by Sharon Shinn
“We’re coming out there,” Bonnie says.
“You’re welcome, of course, but—”
“How did you find him?” Aurelia interrupts me. “Was he able to get back to your house under his own power?”
I lift my eyes to Joe’s and give him an apologetic smile. He can’t hear their side of the conversation, but I’m sure he can fill in the blanks. “He was a deer when he was hit. He shifted. The hunter brought him back to me.”
There is absolute silence on the other end.
Joe motions for me to give him the phone, but I switch it to speaker before I hand it over. It’s like the worst conference call you can imagine. Joe says, “It was me. I shot him. I’m so, so, so sorry.”
“Who is this?” Bonnie demands.
Aurelia, of course, is the one who remembers. Aurelia remembers every face, every voice, she’s ever encountered. “It’s that Joe fellow. The one who’s dating Kara.”
“You shot our boy?” There is no leniency in Bonnie’s voice at all.
“I was aiming at a different animal. He jumped in the way. Almost like he did it on purpose.”
“That excuses nothing,” Bonnie says sternly, but Aurelia has a different take.
“He probably did do it intentionally,” she says. “Alonzo hates to think of animals getting hurt. Of anybody getting hurt.”
“We’ll be out there in a half hour,” Bonnie says.
“Forty-five minutes,” I correct her, but she’s already hung up. I look over at Joe. “Better run while you can.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll stay. Gotta man up.”
It’s what I expected him to say, but the reply pleases me anyway. This is someone who doesn’t run from the consequences of his actions. “Then can I feed you something? Fortify you against the ordeal to come?”
“That would be great,” he says. “And I’d love another beer but I think I’d better not.”
“Yeah, the only thing Bonnie would hate more than someone who hurt Alonzo is someone who hurt Alonzo and then got drunk.”
Turns out the anxieties of the past hour have burned through all my reserves, so I’m starving, too. I’m not up to cooking, so I defrost some chicken casserole and open a bag of chips. We talk quietly as we eat. Mostly Joe asks more questions about my life, my transformations, my injections, my limitations. He seems more intrigued and less astonished with every passing minute, so I find myself relaxing, growing more eager, wanting to tell him the minutest details. I can’t help wondering if this is what it was like for Bonnie’s old girlfriend Derinda when she first told an outsider her own story. Terrifying and exhilarating and, in the oddest way, comforting. I don’t know how I know this, but I believe this person will never betray me.
Bonnie never betrayed Derinda, of course. I guess it’s too soon to know about Joe.
“You can’t tell anybody, you know,” I say as we gather up the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. “Anybody. Mark. Your brothers. Your next girlfriend. Whoever you marry. Even if we have a huge fight and you decide you never want to see me again, you can’t get back at me by talking about this.”
“First, really hoping we never have that kind of fight,” he says, closing the dishwasher door and snapping it in place. “Second, I tend not to be a big blabbermouth anyway. Third, nobody would believe me. So I’d look like an idiot if I talked about you.”
“Ah, male pride,” I say. “The one thing I can rely on even if everything else fails.”
I’ve been watching the clock, so I’m not surprised by the sounds of tires rolling across gravel and car doors slamming shut. Bonnie bursts through the kitchen door first, her bony face set in grim lines. I’d lay money that she was the one driving.
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs in his room.”
She gives Joe one look of burning reproach before hurrying toward the stairwell. Aurelia enters just as Bonnie exits, her pace more leisurely and her pose a little less strained.
“Bonnie’s convinced he’s at death’s door, but I’m thinking you didn’t lie to us,” she says. “And he really will be okay.”
“I’m worried about infection, and there could be some damage to his shoulder muscles, but aside from that, I swear to you I think he’ll be fine.”
Joe came to his feet the minute they drove up, and now he squares his shoulders. “I can’t apologize enough,” he begins.
“Probably not,” she says. “But I don’t see how we can blame a hunter for shooting a deer. And believe me, I would blame someone if I could.”
Joe risks a quick look at me, unprepared for the reasonable tone. I give him a faint smile. “Aurelia’s done some hunting in her time.”
“Rifle,” she says. “Never had the patience for a bow. It’s been years, though.”
“This will be my last hunt,” Joe says.
Aurelia nods. “Yeah. Meeting shape-shifters is what turned me off of it, too.”
She heads out the door toward the stairs, and Joe watches her with a hopeful expression. “Maybe she’ll keep Bonnie from killing me,” he says.
“She’s the only one who could.”
Joe remains behind in the kitchen while I join the others in Alonzo’s room. Bonnie’s perched on the edge of his mattress, one palm pressed against his cheek, her eyes unwavering as she watches his face. Aurelia’s standing at the foot of the bed, her hands in her back pockets, her expression soft as she gazes at the two of them. It’s impossible to ever guess what Aurelia’s thinking, but I make a stab at it. These are two of the people I love most in the world. It will not be because of my negligence that either one of them ever comes to harm.
Bonnie turns her head when I step into the darkened room. “How long will he sleep?”
“At least a couple hours. Longer if I give him another shot.”
“Can you bring a chair or a cot in here so I can sleep in his room?”
