The Better to Hold You (34 page)

I chewed while Red smiled at me. “You want to step on over here where it’s quiet?”

I followed Red into my favorite spot in the house, a lovely little central hall area with a fountain in the middle of the room and a skylight overhead. The real El Greco house in Spain is open to the sky here, but this is as close as you can come in New York State. The others were still audible from the living room, but they seemed far away. From where we stood we could see out of two large windows, and I took a deep breath and felt better.

“I’m okay, Red. It’s just—this is too claustrophobic for me.” I hadn’t been able to bear the thought of living in Red’s cabin, so close to Magda and Hunter, who were still living in the Barrows’ ancestral home. And, I suppose, I hadn’t wanted to live in a place that had so much wild magic floating around. I didn’t like believing in magic. I didn’t want to embrace a lifestyle that meant losing control once a month—especially now that I’d seen where that could lead.

“Now, that’s just what I was wanting to talk to you about. I know staying here at your mom’s has been kind of rough on you, but I think I might have a solution in mind.”

“I think I have one, too. I think I need to go back to Manhattan.”

Red looked a little startled for a moment, but then he collected himself. “I guess I understand that. You thinking about the Medical Institute?”

“I’d like to finish my internship. If they’ll take me back.”

Red jammed his hands into his back pockets and whistled softly. “The city, huh? Well, as the good book says, Whither thou goest, honey, I go along for the ride.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be working almost all the time.”

“Since you don’t sleep much nights, I reckon I’ll still get to spend a few hours with you after dark.” Red grinned. With his hands still in his back pockets, he scraped the toe of one of his scuffed cowboy boots like a cowboy straight out of central casting. “Hell, after dark’s the best time, anyways.”

“You’d hate being in the city.”

Red met my eyes, serious, all trace of the redneck act gone. “You might hate it too, Doc. You haven’t been back since the change.”

“Then I need to find that out for myself.”

Red put his arms around my waist and we looked out the window together, at the dark night and the bare, brown earth and the skeletal trees. A glitter of white caught my eye.

“It’s started to snow, Doc.”

I nodded. I was crying.

“Ah, don’t do that, Abra. I’m not going to let you get away. I’ve been looking for the right mate for way too long to let a little thing like an internship get in the way. I can wait a couple of years for kids—so long as you make an honest man of me now.”

On the other side of the window, the snow looked powder-soft, and I watched it filling the air like a cloud. Behind me, I could hear the steady rhythm of Red’s heartbeat. “So I’ll commute for a while. A couple of years we won’t see each other so much. That’s not too bad, is it?”

I shook my head. I wanted to believe in what he was saying, but I’d lost the faith that had kept me with Hunter. Maybe Red would stay with me, driving back and forth whenever I had a day off. But I still remembered him huddled beneath my mother’s caftan, fighting his own instincts. He’d said he controlled the change, that his initial attack on my mother and the subsequent wrist-licking had all been part of an elaborate trick, and I half-believed him. But that wasn’t exactly comforting, because it meant he’d lied about what kind of animal he was. If Red really had been faking, then he was more coyote the trickster than he was admitting. In the Native American myths I’d heard, coyote was the card that always played wild.

So how could I trust him, knowing that duplicity was part of the package?

Which brought me back to thoughts of Hunter. I suppose I’d always known, deep down, that Hunter was capable of cheating on me. I may even have thought there was a chance our marriage might not last. But I never thought he would leave me so completely that he didn’t care if I lived or died. I never thought he would tear me apart and then blame me for everything. My mother had warned me that I wasn’t reading Hunter correctly. But who’d have guessed my lack of insight would nearly cost her life?

“Abra.”

I turned to Red and discovered that he had dropped to one knee. Despite the submissive position, his smile held perfect confidence. Well, why wouldn’t he feel secure? We’d spent the past month in a kind of extended recuperative honeymoon. “You haven’t answered me, Doc. Suppose I ought to say it right.”

I couldn’t smile back. “Oh, please don’t.”

