Page 54 of The Shield
“I haven’t officially decided,” I said, and even I could hear the lie.
“You have,” she said. She released the cuff with a sigh. “You decided somewhere between the sandbag site and that poor woman’s van. Maybe before. That’s fine. That’s good,” she added, like she knew the part of me that braced for a scolding. “But if you’re going to be the woman this city needs, you’re going to have to learn the rhythm of care. Yours as well as theirs.”
She swapped the empty water cup for a full one, and I drank because it was easier than arguing and because my mouth tasted like the inside of a pipe. The electric blue was electrolytes. She set the bear claw back on my skin when it slid, a righting touch I felt deeply.
“You ever flown?” she asked.
“Plenty,” I said. “Don’t say oxygen mask.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she sniffed. “I was going to say the part where the captain’s voice comes over the speakers and you realize someone you’ll never see has been awake and alert and quietly steering through misery for miles while you were losing your mind over the soda cart. That’s leadership. Boring heroics. Long competence. If you’re going to do that for a city, you have to have something left at midnight.”
“That sounds dull,” I said, smiling so she’d know I knew better.
“You can have dull and you can have sex on the porch,” she said. “They’re not mutually exclusive. In fact, in my experience, the first produces more of the second.” She glanced at the monitor. “Your heart rate agrees.”
Heat rushed my cheeks. “He kissed me like a person who had to go save the world,” I said. “And I let him.”
“And then you’re going to make it a world worth coming back to,” Pearl said. “Which is not as pretty as a kiss and not as cinematic as a rescue, but is the thing that makes the other two mean something. Now.” She checked my pupils with a penlight that appeared from nowhere, then clicked it away. “Here’s what youwilldo. You will sleep until your brain stops ringing. You will let me keep you for one night. Maybe two, if that head worries me when the catscan comes up. And you will stay in this bed until a doctor with a degree and a disposition meaner than mine says you may go.”
“Pearl,” I said, because I am a woman who knows when to play a name like a card, “the tide?—”
“—will rise and fall,” she finished. “Without your supervision. This time. There are people on it. You put them there.”
That landed. I looked at the bear claw, at the tiny gouge time had carved into it. “I almost didn’t come back,” I said. It felt like a thing you say to a nurse in a quiet room.
Pearl sat. Not many nurses sit. It’s a gift when they do. She had old hands and a new manicure. “You did come back,” she said. “And the part of you that’s a girl from here—who knows what pluff mud smells like after a storm and why you never put a real wood chair on a screened porch—is about to start telling stories about what she saw on the way. That’s fine. That’s how humans make sense. But listen to me: the story that matters is the one that takes place when you open your eyes tomorrow and decide to make the day unglamorous and good. That’s where mayors are made. That, and who you choose to love.”
The monitor ticked. The rain tapped. I thought about the yard like a promise. I thought about Amelia’s peach-sticky hand in my hair and James naming a frog Councilman. I thought about Ethan’s mouth sayingI’m not letting goand his hands proving it to a river that didn’t think it could be told what to do.
“I don’t think I know how to be careful,” I said.
Pearl’s smile lifted one corner, wry and warm. “Then be intentional. Careful is hiding. Intentional is brave.” She stood, smoothed the blanket with a comforter-snap. “I’ll send your friends in two at a time in an hour. Right now, you’re going to close those eyes and rest.”
She turned at the door, then added, as if it had just occurred to her, “And honey?”
“Yes?”
“You can want your man and your mission both. Women who were told to choose are my least favorite fairy tales.”
24
ETHAN
Ididn’t linger over preparations. The hospital room had given me clarity, a quiet space to steel myself for what lay ahead, and now the urgency pulsed through me like the rain still drumming against the windows of The Palmetto Rose.
The dampness clung to my skin as I packed, the weight of the note a constant reminder of the threat I couldn’t ignore. A change of clothes, a few essentials, my .45 pistol checked and loaded, and a small blade tucked into my boot—enough to move fast, to disappear.
But as I moved through the motions, my mind drifted back, unbidden, to that pivotal moment, the one where my father, Byron Dane, made his proclamation for my life. It was a memory that shaped me, a crucible I’d carried into every fight since, and it demanded my attention now, pulling me deep into the past.
It had been a summer in Montana, two weeks carved out of the relentless rhythm of ranch life, a camping trip that had felt like a young man’s paradise. The Absaroka Range had stretched before us, a jagged crown of peaks piercing a sky so blue it hurt to look at, the air crisp with the scent of pine and wild sage.
The creek had glittered like liquid silver, its waters cold and clear, alive with trout that had danced at the end of our lines. We’d set up camp in a wide meadow, the grass tall and golden, dotted with wildflowers—purple lupines, yellow balsamroot—swaying in the gentle breeze.
The fire had crackled each night, its smoke curling upward to mingle with the stars, while the horses had grazed nearby, their coats gleaming in the fading light. It had been a world apart, a sanctuary of hunting and fishing, of camaraderie that bound us—my brothers and me—together with Dad finally present, his laughter echoing through the trees.
Those mornings had been golden, the sun rising over the ridge to paint the valley in soft hues, Dad showing us how to track deer and elk through the underbrush, his voice a steady guide as he pointed out broken twigs and hoof prints.
We’d fished at dusk, the rods bending with each catch, the splash of water a symphony against the rustle of leaves.
