had knocked on the Benitezes’ door, he’d gone in expecting her stepfather to be the one in the room.

  That hadn’t been the case, but Eamon had come in, things had escalated, and boom! Aaron’s world had exploded, and the last thing he remembered was the picture on the wall falling on his head.

  And then Larx talking to him, coolly assessing his wounds, and trying so hard not to lose his shit. God, Aaron was proud of him. When Larx had been hurt, Aaron hadn’t been nearly that capable. But then, Larx’s practicality let him teach high school students without completely losing his mind. Aaron had firmly believed that even before he’d seen Larx running without his shirt and been smitten.

  He was falling asleep again, but he managed to say the one thing that could get them through this without heartbreak. “Larx. Gotta talk to Larx.”

  NATURAL LIGHT was coming through the small prison window above his bed, and he had a grim and uncharitable thought about whoever designed this hospital. If he was actually going to die of his wounds here, he’d love to have something to look at besides the plain white wall with the exhausted man slumped against it.

  His exhausted man.

  Oh Lord, he hated to wake him up for this.

  “Larx?” he whispered, and Larx’s body popped right up, his eyes bright and alert, proving that he’d only been dozing. If he’d been getting real sleep, he would have stood up, plowed into a wall, and said something truly amusing and incoherent.

  Dimly, Aaron wished Larx had been truly asleep. He loved those mornings when there was nothing to do but wake up and run his hands over Larx’s chest. Besides the fact that it was a really nice chest, Larx made delicious sounds, decadent humming ones in the back of his throat, half-muffled chuckles, little gasps. Even if they didn’t end up having morning sex—and given how early the kids got up, the answer was usually no—just having him there, in Aaron’s arms, was all the heaven Aaron thought people ever got.

  “Whassup?” Larx mumbled, walking across the room to the chair by Aaron’s bed. “You need drugs?”

  Aaron assessed again. “No,” he said soberly. “Not for a little while. I gotta stay awake. Eamon… is Eamon coming?”

  Larx grunted and checked his phone. “Yeah. He says it’ll take two hours for the plows to get through, and then we’ll have a big meeting.”

  Aaron grunted. Who knew how conscious he’d be then. “Wasn’t her stepdad,” he slurred. “Killed stepbrother. Stepdad is still out there… out there with gun.”

  Larx made a sound like he’d been hit, and Aaron missed the memories of those other good sounds. “Oh no. She’s still out there, Aaron. One of the things we were going to do when Eamon got here was quiz Yoshi about where she might be going. But wherever it is, it’s got to be someplace that’ll give her shelter and hopefully food.”

  Aaron groaned. “Oh God, Larx. We’ve got to get her.”

  Larx’s hand on his was gentle. “We’ll get her,” he promised. “We will. But you’re sitting this one out, Chief. This ain’t TV where you get shot in one frame and do a running tackle in the next.”

  Aaron’s entire body ached under the softening effect of the morphine. “Believe it or not, I know that,” he muttered.

  Larx let out a faint bit of laughter and stroked his hair back from his brow. “Not warm,” he said, voice relieved. “We may be able to get you out of here before spring.”

  “What’s your house like in the spring?” Aaron asked wistfully. Larx had a garden—Aaron remembered passing by the front and seeing flowers in flowerbeds and ragged stone borders up the walkways and in front of the house.

  “Mud everywhere,” Larx laughed.

  “Flowers.”

  “Mm… yeah. We’ve got rose bushes, and bulbs. There should be buttercups and pinks and crocuses when it gets warmer.”

  Aaron closed his eyes, seeing that yard again as it had been in other springs. “Morning glories. You have morning glories growing over the carport.”

  “Some years,” Larx agreed. “Do you want me to plant some this year? I think I pulled off all the vines in the fall so the carport wouldn’t rot.”

  Aaron nodded. “Just like flowers. Stupid. Grown man.”

  Larx laughed a little. “Grown men need pretty too. And kind.”

  And you. “How’re the kids?” He didn’t want to get maudlin. He was doped up and in pain. When he said romantic things to Larx, he wanted to be in full control, so Larx knew he meant them and they were important.

  “Kirby is hurting,” Larx said softly. “He’s… he was able to deal before this by superstition. Someone told him it would all be okay when he was little, and he believed them. He had that ripped away—can’t lie, Deputy, it was rough.”

  Aaron lifted his hand—was hard, everything felt like lead—and he cupped Larx’s cheek. Larx’s usually bright brown eyes were swollen small with lack of sleep and—he could see it now—with tears.

  “Rough night,” Aaron pronounced. “You need some sleep.”

  Larx nodded, but he didn’t get up to go lie down.

  “Put your head down here, like before,” Aaron begged. “Eamon will be here soon enough.”

  Larx smiled tiredly. “Word.” And then he did. Total surrender, like he did sometimes, just did what Aaron asked, stopped thinking, stopped trying to always participate, stopped working to make people happy and the world a better place.

  Just stopped.

  Rested his head on Aaron’s bed. Let Aaron do the comforting, stroking his hair softly before they both fell back asleep.

  Aaron dreamed of spring, of helping Larx dig up his garden, flowers in the front and veggies in the back. Or warm red earth under the pine trees, and the smell of roses and buttercups and pinks.

  Of life.

  THE MORNING stillness eased into the sort of hushed activity of a beginning day in the hospital. Aaron heard the kids first, talking about going to get food, and heard Kirby saying something about ice cream at five in the morning.

  “That’s weird,” Christi mumbled. “Livvy said Dad took her for ice cream at four.”

  Aaron grimaced, eyes still closed, and flexed his fingers to make sure Larx was still there. He was about to tell them to fetch some bacon and eggs for him, since he’d been running on sugar in the wee hours of the morning, but a familiar clearing of the throat stopped him.

  “I’d say that means you should fetch your father some protein and some caffeine, both at the same time, don’t you think?”

  �
�Eamon,” Aaron breathed, smiling as he opened his eyes. His lungs still hurt. Talking still hurt—but oh, it was good to see his boss again.

  “Deputy.” Mindful of Larx, still sleeping at Aaron’s side, Eamon moved to his other side and pulled up a seat.

  “Not sure who had the rougher night,” Eamon said softly. “Yours was over when you got shot—he still had shit to do.”

  Aaron nodded. “Thanks, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “Getting the guy before he could take the head shot.” Aaron remembered that much, sprawled on the floor, trying to breathe. He remembered the gun aimed at his head, his astonishment when he heard the shot and realized the intense, twentysomething young man who’d shot him had gone down.

  Eamon shrugged like he hadn’t saved Aaron’s life. “Well, we all have our uses.”

  At his side Larx yawned and swallowed, then sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. “Ezomo?”

  Aaron couldn’t chuckle, not really, but this was how Larx was supposed to wake up: completely disoriented and not even a tiny bit coherent.

  Eamon’s tired chuckle served double duty, and Larx scowled at him while checking his mouth for drool. “Nungh. Timeizit?”

  “Almost nine,” Eamon said. “You got to sleep in!”

  Larx squinted at him. “You sleep at all?”

  Eamon shook his gray head with a bit of weariness. “Not so much. In fact, I may steal one of those cots for an hour before we get a move on, if that’s okay.”

  Larx nodded and squeezed Aaron’s hand. “I may send the kids home when Womb… uh, Olivia’s, uh, boyfriend gets released.”

  “He’s okay?” Aaron mouthed.

  Larx shrugged. “Still haven’t met him—I’ll need to make the rounds. But….” He frowned like he was thinking and stared at Eamon. “Okay. Plan. I talk to Livvy and Wombat Willie—”

  Eamon burst out laughing.