Lovely Wild

by Megan Hart

  Besides, Sammy’s parents usually seem to leave her money for pizza.

  “Just you and Sammy?”

  Kendra looks faintly scornful. “Of course. Who else would come over?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that boy...what’s his name? Logan?”

  Kendra bites her lip gently. But then she shakes her head, her hand going unconsciously to the pocket of her jeans where her phone buzzes. Ah, Mari thinks. She does like him. But something has gone wrong.

  “Sammy’s parents don’t let her have anyone over when they’re gone. Just me.”

  “I know what they allow and don’t allow, Kendra. But I also know they’re not home and it can be tempting....” Mari trails off before she can spout more daytime drama admonitions. Aware more than ever that Kendra is living a life completely different than Mari’s teenage years. “I just want you to be safe. That’s all.”

  “Mom. C’mon. We’re going to watch TV and stuff. Her mom said when she got home from work she’d take us to the mall and see a movie. I can sleep over. Is that okay?”

  “What time is her mom supposed to be home?”

  A shrug. “Dunno. Seven?”

  It’s a Friday night. School’s out for the summer. Sammy lives just down the street. Mari thinks she ought to protest more, but without the allure of pizza, a trip to the mall and a movie, what does she have to hold her daughter here? Ryan has already said he’d be home late again. It’ll just be her and Ethan.

  “Call me when you get back to Sammy’s house tonight.”

  Kendra’s grin lights up her face. Mari sees herself in that grin and is relieved to feel that connection. For a moment, she remembers the weight of a sleeping infant in her arms, the sweet smell of Kendra’s fuzzy baby head. Time is passing too fast. But isn’t that what time does?

  Mari makes pizza, anyway. She and Ethan eat it on the back deck. The cut on his foot left a scar, but he’s healed fast enough that he barely limps. She watches him build with Lego blocks as she flips through a parenting magazine she bought from the school fund-raising campaign. Nothing in it seems relevant to her, but she tries hard to pay attention to it, anyway. She pages past glossy photos of mothers and children posed around platters of decorated cupcakes, modeling hand-printed T-shirts. She skims the articles, skipping the words and phrases that give her trouble. She can read competently enough. It’s the lack of context that confuses her.

  When the fireflies come out to dot their tiny yellow brightness against the backdrop of night, Mari calls Ethan away from his toys and hands him an empty canning jar. Together they stalk the lightning bugs and capture them until the jar is full.

  “Hold it up,” she tells him. “Aren’t they lovely?”

  “We can’t keep them,” Ethan says solemnly. “Wild things deserve to be free. Don’t they, Mama?”

  “They do. But we can hold them for just a little while, right?”

  He laughs and holds up the jar. “Yep. Then we’ll let them go.”

  “Let’s have some ice cream.”

  “Hooray!” Ethan dances, forgetting that lovely wild things also don’t like to be shaken around in their glass houses. The bugs swirl and dip, falling off the jar’s slick insides.

  Mari takes it from him as he runs ahead of her into the house. She sets the jar on the deck railing as she goes inside to scoop large bowls of ice cream for them both. Whipped cream. Fudge sauce. She loves sweets, even if her teeth ache in memory of past indulgences. She should limit herself and, she supposes, Ethan, too, to one scoop. But she can’t help it. Even with the memory of thousands of dollars and dozens of hours of dental work to repair the damage done to her teeth through childhood neglect, Mari can’t resist.

  Ryan comes home as she and Ethan have settled into chairs on the deck. The sweep of headlights illuminate the backyard for a second as he pulls into the drive, then it’s all dark again except for the jar of tiny living lights. A square of light appears as he opens the door from the garage into the laundry room.

  “Hello?”

  “Out here!” Mari turns in her chair to greet him with a smile. “Want some ice cream?”

  “No, thanks.” He kisses her briefly and ruffles Ethan’s hair.

  “Dad, look at the fireflies.”

  “I see. Where’s Kiki?”

  “She went to Sammy’s. Her mom’s taking them to a movie. Then she’s sleeping over.”

