Lone Wolf A Novel Read online

  “That won’t be a problem.” I move as far away from him as possible (not easy, in a space that is six feet by eight feet) and climb into the upper bunk. I don’t bother to make the bed. Instead I lie down and look at the ceiling.

  “What are you in for?” Vern asks after a minute.

  I consider telling him I’m waiting to be arraigned for murder. Maybe it will make me seem tougher, like someone who should be left alone. But instead I say, “The free food.”

  Vern snorts. “It’s cool. I get it. You don’t want anyone knowing your business.”

  “I’m not trying to be an enigma—”

  “Yeah, damn straight you’re not sticking some hose up my ass—”

  It takes me a minute to figure that one out. “Not an enema,” I say. “And I’m not hiding anything. It’s that I don’t belong here.”

  “Shit, Eddie,” Vern says, laughing. “None of us do.”

  I turn to my side and put the pillow over my head so I don’t have to hear him anymore. It’s just a few nights, I tell myself again. Anyone can survive a few nights.

  But what if it isn’t? What if Joe isn’t able to make all this go away, and I have to wait here for six months or a year until we go to trial? What if, God forbid, I wind up convicted of attempted murder? I couldn’t live like this, in a cage.

  I’m afraid to close my eyes, even after the lights go out hours later. But eventually I fall asleep, and when I do, I dream of my father. I dream he’s in a jail cell, and I am the only one with the key.

  I reach into my pocket to get it, but there’s a hole in the lining of my pants, and no matter how hard I search, I can’t find it.

  LUKE

  I once saw a wolf commit murder.

  There was a lone wolf that kept crossing the boundaries of the other packs and poaching off the livestock from farms in the area. No matter how many times my pack warned him off through howling, he wouldn’t stay away. It wasn’t my decision to act upon, however, but rather the alpha female’s. Every time this wolf was near our territory, tension rose. The wolves in my pack would fight with each other. At night, other packs would call, telling him to get lost.

  One day, the big black wolf—the beta rank—disappeared on a patrol with the other female. That in and of itself was not unusual; it was his job within the pack. However, this time, he didn’t return. Four days passed . . . five . . . six. I started to worry—to believe he was gone for good—and then the female came back alone, confirming my fears. That night, our pack howled, but it wasn’t a location call. It was pain, wrapped in the skin of a single note. It was what we did, when we wanted to sing someone home to us.

  I have been on the receiving end of that call. In the forest you have no direction, so when this constant vocal tone comes out of nowhere like the beacon of a lighthouse, it gives you a direction to follow, to tell you where your pack is waiting. But the beta didn’t turn up. Three nights of calling, and he never answered.

  I was sure he had been killed.

  Then one night, when we howled, there was an answer. Not from the black wolf but from the lone wolf who’d been such a hassle to our pack.

  The alpha continued to call to him. Far be it from me to question her motives, but I imagined this would be a disaster. Here she was advertising the vacancy in the pack, inviting him to join, and he would be nothing but a nuisance.

  Eventually the calls of this lone wolf came closer, and he approached the pack. Everyone was on guard; after all, this was an unknown quantity for the family, and the first meeting would feel like an awkward dance, the beginning of an arranged marriage. No sooner had he loped into the clearing where we were waiting for him, however, than the big black beta wolf barreled out of the cover of the forest and ambushed him. Immediately the other female and the young male leaped forward to help fight.

  The lone wolf was dead within seconds. Lying still on the ground, he had the look of a cross between a feral dog and a wild animal, which would explain his bad behavior. The beta was surrounded by the rest of our pack, which licked at his muzzle and rubbed against him in solidarity, in welcome.

  I don’t think I’m reading human emotion into what happened that day when I say it was a coordinated attack. For the pack to intentionally create a ruse, where the beta was sent off to lie in wait—in silence—in order to lure the lone wolf closer; for the beta to wait for the lone wolf to be drawn out from his cover, so that he could be taken down with the help of the rest of the waiting pack—well, it was premeditated, and malicious, and very, very necessary at the moment to keep the family safe.

  You call it murder.

  A wolf might call it opportunity.

  CARA

  I used to wonder about prisoners who had been given a life sentence. What if one has a heart attack and is pronounced dead and resuscitated by doctors? Does that mean he’s served his time? Or is that why, sometimes, sentences are written for two or three life terms?

  The reason I’m asking is because I’m currently grounded until I’m 198.

  My mother, of course, had returned home from the bus stop to find me missing. I couldn’t very well let her know I was en route to the grand jury in Plymouth, so I had left her a very passionate note about how it was killing me to know my dad was alone in the hospital, so Mariah was going to drive me there for a visit, but that I promised not to overtax myself and she shouldn’t feel that she had to come down and sit with me since she hadn’t seen the twins for a week, thanks to my shoulder surgery, yadda yadda yadda. I figured compassion would trump fury, and I was right: how can you be mad at a kid who sneaks off to visit her hospitalized father?

  If Danny Boyle thinks it’s weird that I ask him to drop me off at the end of my block so I can walk the rest of the way without my mother asking about the strange Beemer that dropped me off, he doesn’t say anything. My mother, actually, gives me a careful hug when I come in and apologizes for yelling at me the night before and asks, “How’s he doing?”

  For a second I think she’s talking about the county attorney.

  Then I remember my fake alibi. “No change,” I say.

  She follows me into the kitchen, where I start to open and close cabinet doors in search of a glass. “Cara,” my mother says, “I want you to know that this is your home, forever, if you want it to be.”

  I know she means well, but my home is across town—complete with a ratty couch that has indentations on it in the spots where my father and I tend to sit. My home has natural shampoos and shaving cream so that the wolves aren’t assaulted by perfume when my father is working with them. My home has a single bathroom with two toothbrushes: pink for me, blue for my dad. Here, I have to rifle through six different drawers before I find what I’m looking for. Home is the place where you know where the silverware lives, where the cups hide, where the clean plates go.

  I run the water in the faucet so that I can get myself a drink. “Um,” I say, embarrassed. “Thanks.”

  I try to imagine a life where I have to constantly expect a little pest hiding under my bed to scare the hell out of me, where I have a curfew, where I am given a list of chores instead of made an equal partner in the household. I try to imagine a life without my dad. He may be an unorthodox parent, but he’s still the one that fits me best. You remember the controversy when Michael Jackson dangled his kid over a railing? I bet no one asked the kid how he felt about it. Probably he was delighted, because to him the safest place in the world was his dad’s arms.

  I hear a door slam, and a moment later Joe comes into the kitchen. He looks rumpled and pretty distracted, but my mother acts like it’s Colin Farrell. “You’re home early!” she says. “I hope that means you got that ridiculous charge against Edward thrown out—”

  “Georgie,” he interrupts, “I think you’d better sit down.”

  My mother’s features freeze. I turn my back to the sink again, dumping out my water and refilling it, wishing I wasn’t caught in the web of this conversation.

  “I got a call from