NICK TOOK ZAC ASIDE. “Get out the signal mirror and give it to Mr. Musashi. Explain that we’re trying to get the attention of an aircraft. Then clear the beach and lay out everything you can find that’s bright-colored. Life vests, anything we’ve got, in a big X.”
A year ago others had done the same thing—so that a chopper would come and get Zac.
Zachary asked, “What’s happening?”
“I think she broke a rib and it may have lacerated her lung. When you’ve done the other stuff, bring a couple sleeping bags and an air mattress over. You can get ours out of my dry bag.”
Zachary nodded, and Nick thought, Keep it together, Zac. Don’t let me down now. Returning to Day, he took off his life vest, dropped to his knees in front of her and smiled. “Doing okay?”
She nodded. He knew she was frightened. So was he.
Taking a roll of two-inch wide adhesive tape from the ammo can that held first-aid supplies, Nick asked, “So, have you ever wondered why, when birds fly in a V, one side of the V is longer than the other?”
Day squinted at him, trying to breathe normally. “Why?”
“Because there are more birds on that side.”
She started to laugh, but it hurt. “Don’t do that again.”
As he ripped pieces of tape, he tried to forget it was Day, the person he loved most in the world. Right now, he was all she had. Maybe the cough is a throwback to her smoking.
He didn’t think so. He’d never carried oxygen on a river trip, didn’t know anyone who did. He wished he had it now. “Okay, go ahead and put your left arm on your head. When I tape this, tell me if it hurts worse.”
She nodded and lifted her arm above her head. She felt scared. There was no reason, but her fear made it hard to breathe. “It hurts a lot.”
“Broken ribs are painful. Here?”
“Yes.” She coughed, had to take her hand off her head. She felt like she was dying. “God.” When she could, she lifted her arm again.
“Okay, I want you to take a deep breath and let out all the air.”
Day did as he said.
He taped her ribs. “Okay?”
She took a breath and nodded, then carefully lowered her arm. Nick found his blood-pressure cuff and stethoscope, while behind him, Zac pulled Day’s sleeping bag out of its stuff sack and inflated her air mattress.
Beyond Nick and Zac, Mr. Musashi flashed a signal mirror toward the sky. As Nick assessed her vital signs, Day said, “I have to go out in the helicopter?”
“I knew you didn’t want to run that last rapid.” He wrote something down, then reached for her hand again.
Day saw him squeezing her fingernail. “Is everything normal?”
“About what you’d expect. Let’s have you lie down on the side that’s hurt.” Her body weight would exert counterpressure on the hole in her lung and help keep air from filling her chest cavity—air that would prevent her lung’s expanding and make it harder for her to breathe.
Nick helped her lie down on the mattress, registering her every wince, and tucked his life vest beneath her feet. “Okay?”
She nodded.
He pushed a lock of. hair off her cheek. Her skin was cool. Come on, we need an airplane. What he heard was an outboard motor. A J-rig, with three large inflatable pontoons, was bounding through the rapids.
Nick got up, waved his left arm at the J-rig, a sign that they had an emergency.
The boatman saw him and turned. Wild West River Expeditions out of Green River. There were seven passengers on board.
Nick waded into the water, grabbed the bow line.
“What’s up?” Letting the motor idle, the boatman came toward Nick on the center pontoon. Beneath his visor, his sunglasses reflected Nick’s face, and his beard was silty, as though he’d enjoyed a mud fight earlier that day.
“I’m Nick Colter, with Rapid Riggers in Moab, and I’m a paramedic. This woman suffered a compression trauma from an oar handle. She has a chest injury, broken rib and suspected lacerated lung. We need a chopper and oxygen.”
From the air mattress where she lay, Day gazed at the life vests arranged in the sand. Why did Nick want a helicopter? He’d taped her up, and Satan’s Gut was the last rapid.
The coughing returned, hard, and she saw blood on her hand.
“Nick?” She tried to sit up.
The Wild West boatman gunned his outboard and turned the J-rig into the current.
Nick jogged back to Day, seeing blood on her fingers. He handed her a triangular bandage to wipe up the blood. “You need to lie down, Day.”
She moved gingerly.
Nick rearranged the life vest beneath her feet, covered her with a sleeping bag and monitored her breathing. Her lips were already faintly blue.
“Could I have some water?”