  This is a normal conversation. Mother, father, son. Ice cream on a new summer night, fireflies in a jar. It could’ve come right out of the pages of a magazine. It’s everything she was taught to believe and want, right there in front of her. And she deserves this, doesn’t she? This normal life?

  “She’ll never be right, Leon. She’ll never be normal. You have to realize that. I know you want to keep working with her, but—” The woman in the sorrow suit shook her head.

  No, not sorrow. The color of her suit was called navy, and the skirt Mari wore was the same. She didn’t like this skirt. Too tight at the knees. It meant she couldn’t run. Couldn’t jump. Couldn’t crawl. Had to sit up straight like a good girl, a nice girl.

  Normal girl.

  * * *

  “Is it time for us to let them go, Mama?” Ethan, mouth smeared with chocolate, hair standing on end, holds up the jar.

  Inside it, fireflies wiggle and flash. They’re so pretty, all gathered there. Mari looks out to the yard, then beyond that to the fields just past the tree line. There, in the knee-high crop are thousands—no, millions, if it’s possible, of fireflies blinking out their mating signals.

  She stands. “Oh, look at how many there are.”

  Ryan’s already gone inside the house, turning on the lights. Ruining the view. Ethan oohs and aahs with her, though. Together she and her son run through the grass toward the trees, hand-in-hand.

  “Let them go now,” Mari says.

  Ethan unscrews the lid. He shakes the jar until the bugs inside realize their freedom and drift upward. Out of the glass, into the night. Into the field, where they blend in with the others, until at last the jar in her son’s hand is empty. His hand slips back into hers as they stare out at the field.

  This, she thinks, is her real life. Her normal life. Short minutes tick-tocking out in the darkness, watching fireflies. These moments of small beauty, shared with her boy. This is where she was always meant to be.

  EIGHT

  IT WAS A FARCE, and Ryan knew it. As soon as Annette Somers’s husband brought the case against him, every doctor in the practice knew it would probably ruin him. They’d pretended they were behind him, of course. Putting him on leave from seeing patients, giving him the shit work to do, dictating notes and culling files. They couldn’t outright fire him, not without proof he’d done what Gerry Somers said he’d done. Most of them had faced malpractice suits in their careers, it seemed to be the way medicine was going, everyone entitled to believe they deserved something they didn’t, that doctors weren’t allowed to make mistakes, not ever. But this was different. This was a matter of ethics, and while his partners might cluck and shake their heads, Ryan knew not a one of them was going to risk being pulled down along with him.

  Not that he blamed them. If it had been one of them, he’d feel the same way. It still royally sucked, though. Walking into the office with a smile for the secretary, even though he had no patients to see. Holing up in his office to stare at the walls or sift through old case files. Taking calls from his lawyer who assured him this would all be resolved without too much hassle.

  Mari had packed him a lunch this morning. Sandwich, chips, a pear, a juice box, for god’s sake. One of those snack cakes she loved so much. That stopped him for just a second. She hoarded those snack cakes as if they were gold. The fact she’d put one in his lunch—the fact she’d made him a lunch at all, when she knew he always ate lunch out—told him a lot about what she’d noticed about the situation he’d so carefully tried to keep from describing in full detail.

  It was too much to sit in this office any
longer, doing make-work while he waited for the ax to fall. Ryan took the lunch bag and slipped on his sunglasses. He passed a hand over his hair and straightened his tie. He didn’t bother telling Ceci the secretary where he was going or to hold his calls.

  Rittenhouse Square Park, only a few blocks from Ryan’s office, was a popular place at lunchtime. Joggers, moms pushing strollers, men in suits just like his staking out primo spots on the benches. Ryan snagged a bench and opened the lunch bag to stare inside without interest. Really, he’d have preferred a greasy cheesesteak from Pat’s, “wit” onions and Cheez Whiz. Then a hard workout later to keep it from settling on his gut. Instead, he had a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with fat-free mayo, tomato and lettuce, a piece of fruit, a snack cake and a damned juice box.

  He’d asked her to cut back, but facing the results of his wife’s efforts, Ryan wanted to punch something. Or run for a long, long time, until everything about him ached and he wore holes in his socks and left bleeding blisters on his feet. Instead, he put the bag next to him on the bench and tipped his face to the late-spring sunshine.

