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Chapter 24

‘Don’t you need, like, camo sheets?’

‘No.’

‘Dad, doesn’t he look funny in there, I mean, with my pink sheets?’

‘Shep’s fine, honey.’

‘You knew Dad when he was a kid?’

‘Yup.’

‘I thought no one knew him as a kid. I thought maybe he never was a kid. What was he like?’

‘Opinionated.’

‘Did he drink? Like, beer and stuff?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Did he smoke?’

‘He tried.’

‘Dad smoked!’

‘Not really, honey. I didn’t always act-’

‘Did he have girlfriends?’ ‘Dozens.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

Mike smirked and headed down the hall to get ready for bed, leaving Kat and Shep. Kat cocked her head, eyeing Shep as if readying to paint his portrait. He looked ridiculous crammed into her bed.

‘So why are you here?’

‘I owe your dad.’

‘You do? For what?’

‘He saved my life.’

‘Like, pulled you out of a burning car?’

‘There are different ways you can save someone’s life.’

‘Like how?’

Shep blinked a few times wearily.

‘Ms C says there are no stupid questions.’

‘Ms C is wrong,’ Shep said.

‘Let him sleep!’ Annabel, passing in the hall, called out.

Kat waited for her mom’s footsteps to fade. ‘Like how?’ she repeated.

‘He expected more out of me than I expected out of myself.’

‘So you owe him forever?’

Shep laid back and stared at the ceiling.

‘I can do long division, you know.’

‘Is that so.’

‘And name the constellations. And the planets, in order. Except Pluto, which isn’t a planet anymore. How sad is that? One day you’re a planet, the next oh, well, sorry.’

‘Pretty sad.’ Shep lifted his shirt, pulled a Colt.45 from the waist of his jeans, and rested it on his chest.

‘Wow. Just… wow. Can I touch it?’

‘Sure.’

She crossed tentatively, reached out a finger, and poked the steel barrel.

‘Kat, we need you in bed with us now. I’ve got practicum tomorrow, which I’m already flunking, and if-’ Annabel wheeled around the corner, Kat looking up at her, finger extended, red-faced. Annabel’s own face tightened. ‘Please don’t let her handle that.’

Shep said, ‘Okay.’

Annabel pointed. Kat marched. Annabel followed. The master door closed, firmly. Raised voices hummed through the walls. A few minutes later, Mike was in the doorway, forearm across the jamb.

‘Nice dust ruffle. Matches your personality.’ Mike came in, sat.

Shep moved up against the headboard, laid the Colt across his lap. He nodded at the window. ‘Don’t worry. You can sleep tonight.’

‘I know.’ Mike took a deep breath, gestured through the wall at their bedroom, then at the pistol. ‘Sorry ’bout that. It’s been a rough couple days. We’ve never dealt with something like this.’

‘She hasn’t, you mean.’

Mike moistened his lips. ‘You don’t like her,’ he said. ‘Annabel.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Technically.’

‘She loves you,’ Shep said. ‘That’s all I need to know.’

Mike looked at his feet. Shep stared at the seam where wall met ceiling.

‘Look,’ Mike finally said. ‘How things were left. I never-’

Shep waved a hand. ‘The past don’t interest me. You need me now. So here I am.’

‘I didn’t know how to handle things,’ Mike said. ‘How to reconcile…’ He sensed Shep’s disinterest and trailed off.

‘You’ve come a long way,’ Shep said.

‘And not so far, too.’ The stymied conversation left Mike feeling like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t know what. ‘We did some good work today.’

And they had. Shep had followed Dana Riverton back to an apartment in Northridge. From across the street, he’d watched her enter a second-floor place. He’d found an elderly neighbor out walking her schnauzer, who’d told him that no Dana Riverton lived in the complex. Mike had left the address, as well as the other bits of information or misinformation on Hank’s old-fashioned answering machine at the office. In the afternoon Shep had applied his focus and Mike’s tools to the house, getting the locks secure as only a safecracker could ensure.

Shep looked relieved at the turn in conversation. Back to logistics. Safer ground. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I’m gonna go see about tracking that cell-phone signal.’

‘How?’

‘I called a guy who knew a guy.’

‘Long shot?’

‘Yup.’ Shep tugged back on the pistol’s slide, and the round reared up its brass head. He released it again, put it back on his chest. They were, it seemed, out of things to talk about. For once Shep broke the silence. ‘She’s a live wire, Kat.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, she is.’

‘What’s it like? Being a parent.’

The question, a bit vague for Shep, caught Mike off guard.

‘Besides the obvious stuff,’ Shep added.

‘They’re yours,’ Mike said. ‘All yours. And then you’re letting them go for the rest of your life. You move them out of your bed. They walk on their own, don’t want to be held the same. You stop cutting their food for them. They go off to school. Pretty soon some jackass in a car’ll be out front, wanting to take her to a concert.’

Shep said, ‘We were once that jackass.’

‘Let’s hope she does better than that.’

‘No shit, huh?’ Shep scratched his cheek with the pistol barrel. ‘I guess if you do your job well,’ he said, ‘you get to let go of her again.’

All the smart stuff Shep ever said came packaged like that, wisdom smuggled in simplicity. Gratitude welled in Mike, and he realized just how much he’d missed him. Again he found himself searching for words. ‘All this’ – his gesture encompassed the room, the house, his family – ‘I got because of what you taught me.’ He looked around, his words echoing in his head – all this – and he realized with chagrin that it may have seemed as though he were bragging, a big shot. On one level – logistics, security, shorthand – he and Shep had fallen right back into sync, but at the same time a part of Mike couldn’t seem to get comfortable.

Shep said, ‘I didn’t teach you shit.’

‘Stamina.’ Mike couldn’t bring himself, just now, to list ‘loyalty’.

Shep’s eyes pulled to a photo on the bookshelf, Kat at three, hair in her eyes, blowing bubbles. ‘Nah, you were always smart enough to know there’s more than that.’

‘But we needed it. Stamina.’

Shep said, ‘That’s because we didn’t have anything else.’

He closed his eyes, though Mike knew he was just resting, not asleep.

After a time Mike rose quietly and headed back to his family.

Two sleepless hours later, Annabel stood at the refrigerator getting water from the door dispenser, one thumb hooked inside the cup to sense in the darkness when it was full. Turning, she froze at a man’s shape in the living-room doorway. Her hand went white around the glass.

‘Shep?’ The word came out strangled.

‘Yuh.’

She shuddered. ‘You scared me.’

‘Didn’t mean to.’

They stood there, two faceless silhouettes.

‘You don’t want me here,’ he said.

She wet her lips. ‘Yeah, but I’m generally wrong half the time, so don’t pay me any mind.’ She cocked her head slightly and seemed to consider him, up and alert at her footsteps, keeping watch. ‘You know what? I don’t know what I want right now. This has been so horrifying. And you’re here, aren’t you? In it with us.’

‘Sorry.’ He shifted on his feet, a rare show of discomfort.

Her face softened; his politeness, his out-of-placeness, seemed to tug at her. ‘You and I have had our differences, but I want you to know that I’m grateful to you for coming.’

Shep said, ‘Okay.’

‘And it means the world to Mike. I’m worried about him. He’s been really… angry. I’ve never seen him like this.’

‘You don’t worry about Mike when he’s mad,’ Shep said. ‘You worry about him when he’s quiet.’