He shook his head, smiling at her, meeting her eyes. Oh, God, Day, hang on. What was she doing on this trip? She should be back at the office, putting on lipstick, tormenting Daily boatmen with her stockings and heels. It was his fault she was here.
She whispered, “What’s wrong with me?”
“I’m not sure, but we’re taking good care of you.” A nightmare, to be saying these things to Day. These were the things you said when you didn’t want the patient to know she might die. Day needed oxygen. It could be hours before a helicopter got here. “Are you allergic to any medications, Day? Any medical problems we should know about?”
“No.” As he checked her vital signs again, she coughed, and more blood came up. The pain was worse. “I feel dizzy.” Her breath felt too fast, and she couldn’t get enough air.
Nick didn’t take his eyes from her. Her blood pressure was falling. If she started going into shock, they were in trouble. It would be harder for her to breathe on her back. Go, Wild West! There was no telling when the J-rig would reach a radio or phone.
She could die. He wanted to say things to her, to tell her to hang on, that he needed her. But revealing his fear would frighten her.
Nick held her hand, tried to keep a clear head. Knowing he should check her vitals again soon, he spent the interim calming her. “So I was looking through the book I gave you for your birthday. There are lots of pictures of England. I never knew there were real places those stories were supposed to have happened. Like the castle where Arthur was born. I want to take you there.”
His calluses, the texture of his skin, soothed her. She barely heard his words. Only felt his hand. Did he know how bad she felt? Don’t complain. He knows.
“I was thinking, too, about a house. We could build it behind Rapid Riggers. Our land reaches from the river to River Inn Road. Day, tell me how you’re feeling.” Though her shallow breaths told him plenty.
She tried to answer and coughed, hard, fading beyond white to blue and gray with pain.
God, where’s an airplane?
Two rafts pulled over. Current Adventure Tours. Lew was one of the guides. He talked to Zac, then came over. “How’re you doing, May-Day? Anything I can do, Nick?”
The twin engines of a small aircraft rumbled above. Nick closed his eyes. “Just make sure they see us.” Thank God.
Mr. Musashi and the two Current Adventures guides flashed signal mirrors at the plane, and the aircraft tipped its wings as it passed over the beach.
Fifteen minutes, at least, till a helicopter landed. Nick asked her, “Okay?”
“Yes.”
“A plane just flew over. We’ll have a helicopter soon.”
She’d always been brave. She knew him well enough to understand that something bad was happening now. But he couldn’t talk about it. And he had to focus every minute.
Time dragged as he watched her condition deteriorate. He saw signs of air beneath her skin. When he touched it, he felt a crackling sensation beneath his fingers, like Rice Krispies. Subcutaneous emphysema. A certain sign she’d injured an air-containing part of her respiratory tract.
“Nick?” She spoke suddenly, as though she’d just awoken in the dark.
“What is it?”
He smoothed her hair back from her lackluster eyes. Her skin was cold and clammy, and when he touched his fingers to her carotid artery, her pulse was weak.
She was going into shock.
Her eyes were shut, and he said, “Day? Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Stay with me. All right? I love you.” He wouldn’t say that again. Anyone could hear that catch in his voice. Which meant she could. He monitored her breaths. Fast but too shallow.
Day struggled for air. She couldn’t think where she was or what was happening. Zac’s voice asked, “What can we do, Nick?”
“Tell Lew to clear the beach so the chopper can land. I’m going to start rescue breathing. I want you to monitor her pulse. Day, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She coughed. “I can’t breathe.”
“Day, we should have a helicopter here pretty soon. Can you roll onto your back?”
She tried, painfully easing down on the air mattress. “I can’t breathe, Nick.”
“I know. I’m going to give you some breaths.”
She was afraid. I’m dying.
He tilted her head back and lifted her chin. Day felt his mouth cover hers, a tight seal, felt his breath going into her. She coughed. “Nick…” Hands soothed her. She heard him counting.
Tears squeezed out of her eyes, and she shifted, trying to get comfortable.
“Relax, Day.”
She didn’t know who spoke. She lost what was going on around her and only felt the pain and his mouth again and the breath that wasn’t hers. Time suspended. Then everything was black.
She did not respond.
“Do you have a pulse, Zac?” He glanced at his watch. He didn’t even have an oral airway with him.
“Yes. It’s weak.”
But it was there. Hang on, Day. If her heart stopped beating, they were in trouble. With her cracked rib, chest compressions could tear her up inside. Nick didn’t feel the sweat streaming off him or the sand beneath his knees as he counted. His ears were tuned to every sound in the air, but there was only the ceaseless pounding of the rapids.
