“What about the panthers?” Charley said.
“It’s going to take more than one woman to save them.” None of us had asked for an explanation, but she must have been preparing her speech on the flight up. “You know, I used to think I could win every battle if I fought hard enough. But Florida has made me realize how close I am to becoming a casualty of war. I guess I’m tired of fighting everything and everyone all the time.”
I hadn’t had to think about Stacey while she was in Florida. No decisions were required of me. Her returning to Maine didn’t need to affect my relationship with Dani. I made a vow to myself that it wouldn’t.
“How’s Buster?” I asked.
Stacey grinned. “To be honest, I think his nose is going to be improved by the surgery.”
“Her friend was bitten in the face by a python.”
“Let’s hear the story!” said Charley.
“I’ll tell it on the flight.” Stacey returned her aviators to the bridge of her nose. “We have to get you home to Mom. She’s been waiting long enough.”
“You need to drop me in Portland first,” I said.
“What’s in Portland?”
Charley leaned in close to his daughter and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
Dani was awake when I arrived at her hospital room. I was in need of a shave and a shower, but I had purchased a bouquet of red roses from the shop downstairs.
She had tubes and wires attached to her arm, but she was sitting up in bed. Usually, she wore her shoulder-length hair in a ponytail, but now it was spread across the pillow. Her face looked like it would scorch my hand if I touched it.
The television mounted to the wall was tuned to one of those Saturday bass fishing shows that I abhorred. Nicole was keeping vigil beside the bed, with a copy of Us Weekly magazine open on her lap. More Harry and Meghan.
“Hey, stranger,” Dani said as if I had just returned from a quick trip to the cafeteria.
“Hay is for horses.” It was one of our jokes.
I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. The skin felt as hot as it looked.
“You just missed Kathy,” she said. Her eyelids were heavy. Her throat sounded scratchy.
Nicole Tate rose to her feet as if in indignation, but it was only to take the inadequate bouquet from me. “Kathy Frost has been here a lot,” she said, emphasizing the last word so the message was unmistakable.
I leaned over the bed again and looked into Dani’s tired gray eyes. I had expected to see fear in them, but I didn’t. In her place, I would have been terrified. “You look good.”
“For someone whose brain was about to explode, you mean?”
“I’m sorry, Dani.”
“Why?”
“For not getting here sooner. I should have—”
“Yes!” said Nicole.
“Mom, can you give us a few minutes?”
“They’re going to be coming soon to take you for those scans, Danielle.”
She exerted herself to raise the arm with the IV from the mattress. “I’m not going anywhere.”
After Nicole had left, still clutching my flowers, I knelt down on one knee beside the bed and took Dani’s hand. The bed, on its wheels, was quite high, making the gesture feel all the more ridiculous. We couldn’t even make proper eye contact.
At least she smiled, revealing one of her secret dimples. “Get off your knee, Mike.”
“I don’t have an excuse, but I have an explanation.”
“I don’t want either of them. I know about what happened up there. Kathy told me. That son of a bitch Lamontaine. People can be so evil it makes me sick. I don’t know how anyone can decide to bring children into this world, as fucked up as it is.”
I let that one go. “I understand if you’re not ready to forgive me.”
“You were doing your job.”
“But I wasn’t doing my job. It was a personal thing.”
I could see her forcing her mind to focus.“You want to feel guilty.”
“I do feel guilty.”
“That wasn’t a question. Guilt is your go-to place. Always has been. Get over it.”
“Move in with me,” I said, reaching for her hand again.
She rolled her eyes. “No!”
“I’m serious. I thought about it on the flight down here. Apply for a transfer to Troop D.”
“You apply for a transfer.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “See, that’s just it. I don’t have a problem with your not being here. I have a problem with your not knowing what you want.”
When I had stood up, I felt stiff, sore, and light-headed from lack of sleep. Thirty-one was too young to be middle-aged. But it was too old to be having the conversation Dani and I were having.
“Consider it, at least,” I said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
She was beginning to flush and perspire. “Because I have plans. They might all be shot to shit, but I’ve worked my ass off to get to where I am, and I won’t stop now, whatever the doctors say.”
I had always admired her perseverance—she had the most grit of anyone I had known.
“You’re right. I’ll put in for a transfer. I’d even be willing to go back to patrol.”
“I’m too tired for this conversation, Mike. You might think you’re ready for happily ever after, but you aren’t. Take care of your wolf first. See how that goes.”
Two nurses arrived to wheel her to whatever imaging scanners they were going to use to map her brain. I hadn’t detected a change in her mental process. If anything, I’d been taken aback by her lucidity. More than taken aback. Properly chastened. Danielle Tate had a constitution that made Rasputin look like a ninety-eight-pound weakling.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” I said with artificial-sounding good cheer.
“Feel free to change the channel.”
After they took her away, I dropped into the chair vacated by her mother and found it still warm with body heat. I let my bloodshot eyes rest on the television set.
The host of the fishing show was a
