Lone Wolf Read online

  Suddenly Kladen moves to the promontory rock that, in the dark, looks like a hulking beast. I can make out the silhouettes of Sikwla and Wazoli. They tip back their throats and start to howl.

  It's a rallying howl, meant for someone who's missing. I know who that is right away. It makes me start to cry again, even as all the other packs in the adjacent enclosures join in, a fugue of sorrow.

  I wish, in that instant, I were a wolf. Because when someone leaves your life, there aren't words you can use to fill the space. There's just one empty, swelling minor note.

  "This is why I wanted you to come here with me," Edward says. "Walter says that they've done it every night since the crash."

  The crash.

  Edward had kept a secret, and it broke our family apart. If I confessed mine, would it put us back together?

  So I turn away from the wolves, and with them still singing their dirge, I tell my brother the truth.

  "Here's a hint," my father said, furious, as he peeled away from the house in Bethlehem where already one kid was passed out and two more were having sex in a parked car. "If you lie about having a sleepover study session at Mariah's, you should remember to take the fake bag you've packed."

  I was so angry I couldn't see straight, but that also could have been the grain alcohol. I had beer once, but who knew something that tasted like fruit punch could pack a wallop like this? "I can't believe you followed me here."

  "I tracked prey for two years; believe me, teenage girls leave a much more visible trail."

  My father had just barged into the house as if I were five years old and he'd come to pick me up at a birthday party. "Well, thanks to you, I'm a social pariah now."

  "You're right. I should have waited until you were being date-raped, or had blood alcohol poisoning. Jesus, Cara. What the hell were you thinking?"

  I hadn't been thinking. I'd let Mariah do the thinking for me, and it was a mistake. But I would have rather died than admit that to my father.

  And I sure as hell wouldn't tell him that, actually, I was happy to leave, because it was getting a little crazy in there.

  "This," my father muttered, "is why wolves let some of their offspring die in the wild."

  "I'm going to call Child Protection Services," I threaten. "I'm going to move back in with Mom."

  My father's eyes had a little green box around them from the rearview mirror reflection. "Remind me to tell you, when you're not drunk, that you're grounded."

  "Remind me to tell you, when I'm not drunk, that I hate you," I snapped.

  At that, my father laughed. "Cara," he said, "I swear, you're gonna be the death of me."

  And then suddenly there was a deer in front of the truck, and my father pulled hard to the right. Even as we struck the tree, even as frustrated with me as he was, his instinct was to throw an arm out in front of me, a last-ditch attempt at safety.

  I came to because of the gas. I could smell it, seeping. My arm was useless, and I could feel the burn of the seat belt strap where it had cut a bruise like the sash of a beauty contestant. "Daddy," I said, and I thought I was yelling, but my mouth was filled with dust. Turning to my left, I saw him. His head was bleeding, and his eyes were locked on mine. He was trying to say something, but no words came out.

  I had to get us out of there. I knew that if there was a gas leak, the whole truck could go up in flames. So I reached across him and unbuckled his seat belt. My right arm wasn't working, but with my left hand I opened the passenger door, so I could stumble out of the cab.

  There was smoke pouring from under the hood, and one of the wheels was still spinning. I ran to my father's side and wrenched open his door. "You have to help me," I told him. With my left arm I managed to hoist him against me, partnered in a horrible nightmare of a dance.

  I was crying and there was blood in my eyes and my mouth and I tried to drag my father clear of the car but I couldn't use both arms to pull him. I wrapped one arm around his chest, but I couldn't bear his weight that way. I let go of him. I let go of him, and he slipped through my arm like sand in an hourglass. I let go of him and he fell in slow motion, smacking his head against the pavement.

  After that, he didn't move anymore at all.

  I swear. You're gonna be the death of me.

  "I let go of him," I tell Edward, crying so hard that I cannot catch my breath. "Everyone was calling me a hero for saving his life, but I let go of him."

  "And that's why you can't let go, now," he says, suddenly grasping what this has all been about.

  "I'm the reason he's going to die tomorrow."

  "If you had left him in the truck, he would have died then," Edward says.

  "He fell down on pavement," I sob. "The back of his head hit so hard I heard it. And that's why he won't wake up now. You heard Dr. Saint-Clare--"

  "There's no way to tell which brain injuries came from the crash and which injuries came after that. Even if he hadn't fallen, Cara, he might still be like this."

  "The last words I said to him were I hate you."

  Edward looks at me. "They're the last words I said to him, too," he admits.

  I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. "That's a pretty shitty thing for us to have in common."

  "Gotta start somewhere," Edward says. He offers a half smile. "Besides, he knows you didn't mean it."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Because hate's just the flip side of love. Like heads and tails on a dime. If you don't know what it feels like to love someone, how would you know what hate is? One can't exist without the other."

  Very slowly I inch my hand toward Edward's, until I can slip it beneath his. Immediately, I am eleven years old again, and crossing the street on my way to school. I never looked both ways when I was walking with Edward. I trusted him to do it for me.

  He squeezes my hand. This time, I hold on tight.

  When I was a kid my father used to tuck me in at night, and every time he turned off the lamp, he blew, as if there was a giant invisible candle illuminating my room. It took me years to figure out that he was flipping a switch, that he wasn't the source of all the light.

  Standing in this weird deja vu tableau, I feel as if I'm the one blowing out that invisible candle, a spark I can't see that somehow constitutes living, if not a life.

  Edward is here, as are the same nurses and doctors and social worker and lawyer, and the donor coordinator. But Joe's here, too, like he promised, and my mother, because I asked.

  "Are we ready?" the ICU doctor asks.

  Edward looks at me, and I nod. "Yes," he says.

  He holds my hand while the ventilator is dialed down, while morphine drips into my father's arm. Behind my father is the monitor that marks arterial pressure.

  When the machine stops breathing for my father, I focus on his chest. It rises, then falls once more. It stops for a minute. Then it rises and falls again twice.

  The numbers on the arterial pressure monitor fall like a stock market crash. Twenty-one minutes after we have started, my father's heart stops beating.

  The next five minutes are the longest of my life. We wait to make sure he doesn't spontaneously start breathing again. That his heart doesn't restart.

  My mother is crying softly behind me. Edward has tears in his eyes.

  At 7:58 P.M., my father is declared dead.

  "Edward, Cara," Trina says, "you need to say goodbye."

  Because DCD requires the organs to be harvested immediately, we can't linger. But then again, I have been saying goodbye for days. This is just a formality.

  I walk up to my father and touch his cheek. It is still warm, and there's stubble like flecks of fool's gold. I put my hand over his heart, just to make sure.

  It is a good thing that they whisk him to the OR for the organ donation, because I am not sure I would have been able to leave him. I might have stayed in his room forever, just sitting with his body, because once you tell the nurse that yes, it's okay to take him away, you don't ever get the chance to be w