“Don’t be embarrassed—I’m not. Abra Barrow, you are the cleverest, least pretentious, gentlest, and most passionate woman it has ever been my good fortune to know. I may not be quite up to the job, but I sure as heck would work at it. Take me on as your husband, woman, and I promise you won’t live to regret it.” He took the ring box out of his back pocket and flipped the top open. It was a lovely ring, a deep coppery gold set with a golden Topaz, the color of my wolfish lover’s eyes. I thought about how much Red must have invested in this—time, money, the risk of my disliking the ring—or refusing him.

My face started to go, first the mouth contorting, then the eyes filling with tears. It wasn’t pretty crying, and I knew it. “I’m so sorry,” I said, and Red jumped to his feet in one graceful motion. His arms came around me and I rested my cheek against the soft flannel of his shirt. “I want to believe it could work. I want to say yes.”

“Sh, Abra. I can wait.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong, if I’ve lost faith or if it’s just too soon after Hunter. But I’m scared of how people change. Even people who don’t change.” I sniffled, and Red stroked the back of my shirt. “I mean, if Hunter hadn’t turned into a werewolf, would I ever have noticed he was no longer the man I’d fallen in love with?”

“I’m done with that kind of change, Abra. I’m not a man who needs to go finding himself anymore. Hunter still is.”

“I know, you’re probably right. But I still can’t do it. I know in my bones that what I need now is to get my life together. You can’t wait for that, Red. And I can’t risk hoping that you will. I have to let you go now.”

“Not now. Not to night. Dump me tomorrow. Dump me the day after tomorrow.”

At the edges of my consciousness, I could scent the tinge of Red’s despair, and behind that, the desire in him, the desire that was so intermingled with love it never felt like a thing apart. The way it had with Hunter.

I leaned into Red and started to kiss him and the taste of him made me feel drunk with the change again, the pull of the other like the pull of the moon. I broke away.

“I can’t do this, Red.”

His hazel eyes searched my face. “Hold on to the ring for me?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Well, do it anyway.” He pressed the ring into my hand, and I let him.

“This feels wrong.”

“I won’t let you go, Doc. But I’ll give you the space you need to figure things out.”

“I’m sorry.”

Red walked to the front door, already unbuttoning his gray flannel shirt. “Don’t be too sad. I’m coming back.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice breaking on the word. He walked out the front door and the cold night air raced in to take his place. I stared through the dark window for a long time, watching Red shake off his boots, unbutton his jeans, and then turn to look at me over his left shoulder, naked and unabashed. I thought I saw him wink, then change form between one eyeblink and the next. Four-legged, he bounded with astonishing speed toward the tree line. When I turned around to try to face the brightly lit room again, my mother was there.

“That was stupid,” she said. She was cradling Pimpernell in her arms, and when he saw me, he wriggled with happiness.

“I know.” I reached out my arms for the dog.

Placing Pimpernell in my hands, my mother put her arm around me, and for a moment, we just leaned into each other. “Well,” she said at last, “I’ve done stupid things, too. Like your father. And look what came out of it.”

I laughed, my forehead against hers. “The most stupid thing of all,” I said, and my mother stopped smiling. Pimpernell barked, a shrill little reprimand.

“No,” she said. “The smartest.” And then, after a moment, she added: “Now, could I talk to you about the lycanthropy? Because Red had a very interesting suggestion …”

But as much as I sometimes wanted to, and as much as my mother longed to run with the wolves, I couldn’t quite bring myself to bite her.

It was too cold for walking, but I needed the exercise. April is the cruelest month, the poet said, but my vote goes to March, which has the gall to call itself the beginning of spring, when it’s really just winter in disguise.

I put on two layers of leggings, a turtleneck, and the faded flannel shirt Red had left behind. At first I’d tried to put it away, as I had done with his ring. But then there were all those long wakeful nights when I found myself searching for his things—his jeans, his Timex watch and worn cowboy boots—everything he’d left on my mother’s front lawn the night he’d walked away. I didn’t feel entitled to wear Red’s ring, but it felt all right to try on his shirt. The ghost of his scent still clung to it, though fainter each time I wore it.