  His father would’ve been ashamed of him.

  Oh, it wasn’t like they’d ever been close. Ryan had been his mother’s son, her pride and joy. Her best work, she liked to say, which was sort of a laugh since she hadn’t ever had a job. It had just been the two of them for a lot of years while his father spent hours at work. In the lab, with patients. His research. He’d left his wife and son to their own devices, showing up late for dinner or not at all, completely clueless and unaware of the silence in the house that grew over congealing meatloaf and cold mashed potatoes. When he did show up, he talked about himself, his discoveries, his breakthroughs and his studies. Always himself.

  Eventually, Ryan’s mother had simply stopped setting a place for her husband. More than once, Ryan had come into the kitchen at night for a bedtime snack to find his father standing at the sink, a plate of leftovers in one hand and a beer in the other.

  They’d never been close, but it hadn’t been a terrible relationship. When Ryan decided to go into psychiatry, Dad had been there to support and advise him, steering him away from the world of academia and into a more practical path.

  “It’s where the money is,” Dad had told him over glasses of decent Scotch that Ryan was too young to drink, one night late after Mom had gone to bed. “You’re going off to college, then med school, that’s great. But don’t end up like me, begging for scraps to keep working. Don’t be a researcher.”

  It was the first time Ryan had tasted liquor. The taste of it would always bring back the memory of that night, the first time his dad had talked to him man-to-man. His father’s hand clapped to his shoulder. Dad’s bleary gaze. The feeling the entire world was opening up to him, just turned eighteen and ready to conquer.

  And now look at him. What the hell had happened? What had he done?

  He’d messed up. Big-time.

  But...the book.

  His father had spent years on research. Compiling data, theories, proving them right. Or wrong. He’d scrabbled for money to fund his work and in the end had made almost nothing from it. But he had left behind a legacy.

  Ryan sat back again, thinking hard. Excitement stirred inside him, tender shooting sprouts that promised to grow into something more. A book about his father’s work was a sure thing. Guaranteed to be a bestseller, he knew it.

  Beside him on the bench, the paper bag rustled. With a frown, Ryan poked it. He had the right to share his father’s work with the world, no question of that. But did he have the right to share the story of his dad’s greatest success?

  It wasn’t Ryan’s story to tell. It was Mari’s. If he asked her, he thought, picking up the crumpled paper lunch sack, she would certainly say yes.

  But if he didn’t ask her, she couldn’t say no.

  The man who shuffled up to him then looked homeless. Wild hair, scruffy beard on pale cheeks. Cargo pants loose on his hips and hanging low, no belt, mismatched shirt. Ryan flinched automatically, expecting a wave of stink, but this guy didn’t reek of booze or piss. That was something to be thankful for, anyway. The guy looked hungry, though.

  Ryan wasn’t in the habit of giving handouts, especially cash. Let them buy their booze and drugs on someone else’s dime. He held up the lunch bag, though, thinking he could do a good deed and then have an excuse to grab some lunch that suited him better.

  “Hey, buddy. My wife packed this for me, but you can have it.”

  “My wife used to pack me lunch.” The man’s gravelly voice rasped on Ryan’s ears. “What do you think of that?”

  Ryan’s fingers crumpled the brown paper lunch bag. Shit. Why’d he always manage to attract the confrontational ones? “I don’t—”

  The man laughed, tossing back his head for only a couple seconds before fixing Ryan with a fierce glare. “You don’t have a clue who I am. Do you?”

  Uncomfortably Ryan looked from side to side, but if anyone in the park was bearing witness to this drama they had the good sense to pretend otherwise. Also, he noticed uneasily that the man looked unkempt, but not necessarily unhinged. “Should I?”

  “You should, since you screwed my wife and then killed her.”

  Shit. Shit and damn and double damn. Ryan stood, lunch bag forgotten. He towered over Gerry Somers, but the other man didn’t even back up enough to give Ryan room to take a step. Trapped between his former patient’s husband and the bench, Ryan had the sick feeling he was going to have to get physical.

  “I didn’t kill your wife.”