Come on, chopper. “One and two and…”
Minutes later, he heard the distant thrumming of the blades. He kept counting.
“I lost her pulse.”
Nick pushed Zac’s hand aside and felt for her carotid artery. Nothing. “Give her two rescue breaths and watch her airway. Keep it open.” Kneeling beside her, he cleared his mind so he wouldn’t think how few people actually survived CPR and how few of them later left the hospital alive. It was a primitive method of lifesaving, the best humans could do, less fail-safe than Na-chu-rú-chu’s magic, the singing and gourd-shaking of the Pueblo weaver who had married the Moon. Day’s chances had just taken a dive.
Zac gave two rescue breaths while Nick found her sternum and located the proper hand position. I could kill her. That rib could hit her heart.
He had no choice. It would take the helicopter too long to land.
“One breath, five compressions,” said Nick. He pressed into Day’s injured chest, praying her heart to stay sound. “One and two and three and…”
She vomited.
“Roll her on her side.” Nick groped for a suction device from the ammo can. He was screwing up.
The black shape of the helicopter passed over him as he continued CPR. His arms and chest grew tired. A gust from the chopper blades blasted him as the craft touched down.
A minute had passed since they’d begun CPR. Nick stopped chest compressions and checked her pulse and breathing. He spun his head and yelled to Lew, who stood twenty yards away directing the helicopter. “No pulse! No respirations!”
Lew yelled what he’d said to the paramedics.
As Nick resumed CPR, shadows swarmed around him. He continued chest compressions, counting, while the paramedics prepared for defibrillation.
“What have we got?” someone asked.
He shot off an answer. “No pulse, no respirations, fractured rib, hemopneumothorax. I popped an oar and it bit her chest. I’m a paramedic.” And she’s my wife.
A female paramedic brought out the paddles. “Stop CPR. Everybody clear!”
Nick recognized the man preparing to intubate Day. These were the same people who had come to get Bob.
“Check a pulse.”
Nick got around her other side, knelt close to her.
“No pulse,” said the man at her head. “Fire again.”
“Clear!”
A paramedic nudged Nick aside.
He stood up as they defibrillated her at 300, then 360 joules of electricity. They were a perfectly orchestrated team.
“No pulse.”
He needed to do something. To sing. To shake gourds. To bring back his wife, the Moon. God, Day, come back.
“Clear!”
Her body jumped with the electricity.
“I have a pulse!”
WHEN THE HELICOPTER was gone, Nick noticed the raft on the shore and remembered Satan’s Gut. He remembered Mr. Musashi. He put away the first-aid kit. “Zac, please pack these sleeping bags.”
She could die on the way to Grand Junction.
The Current Adventures crew was shoving off, starting down the last rapid of the Big Drop.
Nick tied the first-aid kit into the raft, resecured the dry bag. A mosquito bit his neck, and he hit it haphazardly. He scoured the beach with his eyes. Mr. Musashi stood beside him, putting on his life vest. He looked very sober, and when Zac came near, the man asked him something in Japanese. It looked as though he was asking about Day. Zac answered quietly.
Nick turned away. They were loaded, but before he could step into the raft, Zachary said, “We never scouted.”
Nick hadn’t scouted the first time, either. When he was fourteen. In the canoe. Each bend in the river had brought something he’d never seen before.
Now he knew these rapids.
But because of what Zac had done for him, for Day, he turned and hiked up onto the boulders and looked at the cataract. And when he came down, it was like the first time.
Since then, he had never felt so alone.
On this trip, there would be no Sam Sutter at the end.
There might be no Day.
IN THE SUPPLY STORE at Hite Marina, Nick waited for the pilot to return from checking his plane, fueling up, whatever he was doing before he could fly Nick to Grand Junction. Day was in surgery there.
Sam Sutter had died in heart surgery.
Nick had gone to the hospital with Day. His last words to Sam were “See you in a few.” They’d clasped hands.
Never I love you. Neither of them had ever said that.
And when Day had been called to the lawyer’s office with Grace…
You were deluded, Nick.
Day thought the pot hunting was why he’d been excluded from the will. Nick doubted it. More and more, he doubted it.
Sam hadn’t been able to control him and Day. Had never tried.
But one August morning, six months before he died, he’d said what he thought. Nick couldn’t remember what had instigated it. Only the words.
