Fly by Night (36 page)

Bryce looked tired. “The way it looked at you too.”

He lowered his head and nodded.

“Bryce.” She touched the arm of his sleeve. “What's happening?” She shivered from the cold.

He hesitated; she sank into the puffiness of his coat.

“I keep seeing the outline of the wolf's head in my mind,” she said.

The snowy, heavy-laden branches of fir trees, the way the wolf had hopped through snowdrifts and then scampered onto the animal path. She'd felt the power of the animal's breath in her chest, its excitement as it knocked snow off branches as it brushed past as if playing before darting deeper into the woods.

“Something's changed me or changed in me,” she said. “Like the first time we saw a deepwater reef. Remember?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “You don't think it's real, like you've been transported to some alien wonderland.” The way he said it made her laugh.

“How sunlight disperses the jewel colors, fluorescing like nothing else I'd ever seen in the topside world.” Its vividness was right before her. “Never thought anything could touch me like that again.”

She looked up at him.

They sat in the quietness of thought.

The cold was making her nose drip. “Like I've fallen in love with a whole other world—with creatures, rhythms, and a language of its own that I don't speak—one I was never aware of until now.”

In the quietness of the woods it had found her. Looking into the wolf's face the rusty gates of her heart had creaked open, with curiosity being the oil to ease its hinges.

She tugged on the collar of his jacket.

“We saw the face of wild again, Am,” Bryce said.

She looked at him, they both smiled.

“Am I nuts?”

“Of course you are.”

She laughed darkly. “Was hoping you'd say that.”

He brushed aside her hair.

She paused. “It claimed me, Bryce, as corny as that sounds, know what I mean?”

She heard the swish of his coat collar as he nodded.

“Like the first sea horse,” he said.

“Yeah, but now it's the woods, the snow, Lacey being killed.” She sat up and gestured out the windows. “Only you'd understand; only you would know because you always do.” She rested back onto his coat, folding her hands into his pockets for warmth.

Amelia's eyes darted, realizing the Jeep was her only home. Minneapolis wasn't home, there was nothing to go back to—their airport apartment, the NSF grants—bits and pieces of somebody else's life they'd been trying to tape together.

“I don't want to leave,” she said into the fabric of his coat. “But how stupid—with a half brother who hates me.”

“Shh,” he said and kissed the top of her head, resting his face against it.

“I don't know what this means,” she said.

She felt Bryce sigh before speaking. “You don't have to.”

“So you don't think I'm nuts.”

“He didn't answer.”

She breathed in a ragged way and then pushed back to look in his eyes.

“Something's different.” She looked at him. “Is it different for you?”

He nodded but didn't speak.

“Well.” He lifted her chin. “I'm in there with you.” He then bent over and kissed her fully on the lips, as shy as an eighth-grade boy at his first dance.

She blinked and looked back, stunned.

“Did you just kiss me?” She blinked several more times.

He nodded.

She looked more closely.

“Did you mean it?”

He looked at her. “What do
you
think?”

“That's not an answer.”

Then his eyes looked funny, out of focus, almost like when he'd smoked a joint, only she knew he hadn't.

Amelia looked away. “Think maybe we love each other?” She sat back in the driver's seat as he kept nodding. “Like love, love each other?”

“Yeah.” He smiled and leaned over to kiss her again. “I do.”

This time she leaned over and kissed him back, tasting his lips as her fingers felt through his hair, kissing his face, nibbling his cheeks as he laughed. She slid her arms around his neck and smelled the place on his chest that she had while under Gloria's deck with the pups tucked into her coat.

“I've wanted this for s-o-o long,” he said and pressed her to his chest. “I wanna be with you.”

It felt familiar. Safe and sheltered.

They kissed again. All of the years within inches at the lab bench and swimming together in oceans now felt like the love dances of sea horses, circling and folding into each other as they clasped hands.

