Forever

My mother, who’d become drowsy and benevolent from the wine and the hour, came to sudden attention. “Isabel, pull in behind them. They might need help.”



I just wanted to get home so that I could call Sam or Cole and find out what was going on with Grace. We were two miles from the house; this felt a little unfair on the part of the universe. In the far-off edge of my headlights, the stopped vehicle looked a little disreputable. “Mom, you’re the one who said to never stop in case I get raped or picked up by a Democrat.”



Mom shook her head and pulled a compact out of her purse. “I never said that. That sounds like your father.” She flipped down the visor to look at herself in the small, lighted mirror. “I would’ve said Libertarian.”



I slowed to a crawl. The truck — it was turning out to be a truck with one of those tall caps over the bed, the kind that you probably have to show ID proving you’re over fifty to buy — looked like it probably belonged to a drunk who’d stopped to puke.



“What would we do, anyway? We can’t … change a tire.” I struggled to think of what would make someone pull over, other than puking.



“There’s a cop,” Mom said. Sure enough, I saw that a cop car was parked by the side of the road as well; its lights had been blocked by the hulking truck. She added casually, “They might need medical assistance.”



Mom lived in hope of someone needing medical assistance. She was always very eager for someone to get hurt on the playground when I was little. She eyed line cooks at fast-food restaurants, waiting for a kitchen disaster to strike. In California, she used to stop at accidents all the time. As a superhero, her line was: “DOES ANYONE NEED A DOCTOR? I AM A DOCTOR!” My father told me once that I needed to go easy on her; she’d had a hard time getting her degree because of family issues, and she just liked the novelty of being able to tell people she was a doctor. Okay, fine, self-actualize yourself, but really, I thought she’d gotten over it.



Sighing, I pulled in behind the truck. I did a better job than him of getting my vehicle off the road, but that wasn’t saying much. My mother deftly leaped from the SUV, and I followed her more slowly. There were three stickers on the back of the truck: GO ARMY, HANG UP AND DRIVE, and, inexplicably, I’D RATHER BE IN MINNESOTA.



On the other side of the truck, a cop was talking to a red-haired man who was wearing a white T-shirt and suspenders because he had a belly and no ass. More interestingly, I could see a handgun sitting on the driver’s seat through the open door of the truck.



“Dr. Culpeper,” said the officer warmly.



My mother adopted her caramel voice — the one that oozed richly about you so slowly you didn’t realize you were possibly being suffocated. “Officer Heifort. I just stopped to see if you needed me.”



“Well, that’s decent of you, for sure,” Heifort said. He had his fingers linked in his gun belt. “This your daughter? She’s pretty as you, Doc.” My mother demurred. Heifort insisted. The red-haired man shifted his weight from foot to foot. They spoke briefly about the mosquitoes this time of year. The red-haired man said that they weren’t near as bad as they were going to be. He called them “skeeters.”



“What’s the gun for?” I asked.



They all looked at me.



I shrugged. “Just wondering.”



Heifort said, “Well. Seems Mr. Lundgren here decided to take the wolf hunt into his own hands and do a bit of spotlighting.”



The red-haired Mr. Lundgren protested, “Well, now, Officer, you know that’s not what went down. I just happened upon it and shot from my truck. That’s not quite the same.”



“I suppose not,” Heifort said. “But there is a dead animal here and no one’s supposed to be shooting much of anything after sundown. Much less with a.38 revolver. I know you know better, Mr. Lundgren.”



“Wait,” I said. “You killed a wolf?” I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket. Even though it wasn’t that cold, I shivered.



Heifort gestured over toward the front of the truck, shaking his head.



“My husband told me no one was allowed to hunt them until the aerial hunt,” my mother said, her caramel voice a bit harder. “To keep from scaring them into hiding.”



“That’s the truth,” Heifort said.



I moved away from them to the ditch where Heifort had gestured, aware that the red-haired man was watching me dolefully. Now I could see a ridge of fur from an animal lying on its side in the grass.



Dear God and possibly Saint Anthony, I know I ask for a lot of stupid things, but this one is important: Please don’t let that be Grace.



Even though I knew that she was supposed to be safe with Sam and Cole, I sucked in a breath and stepped closer. The ticked fur ruffled in the breeze. There was a small bloody hole in its thigh, another in its shoulder, and finally, one just behind the skull. The top of its head was a little gross where the bullet had come out the other side. If I wanted to see if the eyes were familiar, I would have to kneel, but I didn’t bother checking.



“This is a coyote,” I said accusingly.



“Yes, ma’am,” Heifort replied, genial. “Big one, right?”



I let out my breath. Even a city girl like myself could tell the difference between a wolf and a coyote. I was back to assuming Mr. Lundgren had had one too many or just really wanted to try out his new handgun.



