Livia Lone

42-THEN

She hadn’t expected Rick to be any kind of parent figure-she knew he was single, with a busy job, and besides, after what she’d been through, just a safe place to stay while she finished high school would have been more than enough. But he seemed to enjoy the kinds of things parents do. He was a really good cook-he knew how to make lots of dishes, including his special salmon, and chicken tandoori, and bouillabaisse, Livia’s favorite. He went to PTA meetings. He helped her research colleges. But she wasn’t sure college made sense for her, and one night, at the dinner table, she told him of her doubts.

He paused with a spoonful of lentil soup halfway to his mouth. “I’m not pushing back,” he said, “but do you mind if I ask why? Because college would create more options. And that’s as important in life as it is on the mat, right?”

She hesitated, then said, “I think… I think I want to be a cop. Like you.”

She was afraid he would belittle the idea, or otherwise try to talk her out of it. But instead, he looked down for a moment, then said, “The first thing I want to say, and it’s the least important, is thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saying you want to be a cop like me. And if you wind up going that route, you’ll see one day how much that means.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant, but the way he’d said “if,” acknowledging at least the possibility, made her smile.

He set down his spoon. “And for what it’s worth, Livia, I think you’d make a great cop. One of the best.”

Suddenly, she had to blink back tears. “Really?”

“Really. You’re smart. And compassionate. You know how to sift through evidence, piecing together what makes sense, picking apart what doesn’t.”

He paused. “But that’s not even the half of it. You know what would really make you such a great cop?”

She shook her head, afraid to speak.

“Your personality. You know, most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.”

He looked at his soup, then back to her. “But there’s a third kind of person. The sheepdog. Sheepdogs have fangs like wolves. But their instinct isn’t predation. It’s protection. All they want, what they live for, is to protect the flock.”

Livia blinked, but the tears got past her. Rick smiled. He knew she wouldn’t want to be touched. But he handed her his napkin. And that was enough.

“Look,” he said. “In the end, I just hope you find your thing, the thing you’re passionate about, the thing you’re best at, and do that. I don’t want you to feel I’m invested in anything more than that. I don’t want you to feel any… I don’t know. Pressure from me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t.”

He smiled. “Okay, good. Then I can say without worrying about any undue influence that when I look at you-all that strength, all that compassion-if you decide you want to spend your life protecting the flock, I think you’d be great at it.”

She wiped her face with the napkin. She felt he had seen so clearly inside her. Like he had X-ray vision. Not for the first time, she wondered how much else he might know, or at least suspect.

Rick went back to his soup, giving her a moment. And when she felt a little more in control, she said, “Thank you, Rick.”

He smiled again. “No, thank you, Livia. But don’t rule out college, okay? Remember, it’s about options. And it might even make you a better cop. All I’d ask is, keep it in mind.”

She promised him she would.

Sean sent her letters, mostly news about Llewellyn High. She wrote back, telling him about her new life in Portland, but it was awkward. He explained he had an email account now, and asked if she could get one, too. She could have-unlike sick Mr. Lone, Rick let her use his computer whenever she liked-but she didn’t want to make it too easy to be in touch. What she and Sean had in common, she didn’t know how to express in writing. So they stuck with snail mail. His letters started to arrive less frequently, and she took longer to respond because being reminded of him made her sad. Eventually, the hiatus from his last letter grew so long that she sensed there might not be another. She told herself she could always write back, but the days passed and she didn’t.

Rick had a motorcycle-a 1999 Kawasaki Ninja ZXR that Livia loved the second she saw it-and he taught her how to ride it. He was a member of a machine shop, where he brought the bike to do all the maintenance and repairs himself, and he taught her how to do all that, too. She liked using tools, and working with her hands. It seemed to reconnect her with who she was before all the terrible things happened, to a time when she had caught and butchered and cooked her own food, when she was more self-reliant and felt so much more free.

Rick wanted to teach her to drive a car, too, but he couldn’t let her drive his, because it belonged to the Portland Police Bureau. She asked what car he had used when he drove to Portland-it wasn’t his police car.

The question seemed to fluster him slightly. “Ah, when I need a car for something like that, I borrow one from a friend.”

Livia had wondered before, and almost asked now. But Rick had always been scrupulous about respecting what she needed to keep private. It would be worse than rude, it would be a betrayal, not to do the same for him. So she said only, “I’m glad you have a friend like that.”

