Lone Wolf A Novel (40 page)

“Were you surprised?”

“Not really.”

“Were you angry?”

I lift my chin. “I’ve been making my own way for six years. I don’t need his money.”

“So this whole initiative you’ve undertaken to become your father’s guardian and make a decision about his future medical care—it isn’t motivated by any pecuniary gain?”

“I won’t get a cent from my father’s death, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Edward,” Joe says, “what do you think your father would want to happen now?”

“Objection,” Zirconia Notch argues. “It’s a personal opinion.”

“That’s true, Counselor,” the judge agrees, “but it’s also what I need to hear.”

I take a deep breath. “I’ve talked to the doctors and I’ve asked a hundred questions. I know my father’s not coming back. He used to tell me about sick wolves, which would just start starving themselves because they knew they were dragging the pack behind, and they’d stay on the outskirts until they got weak enough to lie down and die. Not because they didn’t want to live, or get well again, but because, in this condition, they were putting everyone they loved at a disadvantage. My dad would be the first to tell you he thinks like a wolf. And a wolf would put the pack above everything else.”

When I’m brave enough to look at Cara, it feels like I’ve been run through with a sword. Her eyes are swimming, her shoulders are shaking with the effort to hold herself together. “I’m sorry, Cara,” I say directly to her. “I love him, too. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. And I wish I could tell you he’ll get better, but he won’t. He’d tell you that it’s his time. That for the family to move on, he has to go.”

“That’s not true,” Cara bites out. “None of it. He wouldn’t leave me behind. And you don’t love him. You
never
did.”

“Ms. Notch, control your client,” the judge says.

“Cara,” her lawyer murmurs, “we’ll have our turn.”

Joe faces me. “Your sister clearly has a different opinion. Why is that?”

“Because she feels guilty. She was in the accident, too. She’s better, and he’s not. I’m not saying it’s her fault—just that she’s too close to the situation to be able to make a decision.”

“Some might say
you
were too far away to make a decision,” Joe counters.

I nod. “I know. But there’s one thing I’ve realized since I’ve been here. You think, when you leave, that everything stops. That the world is frozen and waiting for you. But nothing stands still. Buildings get torn down. People get into accidents. Little girls grow up.” I turn to Cara. “When you were little, you used to go to the town pool in the summer and do belly flops off the diving board. You wanted me to grade you, like they did at the Olympics. Half the time I was busy reading and I’d just make up a number, and if it was too low, you’d beg me for an instant replay. The thing is, when you get older, there are no instant replays. You either get it right or you screw it up and you have to live with what you’ve done. I hadn’t seen my father in six years and I always thought that, eventually, we’d talk. I thought he’d say he was sorry or maybe I would, but it would be like those Hallmark movies where everything gets tied up nice and neat in the end. I can’t get back those six years, yet at any moment I could have been the one to pick up the phone and call my father and say,
Hi, it’s me.
” I reach into my pocket, feel that slip of fortune. “He trusted me once, when I was fifteen. I want him to know that, no matter what, even though I left, he can still trust me. I want him to know I’m sorry things worked out the way they did between us. I may never get a chance to tell him that to his face. This is the only way I know how.”

Suddenly I remember what happened afterward in his office, when I signed the contract. The pen rolled out of my hand as if it had burned my fingers. My father picked up the whisky I’d left in my glass and drained it.
You,
he said,
are an old soul. You’ll do better at this than I ever did.

I held on to that compliment, that treasure, the way an oyster cradles a pearl, completely forgetting the pain that made it possible.

“Make no mistake,” Joe says to me, before the cross-examination begins. “Zirconia Notch may look like she grows ganja in her herb garden and weaves sweaters out of her own hair, but she’s a piranha. She used to work for Danny Boyle, and he picks his attorneys based on how fast they can draw blood.”

So as Cara’s attorney walks closer to me with a smile, I grip the seat of the witness chair, preparing for battle.