“You haven’t had too much trouble like this, have you?” Mom was asking Heifort. She was asking it in that way she did when she wanted to know something for my father rather than for herself. “People taking matters into their own hands? You’re keeping it under wraps?”



“We’re doing the best we can,” Heifort said. “Most people are being real good about it. They don’t want to spoil things for those helos. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a mishap or two before the real deal. Boys will be boys.” This was with a gesture toward Mr. Lundgren, as if he were deaf. “Like I said, doing the best we can.”



My mother looked less than satisfied. Her tone was a bit chilly when she said, “That’s what I tell my patients, too.” She frowned at me. “Isabel, don’t touch that.”



As if I was anywhere near it. I climbed back up through the grass to join her.



“You haven’t been drinking tonight, have you, Doc?” Heifort asked, as Mom turned to go. He and Mom both wore matching looks. Candy-coated hostility.



My mother flashed him a large smile. “Oh, yes.” She paused to let him consider this. “But Isabel’s driving. Come on, Isabel.”



When we got back into the car, no sooner had the door slammed than my mother said, “Hicks. I hate that man. This may have cured me of my philanthropic nature for good.”



I didn’t believe it for a second. Next time she thought she might be able to help, she’d be jumping out of the car again before it stopped rolling. Whether or not they wanted her.



I guess I was turning out a lot like my mother.



“Dad and I have been talking about moving back to California,” Mom said. “When this is all over.”



I narrowly avoided wrecking the car. “And you were going to tell me … when?”



“When it became more definite. I have a few leads on jobs out there; it’s just a question of their hours and how much we can sell the house for.”



“Again,” I said, a little breathless, “you were going to tell me when?”



My mother sounded perplexed. “Well, Isabel, you’re about to go off to college, and all but two on your list are there. It will make it easier for you to visit. I thought you hated it here.”



“I did. I do. I just — I can’t believe you didn’t tell me it was an option, before —” I wasn’t sure how to end the sentence, so I just stopped.



“Before what?”



I threw one of my hands up in the air. I would have thrown both, but I had to keep one on the wheel. “Nothing. California. Great. Yahoo.” I thought about it — stuffing my giant coats in boxes, having a social life, living someplace where not everyone knew the sordid history of my dead brother. Trading Grace and Sam and Cole for a life of cell phone plans, seventy-three-degree days, and textbooks. Yes, college in California had always been the plan, in the future. Apparently, however, the future was getting here faster than I’d expected.



“I can’t believe that man mistook a coyote for a wolf,” my mother mused as I pulled into our driveway. I remembered when we’d first moved here. I’d thought the house looked like something out of a horror movie. Now, I saw that I’d left my light on in my third-floor bedroom and it looked like something out of a children’s book, a big sprawling Tudor with one yellow window on the top floor. “They look nothing alike.”



“Well,” I said, “some people see what they want to see.”



CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN



GRACE



I found Sam leaning on the front porch railing, a long, dark form barely visible in the night. It was funny how Sam, with just the curve of his shoulders and the way he ducked his chin, could convey so much emotion. Even for someone like me, someone who thought a smile was a smile was a smile, it was easy to see the frustration and sadness in the line of his back, the bend of his left knee, the way one of his slender feet was rolled on its side.



I felt suddenly shy, as uncertain and excited as I had been the first time I met him.



Without turning on the front light, I joined him at the railing, not sure of what to say. I felt like I wanted to jump up and down and grab him around the neck and punch his chest and grin like a crazy person or cry. I wasn’t sure what the protocol for this was.



Sam turned to me, and in the dim light from the window, I saw that there was stubble on his chin. While I was gone, he had gotten older. I reached up and scrubbed his stubble with my hand, and he smiled ruefully.



“Does that hurt?” I asked. I rubbed his stubble against the grain. I’d missed touching him.



“Why would it?”



“Because it’s going the wrong way?” I suggested. I was overwhelmingly happy to be standing here, my hand on his unshaven cheek. Everything was terrible, but everything was fine, too. I wanted to be smiling, and I thought my eyes probably already were, because he was sort of smiling, too, a puzzled one, like he wasn’t certain if that was what he meant to do.



“Also,” I said, “hi.”



Sam did smile then, and said softly, “Hey, angel.” He put his lanky arms around my neck in a fierce hug, and I wrapped mine around his chest to squeeze him as hard as I could. I loved to kiss Sam, but no kiss could ever be as wonderful as this. Just his breath against my hair and my ear smashed up against his T-shirt. It felt like together, we were a sturdier creature, Grace-and-Sam.



Still locking me in his arms, Sam asked, “Did you eat something yet?”



“A bread sandwich. I also found some clogs. Not to eat.”



Sam laughed softly. I was so glad to hear it, so hungry to hear him. He said, “We aren’t very good at shopping.”