And one day, late one afternoon, he simply woke up-as if from a long winter’s nap. Why those words came to mind, Brian couldn’t imagine.

From the way the sun was slanting in the window, he could tell it was late afternoon. Kath wasn’t there. Brandon Walker was.

“Hey,” Brian said. “How’s it going?”

Brandon started so abruptly that he almost fell out of the chair. “Hello,” he said as a slow grin crossed his face. “Another station heard from.”

“Where’s Kath?” Brian asked. Just saying that much made his throat hurt. His voice sounded odd-as if he hadn’t used it for a very long time.

“She’s at work,” Brandon said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call her and let her know.”

“So it must be Tuesday then,” Brian said. “She usually has Mondays off.”

“It’s not Tuesday, Brian,” Brandon said.

“What day is it then?” Brian asked. “How long have I been out of it?”

“Since the first week in June,” Brandon Walker told him. “It’s almost the end of November. Friday. The day after Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving? How can that be? How come it isn’t June? What happened?”

“Don’t you remember?”

Brian shook his head. “I don’t remember anything. It’s a blank.”

“You were chasing a bad guy who took off on foot on I-10.”

“Did I catch him?”

“Oncoming traffic is what caught him,” Brandon said. “It turns out it caught you, too. There was a young woman there with her little boy. She had been taken hostage and you helped her escape. She had managed to get the kid out of the car, but a truck was coming. They both would have been killed if you hadn’t shoved them out of the way. You saved them both.”

While Brian tried to get his head around that difficult concept, Brandon was already punching numbers into his cell phone. “You’re not going to believe it, Kath,” he said. “You’ve got to get down here right away. Brian’s awake! He’s awake and talking.”

On the table next to his bed sat a small vase, a reddish-brown clay vase with a high-gloss glaze finish. In it was a single apricot-colored rose. Brian pointed at it and asked, “Where did that come from?”

“The rose came from our backyard, but Diana made the vase,” Brandon said. “She wanted you to have it.”

Brian shook his head in wonder. “I didn’t know she made pots.”

“Neither did I,” Brandon agreed. “I don’t think anyone knew that about her, but she does now. And if you ask me, she’s pretty damned good at it.”

Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, December 5, 2009, 3:00 p.m.

68º Fahrenheit

Lani Walker and Dan Pardee got married the first Saturday in December in a small ceremony in her parents’ house. The wedding was supposed to happen outside in the early afternoon. Naturally it rained-like crazy. The chill winter rainstorm would be good for flowers the following spring, but not so good for wedding guests.

Attending the wedding was Brian’s first outing. They gave him a furlough from the rehab center, but only for a few hours.

There weren’t that many people there. Still, Brian had a tough time sorting through them.

Most of the guests were family members and people Brian already knew, such as a family named Torres-including the young mother and son Brian had saved. There were several strangers as well, including Micah Duarte, the groom’s grandfather. He was Indian-Apache-and uncomfortable in all the uproar. Brian’s heart went out to the man. The only time he seemed at ease was when he was chatting with little Gabe Ortiz.

The other total stranger was an Anglo man who also seemed to have some connection to the groom.

During the reception, the man sat down on the couch near where Brian’s wheelchair was parked. “I understand you’re a real hero,” he said by way of introduction, holding out his hand. “I’m David Blaine. Retired LAPD.”

“You’re related to the groom?” Brian asked.

Blaine shook his head and smiled. “Not really,” he said. “At least I wasn’t originally, but I guess I am now. When Lani and Dan used the Internet to track me down in Palm Desert and invited me to come to the wedding, you could have knocked me over with a feather.”

Brian was struggling to connect the dots when Blaine explained. “I was the investigating officer years ago when Dan’s mother was murdered. I didn’t do that much, but I’m the one who carried him out of that terrible place. He couldn’t have been more than four years old. I’m surprised he remembered.”

Brian glanced wonderingly in Dan Pardee’s direction. His mother had been murdered? Why was it Brian knew nothing about any of that, nothing at all?

“Who knows?” Blaine continued. “Maybe the same thing will happen to you someday. You’ll get a call to come to the wedding of that little kid over there.” He nodded in Pepe Torres’s direction. “He may forget, but I can promise you his mother and his grandmother never will.”

Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, December 5, 2009, 10:00 p.m.

61º Fahrenheit

Brandon shivered as he held the door open for Damsel to come back in one last time. The guests were gone. The caterer was gone. He and Diana and Damsel finally had the place to themselves.

He, for one, was glad the wedding was over. Brandon had been happy to see all those people, but he had been even happier to see them all go home. As far as he was concerned, the high point of the day had come about when Angie, the flower girl, had escaped Diana’s clutches and raced to the bride and groom. She had grabbed on to Dan’s tuxedo-clad leg and resisted all efforts to pry her away. Finally Dan had relented. He had picked her up and held her on his hip for the duration of the ceremony.

Before letting the dog out, Brandon had stripped off his father-of-the-bride jacket, dress shoes, and tie. Thank God I don’t have to wear those anymore, he thought.

Damsel came in and shook, showering him with cold spatters of water. Outside it was still raining.

Going back through the house, Brandon was surprised to find Diana sitting on the couch in the living room. The only light in the room was from a single lamp on an end table next to where she sat holding a basket. At first Brandon thought it was one of Rita Antone’s, but when he came closer, he realized it was a burden basket he had never seen before.

“Hello,” he said. “I thought you’d already gone to bed. And what’s that? I thought you weren’t going to collect any more baskets.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “It was a gift from Micah Duarte.”

“I couldn’t help liking that guy,” Brandon said. “He reminded me of Fat Crack, only not nearly as wide.”

Nodding, Diana passed the basket to her husband.

“Micah told me this originally belonged to his wife’s grandmother,” Diana explained. “He said he had heard about my basket collection from Lani and Dan. He thought it might be a good idea for me to look after it, either to pass along to Dan when he’s finally able to appreciate it or else to give it to Angie.”

Brandon examined the basket. It was old and frayed. In one spot some of the stitching had come undone.

“This doesn’t look like it’s made of bear grass,” he said.

Diana nodded. “It isn’t. The Apaches usually used willow and yucca. If you look closely you’ll see there’s even some yucca root.”

“So it’s valuable, then?” he asked.

Diana glanced around the room at all the other baskets-at Nana Dahd ’s baskets. “They’re all valuable,” she said. “And that has nothing to do with money.”

“She’d have a fit, you know.” Brandon chuckled as he gave the burden basket back.

“Who would have a fit?”

“Rita Antone,” he said. “The idea of having an ohb basket in here with all of hers.”

“No,” Diana said. After a moment’s pause, she smiled. “I don’t think Rita would mind one bit. Come on, old man. Let’s go to bed.”