He looked at her for a long moment, almost nervously. Then he said, “Yeah. I think… you’d like him. And he’d like you.”

She shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal. “You could introduce us sometime. If you want. I’m sure I’d like your friends.”

He smiled, looking both frightened and relieved. “Well, maybe he’d let me use his car to teach you to drive. I could ask him.”

They developed an easy rhythm. Livia did the shopping, the cleaning, and the laundry, too. Rick told her it wasn’t necessary, but she didn’t listen. She didn’t want to be a burden, something he took on because of a feeling of obligation, something he felt stuck with. She wanted to be valuable, and it made her feel good to know she was. She liked making the coffee, and had a cup every morning, with milk and turbinado sugar.

Sometimes she went to the port. She would stand and stare out at the water, the containers, the machinery, the ships. Then she would close her eyes and listen to the sounds-the thrum of huge engines, the cries of scavenger birds, the lapping of water on the docks-and try to imagine where Nason could have been taken, try to feel where she could be right that moment. She told herself if she concentrated hard enough, she would remember something, imagine something, conjure something that would help. But nothing ever came.

One day, on the way home from school, she came across a thick branch that had fallen from a tree. On impulse, she picked it up and carved it into a Buddha like the one she had made so long ago in the forest-legs crossed in the lotus pose, one hand down and the other out. She placed it by the window in her bedroom, next to the photograph of her and Nason. And every night, without fail, she looked out at the sky and whispered in Lahu, “I love you, little bird. I will never forget. I will never stop looking. And one day I will find you.”

Rick told her that because he always had his service weapon either on him or within easy reach, it was important for her to learn how to handle firearms safely. “You don’t just childproof your guns,” was how he put it. “You also gun-proof your child.”

Livia was thrilled. She wanted to learn about guns. About all weapons. To her, anything that wasn’t a weapon was a weakness. And she was never going to be weak again.

They went over the four rules of safety: Always assume a gun is loaded until you’ve checked it yourself. Never let the muzzle cross something you wouldn’t be willing to harm. Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. And know your backstop-what a bullet would hit if it were to miss or go through your target.

Safety was important, of course, but she told him she also wanted to learn how to shoot. So they went to the gun range, where he taught her the fundamentals: smooth draw, aggressive stance, firm grip, front sight on the target, press the trigger. She listened carefully and shot well, but afterward, in the parking lot, Rick told her the range was nothing like the street-that adrenaline, ambiguity, bystanders, someone shooting back… the street changed everything.

“Did you ever have to shoot someone?” she asked.

“I did, yeah.”

“Have you killed anyone?”

He nodded. “Two people.”

“Were they bad?”

“Very bad.”

“What did they do?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“You can tell me.”

He looked at her, then nodded again. “One of them was a drug dealer. He was shooting people in a house and we had to charge inside to stop him.”

She felt her jaw clench. “The people in the house… he killed them?”

“All but a little girl named Lucy. He had beaten her unconscious and left her for dead. But she’s fine now. She’s in school and she’s going to be a nurse.” He smiled. “She called me not so long ago, on her eighteenth birthday. She said, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but you saved my life. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.’”

“Did you remember her?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? I told her, ‘Remember? Lucy, I’ll never forget you.’”

The story brought tears to Livia’s eyes. She wished Rick had been there when the white van had pulled up. Or someone like him.

“Wow,” she whispered.

He looked at her and shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but she could tell the memory had moved him, too. “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes you get to really save someone. Makes all the bullshit worthwhile.”

“What about the other one?”

“Gangbanger determined not to go back to prison. He shot two officers before they could get their guns out, and had my partner pinned down. I flanked him and shot him in the head.”

“You saved your partner?”

“Well, that’s what they said on the commendation, anyway.”

She could tell he was being modest again. “I’m glad you killed them.”

He frowned and said, “I’m not sure you should feel that way, Livia.”

“But they would have hurt more people if you hadn’t killed them. Killing them saved people.”

He nodded slowly, as though reluctant to concede the point. “I guess… I just don’t want you to be glad about killing. You’re so young.”

She felt the dragon stir, and suddenly she badly wanted him to understand. She looked at him. “I wish you could have killed the people who took Nason and me.”

The way he was looking at her, she thought he understood the full meaning of that word, took. He nodded again, slowly, and said, “Point taken.”

“Or I wish I could have.” She didn’t add that she wished she could kill them still. She didn’t want to worry him any more than maybe she already had.

But she did wish it. And if she ever found a way, she would.