Still Life with Shape-shifter (32 page)

“I remember that!” I exclaim. “The first time it snowed after we moved to Dagmar. You went out to the backyard—you were still a puppy—and you got lost in the drifts. And we couldn’t see you. And Daddy and Gwen were panicked, and they started combing the backyard, calling your name and trying to find you. Daddy was sure you’d gone on into the forest and broken a leg or something.”

“And I was just sitting there on the side of the yard, watching everyone run around. I thought it was a game.”

“You were a little shit,” I inform her, and she giggles.

“Hey, remember the time Debbie and her mom came over, and I was in the front yard, and Debbie started playing with me, and her mom was all, like, ‘Don’t touch stray dogs! They could have rabies!’ And Daddy was
so mad
, but he couldn’t say why.”

“Oh, yeah, and I remember the time Kurt came over and we were sitting on the couch watching TV and everyone else was asleep. And we were making out, of course, and you came out of the bedroom and said, ‘I can
hear
you kissing, and it’s gross.’”

“Well, it was, all slobbery sounding.”

“To this
day
, if I’m watching a movie, and the couple makes any noise at all when they’re kissing, I think about that.”

“You know what I always remember?” she says. Her voice is dreamy, as if she’s drifting back toward a memory or tiptoeing down to the boundary of sleep. “And it’s so stupid. I was, I don’t know, ten, and you wanted me to wash my face and brush my teeth, but all the washcloths were in the laundry. So you said I could wash my face by putting soap on my hands. And I didn’t want to, because I was stuck on the idea that you had to have a washcloth. And you said, ‘That’s how cowboys wash their faces.’”

“I said that? I have no memory of that conversation at all.”

“You said it,” she confirms, speaking through a big yawn. “And to this day, whenever I’m splashing water on my face, I think, ‘Hey, that’s how cowboys clean up.’”

“Well, they probably do.”

She yawns again. “I’m so tired,” she says. “I’ve lost so much energy in the past few days.”

I speak as casually as I can. “Yeah, you’ve gotten pretty thin.”

“I haven’t had much appetite. Been sleeping a lot. Just dragging in general.”

“Yeah,” I say again. “I think the life you’ve led has been pretty hard on your body.”

“Yeah,” she repeats, sounding even fuzzier. For a moment I think she’s already drifted off, then she speaks again in that drowsy voice. “Mel, I can’t keep my eyes open, but I don’t want to fall asleep in your face!”

“It’s all right. We’ve had a chance to talk.”

“Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Of course I will.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

“All right. Then I’m just going to take a nap.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“It was
so good
to see you again,” she whispers. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you more.”

She manages the faintest laugh. “Love you.”

“Love you more.” She might have fallen asleep already; in any case, she doesn’t answer. I add, “Love you, love you, love you.”

She stirs, and for a moment I think she’s going to add something, but she’s just resettling on the rug. I wonder if I should move her to Lizzie’s bed—I wonder if the hard floor will bruise her fragile bones. I’m sure William would pick her up if I asked him to. Hell, she’s so thin I could probably lift her myself.

But I don’t get up. I don’t move away. I merely lie there for the next hour, listening to her breaths as they gradually grow farther apart. At some point I sense a presence behind me, and I turn my head to see a shadow standing in the doorway, unmoving and silent.

“I don’t think it will be much longer,” I tell William, “if you want to stay.”

He doesn’t answer, but he steps into the room and settles on the floor on the other side of Ann. I wonder if I should leave them alone together—it’s a lover’s right, after all, to gather up his beloved’s final hours and fold them against his heart—but then I realize it doesn’t really matter. Ann will have no last words to share with either one of us, so we have nothing to fight over, no reason to be greedy.

We share the night in a silence broken only by our occasional rustling motions and the sounds of Ann’s breathing. Which slows, then slows again, and then finally stops. When the sun comes up, it is so blond and brilliant that it hurts my eyes. Or maybe my eyes hurt because I can’t stop crying.

*   *   *

I
spend a month grieving and a day deciding I’m going to change my life.

“Let’s do it,” I say to Brody over dinner one night. It’s late November, a week past Thanksgiving, and only gaudy Christmas stands off in the future to paint color and hope into a world of gray shadows and endlessly threatening skies.