Bryce was the one who always said yes. She breathed his familiar scent, giving over to what she'd at times suspected might be there, what she'd never seen coming and yet always had—aside from Alex he'd been her ballast; he'd kept her steady when the pull of the undertow felt stronger than her will. “You'll have to tell me to go away and even then I won't.”

The porch light flipped on.

“Busted,” he said.

She looked at the outline of his profile, always loving the shape of his nose.

“I've always loved your nose,” she said.

“My nose.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with herself. “I like how it sits on your face.”

“You
are
weird.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “God, what I'd give for a bottle of wine,” she said and sighed. “I could sit here all night.”

“Yeah, except for the subarctic temps and the fact that they're gonna think something's happened.”

She pulled the front of his coat closer and kissed him, nestling next to the side of his neck, kissing it as he chuckled. “Something has happened.”

She watched him smile.

“Look.” She pointed to the windows.

They'd all been fogged up.

 

29

They'd just fed the pups and set them down on top of the heating pad wrapped in a blanket in the crate by the side of the bed in the guest room.

Amelia shut the bedroom door as she sat looking around at framed photographs of owls, wolves, and eagles. She'd showered and slipped back into Charlotte's sweatpants. Sinking into the post-shower delirium brought on by the warm water, she startled at the knock on the door.

“Well good night,” Charlotte called through the guest room door.

Amelia jumped up, opening the door.

“Thanks for everything, Charlotte.”

The woman walked off with an expression as if knowing something that Amelia hadn't explained.

Amelia closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed.

The hall shower turned off. After a few moments Bryce emerged wearing TJ's sweatpants as he toweled off his hair.

“God, that felt good,” he said, smoothing back his hair.

She watched as he climbed into bed, bare chested.

“They asleep?” He leaned over and looked into the half-open crate.

“For now.”

She didn't move from the corner of the bed.

“Hey,” he called.

She didn't look as he moved closer.

“Come here.” He touched her shoulder.

“Maybe we should wait.” She turned to look at him.

His face asked why.

“You know.” Her eyes traveled around the walls, the dresser with candles, the rough-hewn night tables with lamps. “Kinda weird to have it be in my
brother's
house.”

“Yeah, probably so,” Bryce said and rolled back onto the pillows.

She watched him for a moment.

“Okay, so come here then.” He gestured for her to cuddle.

“You okay with that?”

He made a face as if he'd be crazy otherwise. “No pressure.”

She relaxed. “Thanks. I mean just look at me.” She snorted and pointed at Charlotte's rolled-up sweatpants, dotted with white spots of dried formula where a pup had dripped; she'd not washed her hair in days, making an executive decision to skip the hair since it would've taken hours for it to dry.

“You're beautiful,” he said.

“Ri-ight,” she said with sarcasm, remembering how carefully she'd planned her first night with Myles—new silk bedclothes, high thread-count sheets that she'd washed and even went out to Walgreens to buy an iron, pressing them on the kitchen counter. Bought perfume, even had her nails and toes done at a salon near campus that she'd eavesdropped on students raving about while standing on line in the cafeteria. Her thumbnail had chipped on the drive home.

Bryce lifted the covers on one side, holding them up for her.

She scurried up and climbed in next to him, snuggling up to his neck.

“There ya go,” he said and circled her with his arms.

“You're so sweet.” She reached to turn off the lamp and then kicked Charlotte's sweatpants off the side of the bed.

*   *   *

They hadn't slept between feedings every two hours and then making love; they'd dozed in and out of a state of twilight sleep. They lay looking at one another in the dim snow-glow from the windows, studying each other's faces as if seeing things that were new. Lying close they watched each other as if neither believed their good fortune and yet knowing that it had been there all along. They were used to the lack of sleep on project dives. Amelia had dozed folded against his chest with the pups on the pillows just above their heads.

The next morning Bryce had cleared the walkways with the snowblower, watching as TJ cleared out the driveway with several passes of the snowplow mounted on his truck.