“Isn’t it true,” she says, “that you’re trying to convince this court that, at age fifteen, you were mature enough to be appointed by your father to make a decision about his health? Yet now you’re arguing that your sister—who is seventeen and three-quarters—shouldn’t be allowed to do the same thing?”

“My dad was the one who made that choice. I didn’t ask for it,” I reply.

“Are you aware that Cara manages all your father’s finances and pays his bills?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I say. “That’s what I did when I was her age.”

“You haven’t seen your father in six years, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it possible that he did execute another document—perhaps naming Cara as the guardian for his health care decisions—and
you’re not aware of it? Or perhaps you did find one . . . and threw it away?”

Joe stands up. “Objection! No foundation . . .”

“Withdrawn,” Zirconia Notch says, but it gets me wondering. What if my father
did
appoint Cara, or someone else, and we just haven’t found that piece of paper yet? What if he changed his mind—and I was too far away to know? I don’t believe it’s murder if you turn off life support in accordance with someone’s wishes. But what if it turns out that’s
not
what he wanted?

“Would you describe yourself as impulsive, Edward?”

“No.”

“Really? You leave home after a heated argument? That’s not normal behavior.”

Joe spreads his hands. “Your Honor? Was there a question somewhere in that value judgment?”

“Sustained,” the judge says.

Zirconia doesn’t miss a beat. “Would you describe yourself as someone who likes to be in control of things?”

“Just my own destiny,” I reply.

“What about your father’s destiny?” she drills. “You’re trying to take control of that right now, aren’t you?”

“He asked me to,” I say, my voice tightening. “And he made his wishes pretty public: he signed up to be an organ donor.”

“You know this how?”

“It says so on his driver’s license.”

“Are you aware that in New Hampshire, in order to be an organ donor, you don’t just need a little sticker on your license? That you need to sign up with an online registry as well?”

“Well—”

“And did you know that your father did
not
sign up on that online registry?”

“No.”

“Do you think that’s because maybe he changed his mind?”

“Objection,” Joe calls. “Speculative.”

The judge frowns. “I’ll allow it. Mr. Warren, answer the question.”

I look at the lawyer. “I think it’s because he didn’t know he had to take that step.”

“And you’d know how he thinks because, for the past six years, you two have been
so
close,” Zirconia says. “Why, I bet you had long conversations into the night about all sorts of heartfelt matters. Oh, wait, that’s right.
You weren’t here
.”

“I’m here now,” I say.

“Right. Which is why, after talking to the doctors, you were ready to take whatever measures were necessary to end your father’s life?”

“I was told by the doctors and the social worker that I should stop thinking about what I want, and think instead about what my dad would want.”

“Why didn’t you discuss that with your sister?”

“I tried, but she got hysterical every time I brought up our father’s condition.”

“How many times did you try to discuss this with Cara?”

“A couple.”

Zirconia Notch raises a brow. “How many?”

“Once,” I admit.

“You realize Cara was in a massive motor vehicle accident?” she says.

“Of course.”

“You know she was seriously injured?”

“Yes.”

“You know that she’d just had major surgery?”

I sigh. “Yes.”

“And that she was on painkillers and very fragile when you spoke with her?”

“She told me she couldn’t do this anymore,” I argue. “That she wanted it to be over.”

“And by
this
you assumed she meant your father’s life? Even though she’d been vehemently opposed to turning off life support minutes before?”

“I assumed she meant the whole situation. It was too hard for her to hear, to process, all of it. That’s why I told her I’d take care of everything.”

“And by ‘taking care of everything’ you meant making a unilateral decision to terminate your father’s life.”

“It’s what he would want,” I insist.

“But be honest, Edward, this is really about what
you
want, isn’t it?” Zirconia hammers.

“No.” I can feel a headache starting in my temples.