Frankly, sometimes I don’t think you’re much more than an animal. Someone screwed you up more than I can fix.
Restless, Nick twirled a postcard rack. Zac had left for Moab with Mr. Musashi in the Suburban a shuttle driver had brought. At this rate, he could be in Grand Junction before Nick.
Where was that pilot?
He’d long since gotten over the stupidity of his own expectations regarding the will. But he would never get over wishing Sam had been his father. Had adopted him.
He could have been your father, dumbshit. You could have married Day a long time ago and made him happy. Instead, you made him crazy.
Something he had to live with. Like missing him.
A postcard on the rack caught his eye. A kiva in Grand Gulch Primitive Area.
Abruptly Kelly sprang to mind.
No, not Kelly. Rory.
The archaeologist.
He’d never answered her e-mail. And now she’d been waiting for five days.
There was no fear anymore, no fear of anything except losing Day.
He spun the rack and found a postcard that showed the Maze.
The clerk wandered down the counter. “Need a stamp?”
“Thanks.” He gave him some change and borrowed a pen.
Dear Rory—
I have been a moki digger. I’m not now. This is my post-office box.
Nick
He dug her address out of his dry bag, put a stamp on the card and shoved it through the mail slot a moment before the pilot came inside.
THE VENTILATOR in the intensive care unit made its Darth Vader breaths, a sound Nick never wanted to hear again. Now it was Day instead of Bob behind that mask, Day with a tube in her chest. He’d watched the paramedics insert it on the beach.
Her eyelids flickered at him, then shut, and he held her hand, sometimes pressing his lips to it, while she slept.
When the nurse came to kick him out, he went to the waiting room to find Grace and Zac.
None of them spoke, just drank coffee.
Nobody was sure Day would make it.
Nick finally went to the men’s room just to be alone, to hold his arms around himself, to feel without people watching. There were so many things he wanted to give her, things it would take his whole life to give, and they might have only minutes.
It wasn’t enough.
DAY DIDN’T NOTICE time passing, only the pain and exhaustion, physical and emotional. She knew Nick was there sometimes, holding her hand, and she never wanted him to leave but there was no way to say so. Grace sat with her, too, less frequently. Eventually, a nurse told Day they were weaning her from the ventilator, that she was doing better, and sometime after darkness had come and gone, they removed the tubing and she could talk.
Nick came in right afterward, unshaven. He bent over and gently kissed her, then adjusted her covers. “I love you,” he said, looking into her eyes for a long time before he sat down, drawing his chair close.
Day started to cry. Gradually, things had begun returning to focus, and now she remembered. Not just those last moments in Cataract, but everything that had led her there. Her own dreams of what she could be. What she could have.
“Baby…” Nick sounded scared, and his hand touched her head. “Should I get a nurse?”
“No.” Her voice barely worked after the hours with that tube in her throat. She closed her eyes, turned her head, surrendered again to the uncomfortable sensations in her body. “I can’t be like you want me to be. You should find someone else.”
What was she talking about? “What do you mean, Day?” How did she think he wanted her to be?
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She said, “I can’t keep up.”
Keep up? He held her hand and his own voice broke. “I don’t want anyone else. I love you. You don’t have to keep up with me.” Old scenes came to him. Distant occasions when he’d packed for a trip, taunting, You could come. Knowing she wouldn’t. Nick almost gagged on the recollections. He had taken other women, instead.
Day was crying.
He knelt beside her bed and kissed the tears on her cheeks. “Shh. Stop. Please. You don’t understand. I never wanted you to change for me. I wanted you to be you. I love you. I was so afraid you’d die. All through Satan’s Gut I tried to figure out how to hang myself from a boat if you died. I would have given anything for you not to have been there. I knew it was my fault you were, for pushing you.”
“No.” She jerked her head back and forth through her tears. Frustrated by her voice that wouldn’t work, she whispered hoarsely, “I went for me. I didn’t want to be scared anymore. I guess I’m not. But I don’t like it. I don’t like the things you do.” Remembering the Marble Quarry, she began crying again. Talking made her tired, made her chest hurt. Still, she had to tell him. “But sometimes I love it. I just want to be with you. But I’m slow, and I’m not a good athlete.”
She was sobbing, in a soft choking way, and he could see it was hurting her. “Please, sweetheart. Stop. I just want to be with you, too. Any way. Any place. Even underground. You’re like the air. I’d do anything for you. I’m your knight, Day.”
