39

I DROPPED THE PHONE and flew out the front door and down the steps of the porch. Sarah and Paul were standing in the driveway, the last of our guests gone, Paul making some derisive comments about the Virtue.

I must have appeared pretty alarmed, because Sarah, at the sight of me, looked horrified. “What?” she said.

“Which way did Angie and Trevor go?”

Paul pointed south. “That way,” he said. “What’s going on?”

I was running. Both Sarah and Paul were starting after me, and I shouted back to Sarah, “Call the police!” Sarah, bless her, didn’t ask questions, but ran straight into the house as Paul hung in with me.

We went past Trevor’s black Chevy, parked at the curb, Morpheus’s snout sticking out the half-rolled-down window. He jammed his entire head out, slobber dripping from his jowls, the sudden commotion of us running by sending him into a barking fit. He snapped at me and Paul as we ran by, scratched frantically at the windows with his long-nailed paws.

My eyes followed the sidewalk all the way down to the busy cross street, and there was no sign of either of them. I hadn’t gone all that far before I started feeling winded, but I wasn’t slowing down. Paul was keeping pace, and could easily have outrun me, but he didn’t know what, exactly, the mission was.

“What is it, Dad?” he asked.

“It’s Trevor,” I said, my arms and legs pumping.

“What about him?”

“It’s him. He’s the one who tried to kill Lawrence Jones.”

You could see it in his face, the flash of betrayal, how he’d accepted favors from someone who now presented a very real threat to our family.

“I’ll bet they’re at one of the cafés,” Paul said, and started to pull away from me. He got to the corner about ten seconds before I did, standing there, looking both ways, hoping for a glimpse of either of them. Not only was Paul younger and faster than I, but he had better eyesight, too. If anyone could spot Angie and Trevor, it would be him.

“There!” he said to me. “Come on!”

I followed him up the sidewalk, in and around people strolling and coming in and out of shops and cafés. And then we were upon them, Angie and Trevor standing outside a coffee shop, his hand on her elbow, trying to motion her inside, Angie pulling away, resisting.

“I don’t want to talk anymore, Trevor,” she said. “That’s it.”

“No, you listen!” Trevor said. “I’ve got things to say to-”

He glanced to his left, saw me and Paul standing there. “Daddy,” Angie said, and moved to join us, and Trevor yanked on her arm, dragging her back.

“Let her go, Trevor,” I said.

“Let go of my sister!” Paul shouted. I’d never heard him speak like that in his entire life.

“Shut up!” Trevor said. “Everybody just shut up!”

People who had been passing on the sidewalk quickly sensed there was an “incident” going on, and gave us a wide berth. Some had stopped to watch, but were hanging back.

With his free hand, he reached down into the pocket of his black coat and pulled out the knife that had gone missing from the kitchen. It was flecked with cake crumbs and frosting.

“Keep the fuck away!” he shouted, waving the knife in the air. Angie’s eyes were wide with fear.

Paul went to move forward, and I put my arm out, holding him back.

“Trevor,” I said, trying to be very calm, “put that knife away, and we’ll talk about things.”

He was moving his head slowly back and forth, looking at Angie, then at us and back to Angie. He spoke to her, the knife suspended in the air, none of us able to take a breath.

“I loved you,” he said. “I loved you so much.”

“Sure,” Angie whispered, a tear trailing down one cheek. “You’re a great guy, Trevor.”

“I don’t want to be some guy! Don’t you understand what we are to each other? Don’t you realize, every day now, every day that you live, you can thank me? I’d be entitled to take your life, because every day you get since that night is a gift from me.”

“Trevor,” I said.

He paid no attention to me. “I couldn’t believe it, you with that other guy. Cameron. Did he save your life? Has he been watching out for you, for weeks, keeping track of you, making sure you’re okay? Has he done for you what I’ve done? Do you understand anything about gratitude, or about how much you owe me?”

“Trevor,” I said again, softly. “Put down the knife.”

He shook his head angrily.

“Nothing really serious has happened so far,” I said. I hesitated, then added, “Even Mr. Jones is going to make it. I was just talking to him on the phone. He’s a hell of a lot better. So, right now, as of this moment, you’re in less trouble than you might think.”

Trevor’s cheeks turned crimson. “He was going to say bad things about me,” he said to me. “He took my pictures! He stole them right out of my car! He had no right to do that! And when I found them, he had all these notes written about me.”

“All anyone wants to do is help you, Trevor,” I said. “But you have to put down the knife and-”

Something brushed past my leg, and suddenly Morpheus was running up to Trevor, wagging his tail, leaping up with his paws, catching Trevor right in the stomach. He didn’t want to stab his own dog, so rather than push him off with his knife hand, Trevor released his grip on Angie’s arm to shove Morpheus’s head aside.

Angie bolted. Paul and I moved.

I went for the arm holding the knife, grabbing it with both hands as Paul grabbed Trevor around the middle, nearly trampling Morpheus in the process, the two of us slamming Trevor up against the brick wall. With Paul holding his body, Trevor had no leverage in his arm, and I slammed it once, twice, three times against the brick until the knife slipped from his hand and clattered to the sidewalk. Paul, who had gone into some kind of rage, had freed a fist and was pounding it into Trevor, a word accompanying each punch. “Leave! My! Sister! Alone!”

There was a siren.

Morpheus had gone berserk, ripping into Paul’s and my legs, getting his teeth into the denim and shaking his head back and forth. As we held Trevor against the wall, we kicked back, trying to get the dog off us before he tore through the jeans and was into flesh.

Someone, I don’t even know who, managed to haul the dog off us, and as I felt Trevor give up his struggling, I said to Paul, who was still punching, “It’s okay, it’s okay, calm down, it’s okay. Stop. You can stop.”

And he did, and there were tears in his eyes, and his sister had her hands on his shoulders, and then she was folding her arms around her brother as the cops came running up the sidewalk.

I WAS SITTING in one of the wicker chairs on the front porch. It was a little past dinner, and the temperature was starting to drop. We were heading into fall, and I was debating whether to keep sitting out there, head inside, or head inside for a sweater and come back out.

The door opened and Sarah came out, a pad of paper and our checkbook in her hand. She took the wicker chair next to mine.

“How is she?” I asked.

“She’s good,” Sarah said. “You know she’s got a lecture tonight, and I gave her lots of choices. I said she could stay home if she wanted to, or you or I could drive her down to Mackenzie, wait for her until her lecture is over and bring her home.”

It had been a week. We insisted Angie take a break from classes. Sarah spoke to the registrar, explained all that Angie had been through, and was told that she could take as long as she needed to get back on her feet. After a couple of days, she was getting antsy, and now, seven days later, she was sick of hanging around the house and wanted to get back to her regular routine.

“What did she decide?” I asked.

“She said she wants the car. She’s going to drive herself to her lecture tonight, drive herself home.”