Lone Wolf

with bruises and cuts. Then one night, he brushed up against me. He was slightly damp from a light rain, and I thought at first he was trying to dry himself, but he rubbed his face, the top of his head, and his tail against me. When he pushed against me with all 120 pounds of his body and I fell backward, he nipped at me-another warning to stay in place. He continued to shimmy against me, until I smelled like a wet dog, too.

Which was exactly why he was doing it. A few weeks later he began to bring the other members of the pack to my spot on the ridge. They would hang back, wary, while Arlo bit me on the knee and shin. It was Arlo’s way of showing them, I realized, that I could take direction.

That I could be trusted.

GEORGIE

“Drinking?” I say, stunned. “You were drinking?”

The police are gone, chased away by a nurse after Cara dissolves into shoulder-wracking sobs that leave her gasping with pain. I don’t know who I’m more angry at: the cops, for trying to accuse her of a DUI; or Cara, for lying to me in the first place.

“It was one drink-”

“Served in what? A bucket?” I ask. “Blood tests are pretty damn accurate, Cara.”

“I went to a party with Mariah,” she says. “I didn’t even want to go, it was some guy from Bethlehem High she met at a track meet. And as soon as it started to get out of control, I called Dad and asked him to come get me. I’m telling you the truth. I swear I am.”

“Why didn’t you say anything when the ER doctors asked if you had any drugs or alcohol in your system?”

“Because,” Cara says, “I knew this was going to happen. I made a mistake, okay? Haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

God, yes.

“If you couldn’t admit it to the doctors,” I say, “you might have at least told me. You made me feel like an idiot in front of those policemen.”

Cara’s mouth twists. “How do you think I feel? If it wasn’t for me-if I hadn’t been drinking-Dad wouldn’t have gotten hurt. He would never even have been out on the road.”

That, finally, cuts through the red rage I’ve been seeing since hearing that my underage daughter was drinking while on Luke’s watch. If I’d found out any other way, I would have called him on it. I would have yelled at him about not being a responsible parent, about changing the custodial agreement.

But I can’t very well yell at him right now.

“Cara,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. “It was a car accident. An accident. You can’t blame yourself.”

She jerks away from me. “You weren’t there!” she snaps.

It’s a criticism of me. I just don’t know if she is upset with me for talking about the crash or for being with my other family when it happened.

I’d like to believe that if Cara had still been living under my roof, she wouldn’t have been drinking. That if she had stayed with me, we wouldn’t be in a hospital. Unlike Luke, who was always so wrapped up in his wolves, I would actually know what my own daughter’s up to and I would never let her out late on a school night. But it is always easy to rewrite history after the fact. The truth is, even if Cara had not chosen to go live with her dad instead of me, I might have found myself the recipient of that phone call last Thursday from Cara, begging to be rescued.

There have been a handful of times in my life when I have suddenly had the perspective to be able to see myself from a distance, to trace how I got to that point. The first was the morning I read the note from Edward, telling me that he had left home. The second was at my wedding to Joe, when I was-maybe for the first time- unadulteratedly happy. The third was when the twins were born. And the fourth, now, is at the crux of a nightmare-my first family, all drawn together again, and inextricably linked once more because of Luke’s dynamic persona. Be careful what you wish for.

“You can tell Dad to ground me,” Cara says. “When he wakes up.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her that is an if, not a when.

Which means she’s not the only person in this room who is a liar.

I met Luke when I was assigned to do a story on him for a local news show. I was convinced that I was going to be the next Katie Couric, even if I was currently slogging in the trenches of local New Hampshire television. Never mind that sometimes the anchors were so bad I watched the videotaped newscasts as a drinking game-every time a word was mispronounced I would have a sip of wine, and often downed an entire bottle in a thirty-minute newscast. My job was to spotlight the quirky, crusty, unique residents of the state in the last three minutes of the evening newscast.

I’d met my share of the weird-the farmer’s wife who dressed up her barn cats in hand-sewn costumes and photographed them in the same positions as famous paintings; the bagel baker who had accidentally created a cheddar-dill concoction that bore an uncanny resemblance to the governor; the petite blonde elementary school teacher who had won a lumberjack contest in the north country. One day my crew (which meant me and a guy lugging a camera) was dispatched to the only zoo in New Hampshire, a sleepy little Manchester-area establishment with horseback trail rides, a dairy discovery barn, and a thin collection of wildlife.

We had been tipped off to the story by a viewer, who’d brought his toddler down to the zoo and who had been surprised to see a crowd gathered around the small enclosure where the wolves were kept. Apparently one of the zookeepers, Luke Warren, had begun to sleep overnight with the animals, and to spend part of the day inside the enclosure. His superiors-at first sure this was a suicide attempt-now realized the wolves had accepted him into their fold and encouraged Luke to interact with them during the park’s open hours. His antics had single-handedly quadrupled the zoo’s business.

When Alfred, my cameraman, and I arrived at the enclosure, we had to push our way through the crowd lined up along the fence. Inside were five wolves, and one human. Luke Warren was seated between two animals that were easily each over a hundred pounds. When he saw us, he walked toward the double gates leading out of the enclosure as people whispered and pointed. He greeted those who wanted to ask him questions about the wolves, and then he approached my cameraman. “You must be George,” he said.

I stepped forward. “No. That’s me. It’s Georgie.”

Luke laughed. “You’re definitely not what I expected.”

I could have said the same. I figured that this guy would be a nut job like most of the others I interviewed- peculiar to the point of dysfunctional. But Luke Warren was tall and muscular, with blond hair that reached down to his shoulders and eyes so pale and blue that, for a moment, I had trouble remembering what I was doing there. He wore a ratty old set of coveralls. “Just let me get out of these,” he said, unzipping them to reveal the khaki uniform of a zookeeper. “The wolves are used to this scent, but by now, my clothes could probably walk away by themselves.”

He disappeared into a keeper’s hut and returned a moment later, his hair tied back neatly and his face and hands freshly washed. “So,” I said. “You don’t mind if we film…?”

“Go right ahead,” Luke replied. He led us to a bench that offered the best view of the wolves behind him, because-as he said-they were the real stars.

“I’m rolling,” Alfred said.

I folded my hands in my lap. “You’ve been staying overnight in the enclosure for some time now…”

Luke nodded. “Four months.”

“Continuously?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s gotten to the point where it’s more comfortable for me than any bed.”

Already, I was wondering what this guy’s angle was. You didn’t go sleep with wild animals for four months unless you were trying to get attention drawn to you or you were mentally ill. I thought maybe he wanted his own talk show. In those days, everyone did. “Don’t you worry about the wolves attacking you while you sleep?”

He smiled. “I’m not going to lie-the first night I went in, I didn’t get any sleep. But on the whole, a wolf is far