Energy waning, Day barely heard. She felt almost hysterical. “I want to be with you so badly. I keep trying to be what you want, but I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”
“You are what I want.” How could he convince her? “Day, I love you.” He was whispering like her, couldn’t make his own voice work.
She shook her head, crying.
He tried to hug her, awkwardly, taking care not to hurt her. He’d spent hours wondering if she would live, and he knew now the size of his love for her. She’d taught him about that kind of love. Could he prove it to her?
He said, “Test me, Day. I want to show you how much I love you. Remember in‘The Knight of the Cart’—that tournament when the queen told Lancelot to do his worst, and he did so badly and was such a coward that everyone laughed at him? That’s what I want. I want to do something just because you say so. Something totally unreasonable for you to ask. I won’t care if people make fun of me—because it’s making you happy.”
She tried to wipe her eyes, and he grabbed a tissue and wiped them for her. She looked vulnerable and confused.
Drawing closer, he held her, quiet as a breath. “You can’t get rid of me, Day. Even if you reject me, I’ll hang on. Whenever I see you, I’ll be able to do nothing but stare. I won’t be able to take my eyes off you.”
Day giggled.
It was good to see her smile under the tearstains. Kissing her face, he said softly, “Please. Test me. Ask for something hard.”
Her eyes started watering again. “I’ve never wanted that. I’ve never wanted to hurt you in my life.”
I never wanted to hurt you, thought Nick. I didn’t know how not to. That’s how stupid I was. You don’t have a selfish bone in your body. I’m all self.
“Day, you tell the stories. You know how it is.” He spoke low. “It made Lancelot happy to suffer for Guinevere, to do anything for her. He loved to act on the power of his love. Give me that chance.”
Looking into his brown eyes, Day understood. “You’ll have lots of chances,” she said softly.
He put his face against her side, bowing to her, adoring her. “Please, Day.”
He did want to be a knight. Touching the head she loved more than any other, Day said, “Give up your Selway launch date.”
He hadn’t expected that request. It hurt, like someone had torn a chunk out of him—out of who he used to be. But that sacrifice, giving up the chance to run that wild river, giving to her, made him feel stronger, his heart bigger. “Thank you.”
“And sell your land and give the money away.”
He’d already put the place on the market, but his pride had kept him from telling her. He hadn’t wanted her to think he’d done it because of her. What an alien concept that seemed now.
“I will.”
Weariness swept over her, and she began to feel bad. Talking and crying had taken their toll. Nick saw and called the nurse.
“Having some discomfort?” the nurse asked.
Nick stepped back while Day was given pain medication. When the nurse was gone, he returned to her side, covered her hand with his. Her eyes drifted shut into sleep, but when Nick started to move his hand, they shot open. They were full of tears as she asked one more thing, the thing she would never have to ask again. “Don’t leave.”
He held her hand. “I won’t.” He guarded her.
And in the place where Sam Sutter had died, Nick made his own peace with him. Now he was certain he was doing the only thing Sam had ever wanted of him.
To love Day.
A nurse came in a half hour later and said, “She’ll be okay if you want to go eat or something. Or clean up.”
Nick shook his head. He wouldn’t leave till Day said so.
But when she did awake again, she seemed stronger, and she asked, “Where are you staying? You haven’t even had a shower.”
“Do you want me to take one?”
She smiled. “Every day.”
IN THE POST OFFICE, Rory read the postcard again.
A moki digger.
Why had he told her about the digging?
The thought made her sad. The confession was so strange, and it was impossible not to remember another confession, from another pot hunter.
She studied the writing on the postcard, then hurried out to her car and drove to her apartment. The corrugated file envelope in which she kept field notes from the Broken Sandal dig was beside her computer. She had photocopied the note the pot hunter had left, and now she fished it out and compared it to the writing on the postcard.
And then she hurried to pack, to drive to Moab and find him.
In ways she knew she’d never understand, they had been trying to meet again for a long time.
THREE DAYS LATER, Day asked Nick to return to Moab and check on things at Rapid Riggers. He drove home in the Suburban Grace and Zac had brought to Grand Junction for him and reached his trailer just after four o’clock.
When he pulled in, past the realty sign and down his drive, a faded blue Volkswagen station wagon with out-ofstate plates sat under the cottonwoods.
Someone was looking at the land.