“Really? Because you scheduled a termination of life support for your father without telling your sister that you’d scheduled it. Moments before it happened, you
still
hadn’t told your sister. And even when the hospital administration realized what you were up to and shut down the procedure,” she says, “and even in spite of the fact that Cara was right there begging you to stop, you pushed people out of the way and did what you wanted to do all along: kill your father.”

“That’s not true,” I say, getting flustered.

“Were you or were you not indicted for second-degree murder, Mr. Warren?”

“Objection!” Joe says.

The judge nods. “Sustained.”

“Is it your testimony today that you have no pecuniary interest in your father’s death because you’re not a beneficiary of his life insurance policy?”

“I only learned about his life insurance policy ten days ago,” I reply.

“Plenty of time to concoct a murder because you’re angry that he left you off the insurance policy—” Zirconia muses.

Joe gets to his feet. “Objection!”

“Sustained,” the judge murmurs.

Undeterred, the lawyer moves closer, her arms folded. “Your father also has no will, which means, if he died intestate today, you’d be an heir to his estate and entitled to half of everything he owns.”

This is news to me. “Really?”

“So theoretically, you
do
benefit from your father’s demise,” she points out.

“I doubt there will be much left of my father’s estate after we pay the hospital bills.”

“So you’re saying that the sooner he dies, the more money there will be?”

“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t even know until two seconds ago that I would receive anything from his estate . . .”

“That’s right. Your father’s been dead to you for years, after all. So why not make it legitimate?”

Joe had warned me that Zirconia Notch would try to get me riled, would try to make me look like someone who might be able to commit murder. I take a deep breath, trying to keep so much heat from rushing to my face. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with my father.”

“On the contrary, Edward. I know that your actions here are motivated by anger and resentment—”

“No . . .”

“I know that you’re angry that you were cut out of his life insurance policy. I know you’re angry because your father never came after you when you left. You’re angry because your sister had the relationship with your father you still secretly wish you had—”

A vein starts throbbing in my neck. “You’re wrong.”

“Admit it: you’re not doing this out of love, Edward—you’re doing this out of hate.”

I shake my head.

“You hate your father for turning you away when you told him you were gay. You hated him so much for that you tore apart your family—”

“He tore it apart first,”
I burst out. “Fine. I did hate my father. But I never even told him I was gay. I never had the chance.” I look around the gallery, until I find one frozen face. “Because when I got to the trailer that night, I found him cheating on my mother.”

During the recess, Joe sequesters me in a conference room. He goes off to find me a glass of water I won’t be able to drink because my hands are still shaking so badly. This is exactly what I
didn’t
want to happen.

The door opens, and to my surprise, it’s not Joe returning—but my mother. She sits down across from me. “Edward,” she says, and that one word is a canvas for me upon which to paint a missing history.

She looks small and shaken, but I guess that’s what happens when you learn that the story you’ve told yourself all these years isn’t true. And for that, at least, I owe her an explanation. “I went to Redmond’s to come out to him, but he didn’t answer when I knocked. The trailer door was open, so I went inside. The lights were on, there was a radio playing. Dad wasn’t in the main room, so I headed toward the bedroom.”

It is still as vivid, six years later, as it was back then—the silver limbs in a Gordian knot, the puddles of clothing on the linoleum floor, the few seconds it took for me to realize what I was actually seeing. “He was fucking this college intern named Sparrow or Wren or something—a girl who was two goddamned years older than me.” I look up at my mother. “I couldn’t tell you. So when you assumed that the reason I came home upset was because the conversation
between us hadn’t gone well, I just let you keep assuming it.”

She crosses her arms tightly, still silent.

“He owed us those two years he was gone,” I say. “He was supposed to come back and be a father. A husband. Instead he came back thinking and acting like one of the stupid wolves he lived with. He was the alpha and we were his pack, and wolves always put family first—how many times did he tell us that? But the whole time, he was lying through his teeth. He didn’t give a shit about our family. He was screwing around behind your back; he was ignoring his own kids. He wasn’t a wolf. He was just a hypocrite.”