I was on the waitlist for a new internship at the Institute. Meanwhile, I was renting a room in Lilliana’s East Side apartment, and had found a job spaying and neutering cats and dogs for the Humane Society. In my spare time, I was also working with Malachy, who had turned his Queens town house into a makeshift laboratory. I had contacted Malachy when I’d come back to the city, hoping he could prescribe something that would temporarily suppress the change.

Malachy seemed intrigued at the challenge, and had come up with some foul concoction that I drank every morning. So far, three months had passed, and I hadn’t changed. I also hadn’t had a period, and my hair seemed to be falling out. But I couldn’t see myself going back to Northside and letting my wolf run free without Red around to guide me. And thanks to my brilliant decision-making, Red was gone.

As for Malachy, his health seemed marginally improved, and he made it clear that what he really wanted was to continue his research—ideally, with me as a subject. Barring that, he intended to set up a practice in Northside as soon as he’d saved enough money. The idea that something about the town amplified certain conditions did not strike him as insane, which surprised me. But then, I had never been known for my ability to judge human character.

But I was back in Manhattan, and Lilliana and I were having a ball, cooking dinners together and watching the complete Fawlty Towers on DVD in the evenings. On the weekends, we went to museums and saw foreign films. So, really, I had nothing to complain about.

Except for the pain of losing Red. It wasn’t going away, even though I’d started accepting that I really had lost him. I’d stopped calling Jackie and asking if she’d seen any sign of him. I’d stopped trying the cell phone number on his card. My mother had said, Listen, when a man is really ready to settle down, he settles down with the woman who’s available. That’s the reality. Red wanted a wife and family, and you said no. So give up on that and go start dating again.

But how do you tell a potential lover about this little medical condition you have which makes you hairy and homicidally horny once a month? And how do you content yourself with boring, safe vanilla sex when you’ve had the experience of complete surrender? I suppose I could have tried looking for bikers, but the kind of danger I wanted was wrapped in a package with love and respect and specific desire. I wanted a beast who believed in riding into the sunset. And every day that passed I seemed to want him more.

I walked west to Central Park, smelling the change in the season. Everyone seemed to be out today, and the Great Lawn was full of dogs and their walkers, which was nice—in general, I’d been exercising in a local gym, and I’d missed seeing other people in the street. I switched on my iPod and Helen Reddy sang that she’d been down on the floor but was much too wise to ever go down again. The air was cool enough for me to feel it in my lungs, and the uncivilized part of me whispered, Run. The part of me that needed the smell of the park like a taste on the back of my throat didn’t want to just walk, it wanted to leap and race, bad knees be damned. So I let myself pick up speed. It wasn’t until I moved past a slow jog that it happened. First the golden retriever to my left, tugging, breaking loose from the thin female walker, taking chase. Then the terriers, all three of them. Then the dachshund, pathetically moving its runt legs along.

“Hey!” She ran after them, reaching for their dangling leashes, but now there were other dogs joining in—a beagle descending from another path, a basset hound interrupted mid-sniff, suddenly bounding off—easily outdistancing their elderly owners. A black shepherd mix, puppy-eager, jumped a bench and barked his plea sure as he reached me ahead of the rest.

I looked down at his happy, floppy face, still jogging, trying not to lose momentum. It’s not cardio exercise if you keep stopping. “What is it, boy? What’s going on?” I patted his head as I moved on down the hill, and the others galloped along, the basset hound skidding to keep up.

“Come back here! Hey! Get back! Bad girl!”

For a moment, I thought the shouting was meant for me. Then I looked back up over my shoulder and saw, silhouetted against the pale, cold sky, a Pied Piper’s assortment of breeds and mutts at the crest of the hill, all bounding along, freeing themselves from their leashes and owners, canines aroused by the irresistible, infuriating scent of wolf. I wasn’t just another jogger: I was the friggin’ call of the wild. Turning around, I tried to count. Ten now, including a Samoyed; a giant, dark, square-headed Bouvier; two collies; and a Great Dane.

And suddenly I understood why so many people choose giant hunting and herding breeds to roam their tiny Manhattan apartments. In a city this vast, you sometimes need a dog the size of a person to form a pack with. Except that it isn’t always easy to convince these giants that you are top dog, even if you do bring home the Alpo.