Lovely Wild

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 (#ulink_26a579ce-c5ff-5fb1-a1f9-049f736ad1ec)

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?”