“No,” I say firmly. “He’s not in mortal danger. I’ll make up a room for you down the hall and you can get up as often as you like to check on him. But I think he’d rather sleep by himself.”
“He would,” Aurelia agrees. “Don’t smother him.”
Bonnie’s lips tighten, but she gives a sharp nod. I’m glad Aurelia said it; I don’t think Bonnie would have heeded anyone else.
“Are you staying, too?” I ask Aurelia.
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to smother him, either. I think one of us hanging over his bed will be plenty.”
Since I’m pretty sure they came in the same car, I’m instantly thinking about logistics. I say, “I can bring them to Quinville tomorrow or the day after, unless you want to come back for them.”
She turns to give me a wicked smile. I think her red hair throws a rosy light on her face, because I can see her expression perfectly. “No, I’ll leave the car for Bonnie. I’m going to ride back to town with Joe.”
* * *
Alonzo and Bonnie stay with me through Monday afternoon. Alonzo is, as you might imagine, the perfect patient. He never complains about pain. He accepts every treatment in stoic silence. He refrains from thrashing in the bed, mussing up the sheets; naturally he doesn’t vomit on the bedspread, or anywhere else. He even manages to avoid coming down with an infection, though that might be my drugs, not his willpower.
Bonnie, of course, cannot contain herself enough to sit quietly at his bedside for all the hours of the day, though surely that is what she envisioned herself doing. Instead, she checks on him a couple of times an hour, feeds him, helps him to the bathroom, and even reads to him for an hour at night. But mostly she strides around the property, fixing things. The loose towel rack in the guest bathroom. The burned-out bulb in the living room chandelier. The rickety kitchen chair. All repaired or replaced.
Then she cleans out my pantry, throwing out expired spices and organizing cans alphabetically
. She cooks massive meals from the ingredients I have on hand, and freezes most of them in single-serving containers. She scrubs every room in my house. She changes the furnace filters. She dusts the miniblinds. The whole place is filled with the inviting scents of fresh bread and pine-scented cleaners.
“Can I hire you?” I ask. “You could be the live-in caretaker. I’d give you one of the trailers.”
She barely smiles. “You could have the trailer. Aurelia and I would take the house.”
“Deal.”
Joe calls multiple times a day to check on Alonzo’s progress. He still hasn’t told me what he and Aurelia talked about on the drive back to Quinville. When I asked Aurelia, she just laughed like a cartoon villain. I figure I’ll never know.
“What can I do to make it up to Alonzo?” Joe asks me Sunday night. “Buy him a video game? An iTunes card? A car?”
“A video game, maybe. But I don’t know that you have to buy him anything. He knows you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I still feel horrible.”
“I think even Bonnie is starting to forgive you,” I say. “Everything will be all right.”
“It doesn’t feel like I’ve suffered enough for it to be all right.”
“There are always plenty of other chances to suffer,” I tell him. “Don’t be sad when one of those opportunities passes you by.”
Monday afternoon he sounds unexpectedly cheerful. “Hey, does Alonzo know how to ride a bike?”
I happen to know that he does, because I happened to be there when he learned. Celeste brought him out to my place about two months after he came into our lives, back when he didn’t speak and wouldn’t meet your eyes and always appeared to be waiting for the next blow to land. She’d bought him a shiny red ten-speed and spent a solid week teaching him how to ride it. He didn’t seem to have the requisite sense of balance at first, and I wondered if he’d gotten one too many concussions or maybe he’d suffered inner ear damage after a particularly savage beating. But then one day all the components just clicked for him—weight distribution, muscle coordination, and forward momentum—and he went racing down the road. When he came back, pedaling as furiously as his legs would take him, his face wore the closest thing to a smile any of us had seen so far.
“He does,” I say to Joe. “Why?”
“I think I may have found him a job. If he wants it.”
“Riding a bike?”
“You know the little pharmacy on the corner of Baker and Horseshoe? Q-Ville Drugs and Gifts?”
“Yeah. The owners have a couple of collies and an ancient Siamese cat.”
I can hear his grin. “Well, I didn’t know that, but they’re looking for a part-time person who can deliver orders around town.”
“Huh. That sounds like something Alonzo could do. Except—well—he can’t always be sure he’s going to be available. You know.”
“Right. And Rich said—Rich Hogarth, he’s one of the owners—”
“Right. I know them,” I say patiently.
“Rich said they didn’t need someone every day, anyway. He said maybe Alonzo could call every Monday, or whatever, and talk about the days he’d like to work that week. I don’t know if he can tell how far in advance he’s going to change, but maybe they could work something out.”
“Maybe. I’ll talk to Bonnie about it. And Alonzo, of course. He’ll be pleased you thought of him.”
He blows his breath out in a way that’s half laugh, half sigh. “Still trying to make it up to him. So I think about him a lot.”
“They’re planning to go home tonight. So maybe you could swing by sometime this week and apologize in person.”
“Do you think Bonnie would let me in the front door?”
“Maybe. Maybe she’d make you wait on the porch and just let Alonzo peer out through the screen.”
