that her meds had been adjusted, she was back to being her old self. Not quite her old self. She had handed the book rewrite over to a ghostwriter without so much as a backward glance. She would be going on one last book tour next spring, but after that she was retired.
Her pottery studio now took precedence over her computer. Between making pots and spoiling her new granddaughter-her accidental granddaughter, as she liked to call Angie-Diana Ladd Walker was busy and happy.
As the days moved into weeks and there was no visible change in Brian’s condition, Brandon began to lose hope. He prayed about it. He meditated about it. All he knew for certain was that he didn’t want to lose this man who had come to be so dear to him-his accidental son, he thought, mimicking Diana’s term for Angie-but it was seeming more and more likely.
One day, when Lani came to visit, little Gabe Ortiz came along with her. He stood for a long time by Brian’s bed. When he walked away, he stopped by Brandon’s chair and touched him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Walker,” the boy said gravely. “He’s going to be okay.”
“How do you know that?” Brandon asked.
Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just know.”
Having heard the news from Fat Crack’s grandson, the old medicine man’s heir apparent, Brandon Walker began to believe it, too, maybe because he wanted to believe it.
Brian Fellows would be all right. I’itoi would see to it. It was just a matter of time.
Tucson, Arizona
Friday, November 27, 2009, 4:30 p.m.
82? Fahrenheit
Gradually the haze began to lift a little. There was less distance between Brian and what was going on around him. He was aware that he had been moved from what had been a hospital room to some other facility-to a rehab kind of place. He still had the same cast of regular visitors, but the focus here was different. There was a lot more emphasis on physical therapy.
And one day, late one afternoon, he simply woke up-as if from a long winter’s nap. Why those words came to mind, Brian couldn’t imagine.
From the way the sun was slanting in the window, he could tell it was late afternoon. Kath wasn’t there. Brandon Walker was.
“Hey,” Brian said. “How’s it going?”
Brandon started so abruptly that he almost fell out of the chair. “Hello,” he said as a slow grin crossed his face. “Another station heard from.”
“Where’s Kath?” Brian asked. Just saying that much made his throat hurt. His voice sounded odd-as if he hadn’t used it for a very long time.
“She’s at work,” Brandon said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call her and let her know.”
“So it must be Tuesday then,” Brian said. “She usually has Mondays off.”
“It’s not Tuesday, Brian,” Brandon said.
“What day is it then?” Brian asked. “How long have I been out of it?”
“Since the first week in June,” Brandon Walker told him. “It’s almost the end of November. Friday. The day after Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving? How can that be? How come it isn’t June? What happened?”
“Don’t you remember?”
Brian shook his head. “I don’t remember anything. It’s a blank.”
“You were chasing a bad guy who took off on foot on I-10.”
“Did I catch him?”
“Oncoming traffic is what caught him,” Brandon said. “It turns out it caught you, too. There was a young woman there with her little boy. She had been taken hostage and you helped her escape. She had managed to get the kid out of the car, but a truck was coming. They both would have been killed if you hadn’t shoved them out of the way. You saved them both.”
While Brian tried to get his head around that difficult concept, Brandon was already punching numbers into his cell phone. “You’re not going to believe it, Kath,” he said. “You’ve got to get down here right away. Brian’s awake! He’s awake and talking.”
On the table next to his bed sat a small vase, a reddish-brown clay vase with a high-gloss glaze finish. In it was a single apricot-colored rose. Brian pointed at it and asked, “Where did that come from?”
“The rose came from our backyard, but Diana made the vase,” Brandon said. “She wanted you to have it.”
Brian shook his head in wonder. “I didn’t know she made pots.”
“Neither did I,” Brandon agreed. “I don’t think anyone knew that about her, but she does now. And if you ask me, she’s pretty damned good at it.”
Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, December 5, 2009, 3:00 p.m.
68? Fahrenheit
Lani Walker and Dan Pardee got married the first Saturday in December in a small ceremony in her parents’ house. The wedding was supposed to happen outside in the early afternoon. Naturally it rained-like crazy. The chill winter rainstorm would be good for flowers the following spring, but not so good for wedding guests.
Attending the wedding was Brian’s first outing. They gave him a furlough from the rehab center, but only for a few hours.
There weren’t that many people there. Still, Brian had a tough time sorting through them.
Most of the guests were family members and people Brian already knew, such as a family named Torres- including the young mother and son Brian had saved. There were several strangers as well, including Micah Duarte, the groom’s grandfather. He was Indian-Apache-and uncomfortable in all the uproar. Brian’s heart went out to the man. The only time he seemed at ease was when he was chatting with little Gabe Ortiz.
The other total stranger was an Anglo man who also seemed to have some connection to the groom.
During the reception, the man sat down on the couch near where Brian’s wheelchair was parked. “I understand you’re a real hero,” he said by way of introduction, holding out his hand. “I’m David Blaine. Retired LAPD.”
“You’re related to the groom?” Brian asked.
Blaine shook his head and smiled. “Not really,” he said. “At least I wasn’t originally, but I guess I am now. When Lani and Dan used the Internet to track me down in Palm Desert and invited me to come to the wedding, you could have knocked me over with a feather.”
Brian was struggling to connect the dots when Blaine explained. “I was the investigating officer years ago when Dan’s mother was murdered. I didn’t do that much, but I’m the one who carried him out of that terrible place. He couldn’t have been more than four years old. I’m surprised he remembered.”
Brian glanced wonderingly in Dan Pardee’s direction. His mother had been murdered? Why was it Brian knew nothing about any of that, nothing at all?
“Who knows?” Blaine continued. “Maybe the same thing will happen to you someday. You’ll get a call to come to the wedding of that little kid over there.” He nodded in Pepe Torres’s direction. “He may forget, but I can promise you his mother and his grandmother never will.”
Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, December 5, 2009, 10:00 p.m.
61? Fahrenheit
Brandon shivered as he held the door open for Damsel to come back in one last time. The guests were gone. The caterer was gone. He and Diana and Damsel finally had the place to themselves.
He, for one, was glad the wedding was over. Brandon had been happy to see all those people, but he had been even happier to see them all go home. As far as he was concerned, the high point of the day had come about when