Afterward he whispered to Amelia, “I'm getting a truck like that.”

“Right. Try parking it on the street.”

“I could quit Sea Life and start a business plowing parking lots and shit.”

“Think that might have to be my job,” she said with a sigh.

The sun was as bright as it gets for the day that far north, casting long shadows on everything, especially the trees. But even still, the surrounding groves of birch trees bleached out to the point of invisibility against the fresh snow, reducing all sense of dimensionality into a blindingly white canvas.

As they were preparing to drive down to Minneapolis, TJ invited them into his office. He'd already sent Amelia links on wolves and wolf dogs, and what to expect in the coming months from the pups in terms of behavior and biology.

Panic began to seep through the cracks in Amelia's will as she envisioned the pups at work and in their apartment. And while Bryce had already come up with a plan to cover the feedings at work, she wasn't so sure. She was already in trouble with the managers and was at a loss as to how they'd do their jobs, keep up with feedings, and keep the pups quiet.

Charlotte looked skeptical too as Amelia described her plan, and then she remembered Jen having reported that one of the tenants had just gotten threatened with eviction for having hamsters.

“I'll keep them in our office in the crate for now while we're at work.”

“Think your boss'll mind?” Charlotte asked. It was the first time Amelia heard doubt in the woman's voice.

Amelia chortled with sarcasm.

“Well … technically, I'm the boss though I'm not,” Amelia said, wondering if harboring wolf dogs might be the final eccentricity that landed her an invitation to leave.

Charlotte and TJ listened.

Amelia felt their skepticism, but also began to wonder if they'd wanted her to leave the pups with them. They hadn't said as much, but she felt their mounting doubts about her and Bryce being able to handle it. Anger rose up, a feeling of being threatened or competing with them and she had to calm herself for a moment. Such raw emotions were baffling. Being up there had stirred up so many things, as if their intensity matched the primal, raw beauty of the lake, the ravines, the forests.

“They're gonna get big real fast. Real big.” Charlotte kept on in a way that signaled continued skepticism.

“And they're gonna crap and piss on everything,” TJ qualified.

So what's your point?
she'd wanted to say. She knew this, Bryce did too. They'd managed all sort of marine rescues and situations in the wild.

“Plus they howl,” Charlotte said. “Really loud. Even this little. Wolf howls can travel miles. I could hear Lacey's howl, knew her voice—sometimes could hear her echoing off the surrounding hills.” The woman looked toward the windows. “Signaling Jethro or somebody.”

“Yeah.” Amelia waved her hand, thinking of whale clicks and songs.

“God,” TJ said as he crossed his arms and stood back, looking at her. “You said that just like your father.”

Compliment or insult, she wondered. She didn't like the feel of the conversation and felt ganged up on. She slipped her hand through Bryce's arm.

She paused to look at TJ. “He was your father too,” she fired back.

TJ looked away. She was going for funny but it didn't come out that way. Watching for a frown or smile she saw neither.

“I was hoping we'd have more time to talk about him—”
about what happened,
she'd wanted to say but chickened out.

TJ had turned back to his desk, collecting papers and arranging them into a brown accordion file.

She'd seen his face as he'd turned away, wondering if she'd ever know what had happened with their father, why he'd left, how TJ felt growing up, and wanting to find a way to have some sort of relationship if not friendship.

Then by his elbow she noticed a shell. She reached past him and picked it up, turning it over. A Tyrian purple snail shell.

“Where'd you get this?”

TJ looked up at her. They stared each other down.

“Probably same place as you.”

She set the shell down and turned away.

“But he—”

Amelia couldn't finish the sentence and instead squatted by the blanket, elbow on her knee, chin in hand to watch the pups. The shell made her feel as shaky as the pups—their back legs cow-hocked and bent at the knees as they ambled along, struggling to walk, explore, their heads up, sniffing as they looked around with their Mr. Magoo eyes as if having just landed on Mars for the fifteenth time since the day before.