  “You might as well have. What the hell kind of doctor are you, anyway?” Gerry spat to the side before fixing Ryan with another long, hard stare. “You knew all about her. Knew her problems. And you screwed her, anyway. What did you think would happen?”

  Ryan flashed back to a memory of Annette, naked, breasts pendulous and swaying as he watched her in the mirror. Taking her from behind. Then with her on top. She’d gripped him with her insides, riding him frantically, shouting when she climaxed. A slow trickle of sweat slid down his spine.

  “Your wife had a lot of problems. I wasn’t her first doctor. She came to me with a lot of issues, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help her with them.” Ryan swallowed and looked into the man’s eyes. “But it’s not my fault she killed herself. She was no longer in my care at the time and hadn’t been for six months.”

  Gerry blinked rapidly without moving away. Ryan pushed gently past him to put distance between them. The man turned to follow him, grabbed at Ryan’s sleeve to stop him.

  “She said she was going to leave me for you. Did you know that?”

  Ryan had not. He swallowed again, thick saliva against an uprush of bile painting the back of his tongue. “She was delusional. She had transference issues. She’d had them before. You know she did. If you know anything about her at all...”

  “I knew everything about her! I knew when she came home stinking of you!” Gerry leaned to sniff dramatically at Ryan’s neck. “Fancy-ass cologne. How much you pay for that?”

  “I’m really sorry about your wife, but I can’t talk to you any more about this. My lawyer—”

  “Oh, right. Your lawyer. Well, let me tell you something, Dr. Calder. Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to do shit for you. I’m going to take everything you have. I’m going to ruin you.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” Ryan said without much heat.

  Gerry laughed and backed up, finally. His eyes gleamed. He scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “No threat. The truth. You’re going to pay for what you did. I’m going to see to it.”

  Gerry took another few steps back, then turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Ryan to stare after him. The sun beat down, suddenly too much. His stomach lurched again. He tossed the uneaten lunch into the trash and headed back to his office.

  In the waiting room, neutral beige and hung with paintings of seascapes, Ryan found out just how determined Gerry Somers was. Normally after
lunch there were at least three or four patients waiting their turn in the sea-foam green and mauve chairs. Not today. Today Ceci was sobbing quietly behind the glass window while Ryan’s partner Jack Kastabian patted her shoulder. Two cops with notepads turned when Ryan opened the door.

  Someone, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who, had spray painted Dr. Ryan Calder Is A in red, dripping letters on the waiting room wall. Across one of the bland seascapes, he’d scrawled Wife Fucker.

  Ryan felt his knees wanting to go weak, but he locked them to keep from sinking into one of the chairs. The world went a little gray around the edges of his vision. He heard the roaring of surf that had nothing to do with the ocean.

  “Ryan,” said his other partner, Saul Goldman. “We need to talk.”

  NINE

  “HE’S TOTALLY INTO YOU.” Sammy said this so confidently that Kendra had to roll her eyes.

  “Sure he is. That’s why he spent the whole study hall talking with Bethany.” Kendra shrugged, swiping the screen of her phone to check for notifications from ZendPix. Sammy had sort of bullied her into sending Logan a selfie, but that had been more than an hour ago. He’d opened it, but hadn’t replied. “That’s why he’s ignoring my ZendPix. Shit, Sammy.”

  Kendra wanted to cry. It was bad enough that Logan knew she liked him, but now he knew she knew that he knew...So now it was this big freaking mess. So embarrassing. It had been better when they were just friends. At least then he’d paid attention to her. Ever since Sammy’d told Logan’s best friend, Rob, that Kendra wanted to get with him, he’d been acting weird.

  “He likes you. Rob told me he did.” Sammy leaned to grab a handful of pretzels from the bowl on the floor, then tossed one in her mouth. She crunched, still talking, which grossed Kendra out. “And besides, it’s totally obvious.”

  “It’s not obvious to me.” Kendra groaned and rolled onto her back to stare at the stick-on plastic stars attached to Sammy’s ceiling. The fan blades whirring around made them seem to pulse and vibrate, which made her head hurt. She closed her eyes.