“That’s what I asked them. I was afraid to leave. I didn’t trust myself because I can’t forget what I did to you.” He slowly took his hands out of his pockets and spread them, taking care not to get close to her. “The judge assigned a new, young attorney to my case, and the guy got me out on bail because I had a good record at the detox center, and I’d never been in trouble with the police before, and—”
“But I almost died!” Tedi crossed her arms over her chest. How could they just let him go like that? “Mom said you couldn’t get out to hurt me again.”
He winced as if someone had slugged him. A muscle tightened in his jaw. “I won’t hurt you again.” Now he seemed to study the ground as closely as he had been studying her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. I just wanted to see you, see for myself how you were doing…. I guess I had to make sure you were really okay. I was so scared that night…so sure that…And the police took me in while you were being flown out for surgery.” He looked up then, and his gaze pinpointed the scar at her throat. “I did that and so many other things. All these months in detox I’ve realized how much I did to destroy what I had with you, and…and I was the one who destroyed the relationship I had with your mother. I’ve been forced to admit so much this summer, so much I didn’t want to see, but that I can’t afford to forget.”
Tedi watched his face and listened to his voice. He’d apologized before. Maybe he’d meant it when he said it, but what good had it done?
His gaze drifted again to her throat, and she knew he was looking at the scar, then he closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them tightly shut, as if he were afraid they would burn out if he kept them open any longer. He looked old. He was the same age as Mom, but he looked a lot older than she did. His eyes looked wrinkled, and they turned down at the corners, the way his mouth did.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, and he raised his head and gazed into her eyes again. “I can’t ever make it up to you, Tedi, and I’m so sorry.” He took a deep breath. “But I’m going to try anyway. Tedi, I’m not supposed to be here, but I want to get permission to try to see you again. Before I do that, though, I want to know if it’s okay with you. If not, I’ll wait.”
She didn’t move, didn’t speak. She was too shocked, not by his words, but by the fact that she realized she didn’t hate him totally. Mostly, but not totally.
“I’d like a chance to talk with you, Tedi. Your mother would have to be there with us.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re talking to me now .”
“What I mean is that I want to start seeing you again, regularly, like the kind of visitation you had with your mom when you lived with me.”
She took a step forward, feeling braver. “Mom would never let you take me away from her again. Never! And I will never go back.”
He sighed and held her gaze steadily. “I wouldn’t try to get you back. If I got to visit with you, I wouldn’t even touch you. I promise. I just want to find out if it would be okay with you before I ask for permission from your mother.’ His light blue eyes filled with tears, and he looked away for a moment. “It’s going to take a long time to become friends again, but I have to try.”
Friends? Ha! A friend didn’t try to kill a friend. And a friend didn’t try to keep a friend from her mother or try to ruin her mother’s name in town just out of spite. “I don’t want to be your friend.”
He reached up with the back of his hand and brushed his tears away. “Of course you don’t. I’ve been talking with my counselor about it, and he said it would be unreasonable for me to expect that. I just felt like I had to make contact.”
So now he’d made contact. What else would he want? When Dad was nice, it was always because he wanted something. Why was she even listening to him? Why was she talking to him and thinking about what it might be like to see him again? She should hate him for what he had done to her and Mom. She shouldn’t’ve even come out here.
But what if he’d really changed?
“You’ll have to ask Mom yourself,” she said at last. “I’m not going to be your messenger this time.”
Dad blinked a couple of times and looked back at her. “You’d meet with me?” Some of the sadness left his face. The bell rang, and he stiffened. He reached out as if to touch her and then drew his hand back. “Tedi, I want to prove to you—and maybe to myself—that people can change, that they don’t have to be stuck in the rut they dig for themselves.”
For a moment, she couldn’t help hoping. Then she thought of something Grandma always said, and she knew Dad needed to hear it. “Grandma Ivy says nobody can do that without God’s help.”
Instead of sneering at her and laughing the way he used to do when she quoted Grandma, he cocked his head to the side. “How’s your grandma doing?”
Tedi heard her name being called and glanced toward the building to find Abby gesturing for her to hurry. “I’ve got to go.” She turned to leave.
“Okay. I’ll talk to your mom, Tedi. Today. I’m going to walk to her office right now.”
She paused and looked back and felt suddenly angry again. “Don’t you hurt her. Don’t scare her, and don’t fight with her.”
“I won’t.”
“If you do, I’ll never talk to you again.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, and the muscle flexed at the side of his jaw again. “I won’t hurt her, Tedi. I promise.”
Lukas slipped past the curtain in exam room five and greeted Jacob Casey, who lay on the bed beneath a thin sheet, his wounded upper arm covered in a sterile dressing. “Well, Cowboy, I’ve got a lot of good news and a little bad news. The good news is that I see no vital damage to your arm, and you won’t have to leave Knolls to have the wound repaired. The bullet exited with no bone involvement. The bad news is that I want a surgeon to have a look at you, and he’ll probably want to keep you overnight.”
He expected an argument but got no reaction. Cowboy lay watching him listlessly.
Lukas frowned. “It won’t leave as much of a scar as the lion bite did this spring.” He waited for one of the quick, witty replies Cowboy was known for during his many trips to the E.R., but to his amazement the rugged forty-three-year-old man’s eyes filled with sudden tears. For a moment Lukas wondered if maybe he should recheck Cowboy’s vitals and see if someone had slipped him some pain medication by mistake, then the man cleared his throat and wiped his eyes.
“The police didn’t tell you, did they?” Cowboy said, his voice husky. “The man who shot me also shot and killed Leonardo.”
Lukas stared at Cowboy and felt his jaw go slack. “Oh no.” Not Leonardo. That cat had become a legend around Knolls, and everybody knew Cowboy loved him fiercely. “I’m sorry, Jake. I didn’t know. I had to see about some other patients when the police showed up to get your statement, and since you were stable—”
“Did you ever lose somebody you depended on, Doc?” Cowboy kept his voice low, obviously unwilling for anyone outside the exam room to hear him.
Lukas nodded. “My mother died three years ago.”
Cowboy shook his head and grunted in shared sympathy. He was silent for a moment, then he said, “That lion was my best friend, and Berring just walked onto my ranch and shot him while I was gone. Killed him! I call it murder. How could he get away with that? He’s crazy!”
“Nobody really gets away with anything,” Lukas said. “Not in the end. But I came to tell you something about that, Cowboy. We received word that Berring has been picked up by the police, and they checked his records. He was released from state prison about six months ago after a fifteen-year stint for armed robbery and attempted murder. He’s being held.”
Cowboy