Lone Wolf

lower than the pro basketball player I treated a year ago. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were barely alive. But obviously that’s not the case. So what’s going on?”

“I had a… unique diet and exercise plan,” I explained.

The doctor’s jaw dropped. “You’re telling the truth,” he said, and I nodded.

He sat down and listened while I explained how I’d become part of a pack. I told him about our meals, how we traveled, how we hunted. I explained our sleeping habits, how far we would move on patrol, how we fought predators, how we brought down prey. By the time I finished, an hour later, he was staring at me as if he’d cornered an alien, and had the opportunity to do the first full-body examination of it. “I’d love to run some blood work,” he said, excited. “See how your experience has affected you physically. Would you mind…?”

He left me alone to order the tests, and I put my shirt back on. But instead of waiting for the phlebotomist, I walked into the hall, where I was stopped by an orderly. “Can you show me where the nearest restroom is?” I asked.

He gave me directions-down the hall and to the left. I followed them but didn’t go to the bathroom. I kept walking. I walked out the back door, down a flight of stairs, and into the bright sunlight.

There was a teenager sitting on the curb weeping. He had a pair of enormous air-traffic-controller headphones on, and he was rocking back and forth. “Too much,” he said, over and over, as he shook his head. His voice sounded as if he was speaking from the bottom of the ocean.

I sat down next to him, and a moment later, a woman ran out of the door. It took everything in my power not to react by shrinking away. “There you are!” she exclaimed, dragging him up by the arm.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

“His cochlear implants were activated today,” she said proudly. “He’s just getting used to them.”

I could see it, then, the silver disk in the skull, surrounded by cropped hair. “Too much,” the teenager howled.

To this day he is the only person in this world who I think understands what it felt like for me to return.

JOE

“You know,” I say, closing the door to the conference room, “just once I’d like you to actually tell me what you’re going to say before you say it. In fact, I’d also settle for you restricting your statements to direct questions instead of spontaneous utterances.”

“I’m sorry,” Edward mutters. He buries his face in his hands. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to what? Throw another bomb into the courtroom? Bring your sister to tears? Completely destroy your mother?”

I look down at my phone. Georgie has vanished. I’ve called and I’ve texted, but she isn’t answering. One minute she was in the courtroom, the next, Edward had confessed to his father’s infidelity and she was gone. I’m trying really hard to convince myself that she hasn’t become so upset by the news about her ex that she’s gone into hiding. I’m trying really hard to believe that she’s happy enough with me, now, to feel the sting of the revelation and then shrug it off. The only good news here, in fact, was that she wasn’t in the courtroom during this latest episode of Edward’s True Confessions.

I sit down, loosen my tie. “So?”

Edward looks up at me. “The night I caught him in the trailer with his assistant, he was like I’d never seen him before. Freaking out. Terrified I’d tell Mom. He swore to me that it was a mistake and that it had only happened once in the heat of the moment, that it wouldn’t happen again. I don’t know why I bothered to believe him. But I went home, and Mom knew something was off with me. She thought it had something to do with telling my father I was gay, and because it was easier, I let her believe that. But a day later, I was paying bills, like usual, and I saw one from an abortion clinic in Concord. I only knew about it because of a junior who’d gotten pregnant that year, and who’d gone there to take care of things. Anyway, there was a Post-it note attached to the bill. It said, Thanks for paying in full at the time of your visit-sorry our computer system was down. Please find enclosed a copy of your receipt for insurance purposes. I was pretty surprised to find a bill from there, and I was sure it was a mix-up in the mail, until I read the patient’s name: Wren McGraw. She was the college kid my father had hired to be a wolf caretaker. The one I’d found him sleeping with.” He bites down on his words, as if they are a chain between his teeth. “The one he swore he’d never slept with before.” Edward forces a laugh. “So I guess it’s fitting that everyone always thought my father was some kind of god, since apparently he’s capable of immaculate conception.”

“That’s when you left,” I say.

Edward nods. “My whole life, I felt like I was never the son he wanted me to be. But it turned out he wasn’t the father I wanted him to be, either. Once you know something, you can’t unknow it, and every time I saw him I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from getting mad at him. But I couldn’t explain why I would be acting that way, not without hurting my mother or Cara. So instead, I drove to Redmond’s and left the receipt for the abortion taped to his bathroom mirror. And then I took off.”

“Didn’t you think it might hurt your mother if you left?”

“I was eighteen,” Edward says, an explanation. “I wasn’t thinking at all.”

“Why are you doing this, Edward? Is it some kind of karmic final bitch slap you want to give your father?”

He shakes his head. “In fact, I think he’s the one who gets the last laugh. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had this planned all along. After six years of being apart, we’re all together again. We’re being forced to make decisions together. Go figure,” Edward says. “My father’s finally taught us how to function like a pack.”

The good news, when we return to the courtroom, is that Georgie is there, and she seems not upset but vindicated. The bad news is that I have to cross-examine my own stepdaughter.

Cara looks like she’s about to face the Inquisition. I walk toward her and lean forward. “Cara,” I begin. “Did you hear about the guy who fell into an upholstery machine?”

She frowns.

“Well, he’s fully recovered.”

A tiny laugh bubbles out of her, and I wink. “Cara, isn’t it true that one of the wolves at your father’s enclosures lost its leg?”

“Yes, to a trap,” she says. “He chewed his own leg off to get free, and my father nursed him back to health when everyone said he was a goner.”

“But that wolf was able to use three legs to run away, correct?”

“I guess.”

“And he could still get food with three legs?”

“Yes.”

“And he could run with his pack?”

“Yes.”

“And he could communicate with other wolves in his pack?”

“Sure.”

“But that’s not the case with your father, is it? His injury isn’t one that would allow him to do any of those other things that would constitute a meaningful life?” I ask.

“I already told you,” Cara says stubbornly. “To him, any life is meaningful.”

She carefully avoids looking at Edward when she says that.

“Your father’s doctors have said there’s virtually no chance of recovery for him, right?”

“It’s not as black-and-white as they make it out to be,” she insists. “My father is a fighter. If anyone is going to beat the odds, it’s going to be him. He does things no one else can do, all the time.”

I take a deep breath, because now I’m getting to the part of the cross-examination that’s going to be less than civil. I close my eyes, hoping that Cara-and Georgie-will forgive me for what I’m about to do. But my first