He sets down a forkful of mashed potatoes and regards me steadily. “Do what?” he asks.

“Move to Africa. Work at that school you’re always talking about. What’s it called? Faraja. You can write your book about do-gooders. And I’ll—do whatever they want. They must need cooks or housekeepers or something.”

“This is awfully sudden.”

I shake my head. “No. You’ve been thinking about it for a year.”

“Yes, and you’ve been thinking about it for five minutes.”

“Longer than that. Let’s do it.”

“It’s an awfully big change,” he warns. “You’d have to get—I don’t know—malaria shots. And work visas. And, who knows? International security clearance.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Let’s get started.”

“Melanie—”

“I want to
do
something. I want to
feel
something. I can’t just sit here and mourn for the rest of my life. You’ve spent the last year and a half living
my
life, so let’s spend a year living
your
life. I might hate it. I might love it. But it will get me away from here, and it will give you a chance to do something really important to you. It’s a win-win.”

“You know it will cost a fortune.”

“Hey, I’ve seen your bank account. You’ve got plenty squirreled away, and God knows I do. We can afford to take a year off.” I tick off additional points on my fingers. “We don’t have a house to sell. Neither of us has a job we’d be sorry to leave behind—I mean, Debbie will be sad to lose me, but I think she’d be the first one to push me out the door. We don’t have kids. We don’t have sick parents. We don’t have anything preventing us from simply picking up stakes and going wherever we want.”

He’s starting to show a little excitement—tempered with caution in case I suddenly reverse course. “It
would
be a good time in our lives to go off on an adventure.”

“So let’s do it,” I say again.

He stretches a hand to me across the table, and I push aside the bowl of mashed potatoes so I can reach for him. “Melanie,” he says. “Are you
sure
?”

“The only thing in my life I’ve ever been sure of is marrying you,” I tell him. “Everything else has always been a gamble. But I want to do it.”

He squeezes my fingers, hard, and his smile grows wide. “Then let’s go to Africa.”

*   *   *

I
t’s weeks before we’re ready to depart. Brody wasn’t wrong about the shots and the visas and the extensive red tape, and then of course we have plenty of other details to take care of, from packing and storing our belongings to saying good-bye to friends and family. Some people think we’re insane, others think we’re heroic, but the ones who love us best are happy to see us go. Because they know all the reasons we want to leave.

We’re only three days from departing when I receive a bulky package in the mail from Dr. Kassebaum. I’ve had a day of extended lunacy, so I don’t have time to open it before Brody comes home in the evening, bearing pizza and Coke. We’ve completely cleaned out the refrigerator and the pantry, so we’ve been living on takeout and fast food for the past week.

“What did Dr. Kassebaum send you?” he asks as he gets out the paper plates.

“I don’t know. Haven’t opened it yet.”

“She knows about Ann, right? I mean, you told her?”

I nod. I’d sent her a note a few days after the funeral, giving her the news and thanking her for all her help. Her reply had been brief almost to the point of rudeness, and at the time I’d wondered if I’d offended her in some way. But now I’m thinking there was something else going on in her life just then, and maybe this package will explain what.

Brody picks up the envelope and hefts it, as if from weight and size he’ll be able to determine what’s inside. “Huh. Feels like a lot of paper. Like a—” He moves his thumb along one margin. “Like a spiral notebook, maybe. A five-hundred-sheeter.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Notes on Ann’s case, maybe?”

“Maybe. Why don’t you open it and find out?”

His three sisters beat it into his head that you don’t just read a girl’s mail or browse through her diary, so he won’t even sort through and discard the junk letters that come to the house addressed to me. Heaving an exaggerated sigh, I take the envelope from him and pull the plastic rip cord that opens up the side. Bits of gray recycled paper stuffing float down to the table, landing on the plates and the top of the pizza box.

I pull out a green notebook with a tattered cover and a few sheets of paper that appear to have ripped free of the spiral over the years of its life and been stuffed back in. Just thumbing through quickly, I get the impression that it’s a journal of sorts, written in a similar-though-evolving handwriting over hundreds of pages.

