Lone Wolf

“I think Luke Warren is all about Luke Warren. I don’t know, maybe you’re afraid that Edward doesn’t fit your TV persona.” By now I was screaming at him.

“How dare you. I love my son. I love him.”

“Then why is he gone?”

Luke hesitated. I can’t even remember what he said after that brief caesura, but it didn’t matter nearly as much as the hiccup of space, that infinitesimal delay. Because that one faltering moment was a canvas, and I could paint upon it all of my greatest fears.

Three weeks after Edward left he sent me a postcard from Thailand. He included a new mobile phone number. He said that he had gotten a job teaching English, and an apartment, and that he loved me and Cara. He did not mention his father.

I told Luke I wanted to see him. Even though there was no return address on the postcard, even though Thailand was a big country-how hard could it be to find an eighteen-year-old Caucasian teacher? I called the travel agent to book a flight, planning to use money we kept in an emergency fund.

Then one of Luke’s precious wolves got sick and needed surgery. And suddenly that money no longer existed.

The next week, I filed for divorce.

These were my irreconcilable differences: My son was gone. My husband was to blame. And I couldn’t forgive him for that, ever.

But here’s the dirty little secret I still hide: I was the one who told Edward to go to Redmond’s that day, who urged him to come out to his own father the way he had to me. If I hadn’t made that suggestion-if I’d been with Edward when he told his father-would Luke have still reacted as badly? Would Edward never have left?

If you look at it from this angle, it’s my fault I lost my son for six years.

Which is why, now, I won’t make the same mistake twice.

I would be the first to tell you I’m not perfect. I only floss before dentist appointments. I sometimes eat food that I’ve dropped on the floor. Once, I even spanked one of the twins when she ran into the middle of the road.

And I know how it must look when I do not stay with my daughter, who is wrapped and bandaged and wounded more than bone-deep, but instead choose to follow the son who has tried to pull the plug from his father’s ventilator. I know that people are talking as I walk behind the security guards and the hospital lawyer, calling out to Edward, so he understands he isn’t alone.

I look like a bad mother.

But if I didn’t run after Edward-if I didn’t try to explain to the hospital and the police that he didn’t mean it-well, wouldn’t that make me a worse mother?

I don’t deal well with stress. I never have-it’s why you never saw me on any of Luke’s TV episodes; it’s why, when he went to Quebec to live in the wild, I started taking Prozac. Over the past week I have done my best to hold myself together for Cara, even though being in this hospital at night feels like wandering through a ghost town, even though walking into Luke’s room and seeing him with his head shaved and the stitches bisecting his scalp makes me want to turn tail and run. I stayed calm when the police came asking questions to which I did not want to know the answers. But now, I willingly throw myself into the fray. “I’m sure that Edward can explain,” I tell the hospital lawyer.

“He’ll have a chance to do that,” she says. “Down at the police station.”

On cue, the sliding doors of the hospital entrance open and two officers walk in. “We’ll need the nurse’s statement, too,” one of the cops says, while the other one handcuffs my son. “Edward Warren, you’re being arrested for simple assault. You have the right to remain silent-”

“Assault?” I gasp. “He didn’t hurt anyone!”

The hospital lawyer looks at me. “He shoved a nurse. And you and I both know that’s not all he did.”

“Mom,” Edward says, “it’s okay.”

Sometimes I think I have spent my entire life being torn in two directions: I wanted a career, but I also wanted a family. I loved the way Luke’s wildness could barely be contained inside his skin, but that didn’t necessarily make him the best husband, the best father. I want to be a good parent to Cara, but I have two little children now who demand my complete attention.

I love my daughter. But I also love my son.

I stand rooted to the floor as the security guards and the hospital lawyer leave, as the police lead Edward into a day so bright I have to squint, and even then I lose sight of him too fast.

The automatic doors whisper like gossip as they close. I rummage in my purse and find my phone, so that I can call my husband. “Joe,” I say when he answers. “I need your help.”

LUKE

An alpha female can choose a specific prey animal from a herd of hundreds by the smell it leaves behind. A moose with a scratch on its foreleg will leave behind the scent of pus with every footstep. The alpha reads this as vulnerability, and she can track it as if each footfall were a visible bread crumb. She can sniff at the tufts of grass the moose has fed upon and know, from the scent of its teeth, how old the animal is. Long before she ever comes into contact with this moose, she already knows volumes about it.

Eventually she stops focusing on the ground and instead breathes deeply into the air. The dust coming off the moose’s coat leaves particles in the wind, so even from miles away, she will know this is still the same animal. She will start to run, her hunters keeping stride, and when she reaches the herd, she will hold herself back-she’s far too valuable to put herself in danger-and signal a plan of attack to the others. There is a gland on a wolf’s spinal area near the tail. To get a hunter to move right, the alpha will lift her tail up to the left, letting out a directional scent that her hunter can read. If she wants the hunter to speed up, she’ll circle her tail. If she wants her hunter to slow down, she’ll drop her tail. Through these tail postures, and her scent, she communicates with her team, directing them. Even if another moose is closer, the hunters will not strike until their leader gives them the signal, and even then, they will only take the animal she’s pointed out.

An alpha will put two wolves in front of the moose’s shoulders, and then listen for its heart rate. The moose may stamp or snort or throw its rack around to show how mighty a foe it is, but it can’t affect its own adrenal system. When the alpha cues a third hunter to the back of the moose, and its heart skips a beat, she may instruct her team to terrorize it. This may take hours; it may take weeks.

It’s not that wolves are cruel. It’s that the alpha also knows, for example, that to the east is a rival pack that’s bigger and stronger than her own. If this moose gets frightened, adrenaline will saturate its system-it’s the emotional price of death. If her pack can then feed off that moose, those rivals to the east will smell the adrenaline in the urine and scat her pack leaves to mark the boundaries of the territory. And suddenly, her pack is less vulnerable. The wolves to the east would never come steal the food or kill the offspring of a pack whose scent is redolent with emotion, power, dominance.

In other words, what looks cruel and heartless from one angle might, from another, actually be the only way to protect your family.

EDWARD

Suffice it to say I was not the most popular kid in middle school. I was the quiet one, the brainiac who always got A’s, the boy you only struck up a conversation with if you needed the answer to number 4 on your homework. At recess, I was more likely to be found in the shade reading than dunking on the basketball court. That was long before I discovered the benefits of circuit training, so my biceps back then were about as thick as rigatoni noodles. And obviously, I didn’t stare after girls with skirts so short that their panties peeked out from behind-but every now