Nick was glad. He’d gone to the library in Grand Junction, researched, come home and made phone calls until he’d decided where he wanted to give the money, to an organization working to prevent child abuse.
Leaving the Suburban, he saw a woman coming up from the river and waved to her. “Hi. I’m the owner,” he said, not wanting to scare her. Did she like the place?
She drew nearer. She had long dark hair.
Her face was like his.
And her car had New Mexico plates.
His eyes started watering for no reason.
“Kel—” Couldn’t talk. Could just grab onto her and sob.
RORY HAD NO HARELIP. “I had surgery when I was about nine. They wanted to do it at a particular time, so that it would come out right.”
“Obviously it did.” The shadows beside the river flickered over a beautiful face. He looked away toward the water, trying to contain his emotions. She was all right. She’d been happy. He hadn’t screwed up. He hadn’t screwed up this one thing that mattered so much. Mattered—like not puncturing Day’s heart with her own rib during CPR.
Both had been risks.
Both times he hadn’t known what else to do.
From the cottonwood trunk where she sat, Rory tossed a stick into the current. “I’m mad at them, Nick.”
Her parents.
“I’m still mad at them. Maybe I shouldn’t be. They’ve always loved me and I love them. But what a thing to do! My mother is bipolar—manic-depressive. She couldn’t adopt through normal channels.” She explained that Dr. Levi Black, who had arranged the illegal adoption, had been her adoptive mother’s brother.
Rory had grown up in Farmington.
So close. It should have been easy to find her.
The sun disappeared behind the cliffs, and the mosquitoes thickened. They talked, talked until he could ask, “Do you remember why I gave you away?”
“Yes.”
A thin word.
“Have you ever talked to anyone about that?”
The movement of her head was negative.
“Things might be better if you…tried to talk to someone.” He wasn’t good at this. His father had robbed her. Had raped her. It made him cry. “Don’t let it wreck your life.”
I needed you, she thought. Seeing him made her know she could talk about it. Because her brother had not lost his life in saving hers. Because she could still know the person who had told her stories about Rousel and made her believe in goodness, not just by speaking but by being. “I’ll…do something.” She was good at digging. She wouldn’t stop now.
Recalling the photocopied note in her purse, Rory brought it out and handed it to him. She told him about the Broken Sandal site and read his dismay when she asked what he’d seen—and told him what they were seeking.
“Feces? You’re looking for human feces?”
“To prove that the Anasazi practiced cannibalism. Did you see any?”
“I wouldn’t have noticed anything like that. I’m sorry,” he added. “But aren’t some people upset by that theory, anyhow? Maybe it’s better not to know.”
Rory dropped her eyes, recalling what she’d just promised she would do. Continue the dig. The dig into what had happened in that shack he’d burned down. The fire had become a lesson to them both that history could not truly be destroyed. “It’s always better to know.”
She changed the subject then. History was still emerging. His story.
“Now tell me how you got along, Nick. Who took care of you?”
He thought of Sam Sutter. And of Day.
There was a photo on the kitchen wall at Rapid Riggers, an old man rowing a rubber ducky through Lava Falls in the Grand Canyon. There were friends upstairs. Friends down the road.
There was Day.
And there were stories to tell.
“If you’ve got time, I’ll introduce you to them.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
NICK STUCK HIS HEAD in the hospital room, then looked back at his sister. “She’s sleeping.” He tugged on Rory’s hand, led her into the room to show her the blond princess dreaming among flowers and balloons, none as bright as she, his true love. His childhood had been made of nights in sequence without days. Each missing day was repaid in this one, in her.
Nick had said something about being “lucky” in Cataract Canyon, but Rory knew that the woman in the bed was breathing because of him. Like her, this man had felt a compulsion to dig in the dirt, to dig up the past. But now the past was behind him, and he saved lives, as he had saved hers.
Rory admired him, and as she had when she was young, she found him to be a candle in a very dark room.
He was bending over the blond woman in the bed, tenderly pulling the covers up to her chin, kissing her lips.
She stirred, and when she opened her eyes, they were the color of the sky, and Rory saw how much her brother’s wife loved him. She seemed to have a hard time looking away from him, but when she noticed Rory, the happiness in her eyes appeared to double. She smiled, and Rory felt herself welcomed to a new family.
Nick was kneeling beside the woman he so obviously loved, holding her hand. He said, “Day, this is my sister, Rory. And Rory, this is Day. She took care of me.”