“What the hell?” Brody demands, coming around to peer over my shoulder. “Is it a diary? Is it
Dr. Kassebaum’s
diary?”

“Or something like that,” I say. I’m wildly curious, but I’m also starving, and I have at least five hours’ worth of chores to get done tonight before I go to bed. I flip the cover shut and slip the notebook back in the envelope. “I’ll save it to read on the plane.”

“I bet it’s juicy,” he says.

“I’m sure it’ll be interesting, whatever it is. Dr. Kassebaum’s that kind of woman.”

Brody gets out paper cups and pours two glasses of wine from a bottle that is literally the last thing in the refrigerator. “To Africa,” he says. “New beginnings, new challenges, new lives.”

“To Africa,” I say, “and to us.”

EPILOGUE

JANET

F
or a long time, I couldn’t decide who to give it to—this notebook where I have written down my story. My first thought, of course, was Karadel or Evan, people who would wholly understand the life I have lived and the choices I have made. But I found that I wanted to put the story into the hands of someone more like me. Someone entirely human. I wanted to try to explain the impossible tale to someone who would not at first believe it, and make that reader, finally, believe.

At first I thought that person might be Crystal. She would be shocked and astonished and perhaps horrified (and I would certainly have to change Evan’s name). But I thought she would accept the story. She knew enough about me, enough about Cooper, to understand how much we would want to be together, no matter how impassable the gulf between us seemed to be.

Then, when I met Brody Westerbrook a couple of years ago, I thought I would give the notebook to him. He could edit it, supplement it, turn it into a book. I smiled at the thought. He had wanted so much to document the existence of shape-shifters. This firsthand account by a woman who had loved one would go a long way toward winning over the doubters. Although maybe not. Most people would think my tale was fiction—would want it to be fiction, because they would not be able to bend their minds around the notion that supernatural creatures exist all around them, unnoticed and ordinary and real. But Brody would still like to read the pages, I thought.

In the end, I realized it was Melanie who needed the book the most. I know she struggled mightily with her own decision—the terrible choice she made for love. I want to be able to tell her it was the right choice. I want her to know that she bought Ann the only things that anyone is ever really willing to pay a high price for—love and time. The two things I am now willing to buy with my own life.

Karadel will give me the injection tomorrow. Cooper turned into a wolf last night, and I have already given him his own shots, the ones that will keep him in his animal state for at least six weeks. When he feels the urge to change come upon him again, he will return to the house, and Karadel will give him another set of shots—and another, and another, for as long as he has the strength to present himself at her door.

I cannot guess how long my own transformation will endure. I have no idea how long my body, unused to such stresses, will be able to sustain the wolf state. I may live only a few days or a few months, leaving a bereft Cooper behind to grieve for me. I may live another ten years. Though I don’t think so. Once Cooper is gone, whether I am wolf or human, I expect I will lose the strength to keep on living. Karadel knows that. She will not look for me to return to the house once Cooper has breathed his last.

I imagine sometimes what Crystal would say if I had decided to give her the notebook. Perhaps Melanie would ask the same questions—perhaps anybody would. “Are you crazy? Why are you throwing your life away like this?” And all I would be able to summon for a reply is, “Because I want to be with him. Because I need to be with him. Because I love him.”

There is never any other answer.

*   *   *

Click here for more books by this author

Ace Books by Sharon Shinn

THE SHAPE OF DESIRE

STILL LIFE WITH SHAPE-SHIFTER

MYSTIC AND RIDER

THE THIRTEENTH HOUSE

DARK MOON DEFENDER

READER AND RAELYNX

FORTUNE AND FATE

ARCHANGEL

JOVAH’S ANGEL

THE ALLELUIA FILES

ANGELICA

ANGEL-SEEKER

WRAPT IN CRYSTAL

THE SHAPE-CHANGER’S WIFE

HEART OF GOLD

SUMMERS AT CASTLE AUBURN

JENNA STARBORN

QUATRAIN

TROUBLED WATERS

Viking / Firebird Books by Sharon Shinn

THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET

THE TRUTH-TELLER’S TALE

THE DREAM-MAKER’S MAGIC

GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER

GATEWAY