But Bonnie, when I talk to her a few minutes later, merely nods. “I think it would be good for him to come by and express his remorse to Alonzo directly,” she says. “A man should own up to his misdeeds, and it will be good for Alonzo to have that role model.”
She’s intrigued by the notion of the part-time job with Q-Ville Drugs, but, of course, she sees all the obstacles as plainly as I do. “We would have to let the Hogarths know that he is sometimes—and quite suddenly—unavailable,” she says. “Perhaps we could come up with an arrangement, however. On the days Alonzo is scheduled to work—but can’t—I could complete the deliveries for him. That shouldn’t happen more than once or twice a month, if we pay attention to when his next cycle is about to start.”
I agree. “There seems to be no reason not to try it,” I say. “And if it doesn’t work out—well, he’s no worse off than before. I suppose the Hogarths are inconvenienced if they have to look for another delivery boy, but—”
“But we can’t worry about their problems as well as our own,” Bonnie concludes. “So let’s give it a try.”
I’ve prepared quite the cornucopia of drugs for Bonnie to take back with her and administer as needed, but Alonzo is doing remarkably well by Monday evening. He even sits at the dinner table and eats with us, though he’s quieter than usual and doesn’t have a huge appetite. He lets me hug him, though, before he gets in the car.
“You call me the minute the pain gets worse, or the wound looks funny, or you spike a fever, or anything,” I tell him, sticking my head through the passenger-side window to give my final instructions. “Don’t try to tough it out. I am here for you.”
That elicits a faint smile. “I know. Thanks.”
I pat his cheek, then step back. “You are absolutely and completely welcome.”
They drive off into the gathering dark and I head slowly back to the house. Scottie follows me as I move from room to room, straightening up and locking up and generally making sure everything is in order. But despite his faithful presence, despite the fact that I am so relieved at Alonzo’s quick recovery, despite the fact that I am glad to have my house back to myself, I realize that I’m feeling at loose ends. A little lonely. Depressed, even.
I recognize the emotion, of course. It’s loss. Bonnie and Aurelia and Alonzo are the closest thing I have to family these days, and despite the terrors of the situation, it was rather lovely to have them around for the extended weekend. I’ve become something of a hermit since Janet and Cooper died, and I was never the kind of person who liked big crowds and noisy gatherings. But I don’t think my natural personality is a solitary one. Under other circumstances, I believe, I would be the kind of woman who hosted Saturday dinners for all the cousins or plotted the annual family reunion. I might have had only a few close relationships, but I would have treasured every connection; I would have poured my heart into each one.
Well. Fewer relationships now, but still that willing heart. I collect a beer from the fridge, pick up the cell phone from the kitchen counter, and go settle on the couch to call Joe.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Celeste wants to meet Joe.
“You’ve met him,” I tell her, as I’ve told her before. It’s Monday, more than a week after Alonzo’s accident, and she’s disgruntled that I haven’t had time for her in all these days. So she’s driven out to my property to demand lunch and conversation.
“For five seconds! When we were walking in the door at Arabesque! That doesn’t count.”
“I’m not ready for you to meet him.”
“Why? You think I’ll tell him things about you?”
I wave my hands. “Because you’re so—you’re such a force of nature. People find you overwhelming.”
“People find me charming.”
“You’re deluded.”
She grins. “If you won’t introduce me, I’ll just find a way to meet him on my own. He coaches Alonzo at the Y, right? I’ll go hang out with Bonnie some night so I can introduce myself.”
“Why woul
d you bother?” I demand. “I never force myself on anyone you’re dating.”
She makes a dismissive gesture. “None of them mattered. Joe seems to matter to you. So I need to know him. Decide if he’s good enough for you.”
I point at her. “See? Right there. That’s why I don’t want you to meet him. If you don’t like him, you’ll be horrible.”
“If me being horrible to someone is enough to scare him off, then he wasn’t the right guy for you to begin with.”
We’re still arguing when I hear the sound of a car pulling onto the gravel. I’m not expecting any clients, so it might be an emergency—a dog that swallowed something toxic, a cat going into renal failure. Even my most devoted clients tend to take their animals to vets in town when the situation is dire enough, but maybe one of them risked the mad dash out here because he just didn’t trust anyone else.
I head to the kitchen door and wait to see who steps out of the car. It’s got Missouri plates, which is my first clue that this isn’t one of my regular visitors. I don’t recognize the driver, either, when he emerges a moment later. He’s a slim, dark-haired guy of medium build and handsome features, and he doesn’t have a pet with him. But he strides straight up to the porch as if he’s been here before. Something about him is teasingly familiar, and nothing about him screams danger, so I open the door and motion him in before he’s even had a chance to knock.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
He glances quickly around the kitchen as if to check it against his memory, nods casually at Celeste, then addresses me. “You might not remember me, I used to know Janet Kassebaum,” he says. His voice is so attractive I think he should be a singer, or maybe a radio announcer. “My name is Brody Westerbrook.”
“Brody!” I exclaim. “Of course! I’m Karadel.”
He smiles. “I thought you must be, but you were just a skinny kid last time I saw you.”
“Come on in. You want a drink? Something to eat?”
“A soda would be great,” he answers, moving toward the table.