“Well, I for one hope they catch him,” says Mr. Avery. “I want a chance to look him in the eye.”
“Dad,” says Tucker wearily. “Give it a rest.”
“No.” Mr. Avery clears his throat. “That was your land, your grandfather’s legacy to you, that was everything you ever worked for, your truck, your trailer, your horse, all those odd jobs, scrimping and saving to be able to afford the rodeo fees, the gear, the gas for the truck. Years of backbreaking work, sweat and more sweat, hours of practice, and I will not give it a rest.”
“Wait,” I say, still catching up. “It was the Palisades fire where they suspect arson?” Mr. Avery nods.
So, not the fire Samjeeza started trying to flush out my mom and me out at Static Peak.
The other fire. Someone deliberately started the other fire?
“It doesn’t matter,” Tucker says offhandedly. “It’s over and done with. I’m grateful just to be alive.”
So am I. And what I’m thinking in this moment is, How can I keep you that way?
Later Tucker and I go out to the porch. We sit in the swing and rock. It’s cold, freezing actually, but neither of us seems to mind it. It’s too cloudy to see the stars. After we’ve been sitting there for a while, it starts to snow. We don’t go in. We lie there in the swing, swaying back and forth, our breath mingling as it rises in foggy puffs above our heads.
“The sky is falling,” I whisper, watching the flakes drift with the wind.
“Yeah,” he says. “It kind of looks that way.” He sits up in the swing to look into my face, and my heart starts pounding a mile a minute for no good reason.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “You’ve been tense all week. What’s going on?” I stare up at him and think about losing him and my eyes suddenly brim with tears. And tears—any girl’s tears, but mine especially—really get to Tucker.
“Hey,” he whispers, and instantly gathers me up in his arms. I sniffle against his shoulder for a few minutes, then get myself together and look up and try to smile.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just stressed.”
He frowns. “Angel stuff,” he says, not even as a question. He assumes, every time something’s weighing on me, it must be angel stuff.
I wish I could tell him. But I can’t. Not without knowing for sure.
I shake my head. “College stuff. I’m applying to Stanford, you know.” This is true. Even though I think it’s pretty far-fetched, even though I can’t drum up much enthusiasm for college, even Stanford, I’ve been applying.
Tucker’s expression clears, like he suddenly understands everything perfectly. I’m upset because I am going to college and he’s staying here.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ll make it work, wherever you end up, okay?”
“Okay.”
He hugs me again, his playful shoulder-squeeze hug. “Everything’s going to be all right, Carrots. You’ll see.”
“How do you know so much?” I ask, only half playfully.
He shrugs. Suddenly he frowns, cocks his head slightly to one side.
“What is it?” I ask.
He holds up a hand to quiet me. Listens for a minute. Then he lets out a breath. “I thought I heard something, that’s all.”
“What?” I ask.
“A horse. I thought I heard a horse.”
“Oh, Tuck,” I say, hugging him tighter. “I’m sorry.”
But then I think I hear something too. A rumbling kind of noise. Maybe hoofbeats.
I listen for a few moments and still hear it, the steady rhythmic strike of something against the earth. Then the huff of air from a large moving animal, running, breathing heavy.
My eyes meet Tucker’s. “I hear it too,” I tell him.
We pop out of the swing, dash onto the front yard. I turn a slow circle in the yard, listening, as the sound gets closer.
“That way,” I breathe, pointing toward the Tetons. Tucker starts running in that direction, leaps over a low fence. That’s when Midas breaks the tree line, running hard, sweat gleaming along his flanks. Tucker sees him and gives this great, joyous whoop. Midas neighs. I stand there and watch as Tucker and Midas meet each other in the field near the house. Tucker throws his arms around Midas’s shoulders, buries his face in the glossy neck. They stay that way for a long time, and then Tucker pulls away and starts moving his hands all over Midas’s body, looking for injury.
“He’s burned, real skinny, but nothing bad,” he calls out. “Nothing we can’t deal with.” Then he says to the horse fondly, “I knew you’d make it. I knew that fire couldn’t get you.” His parents and Wendy come out onto the porch, see Midas, and run down into the field with us to marvel over this crazy miracle. Wendy holds my hand tight as we all bring the horse back into the barn, back where he belongs.
“What once was lost, now is found,” Mrs. Avery says.
“See, Carrots,” Tucker says, stroking Midas’s nose. “Things have a way of working out the way they’re supposed to.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Sorrow descends on me again the next day. I’d almost forgotten how awful it feels, the way my throat closes up and my chest constricts and my eyes burn. This time I’m in the grocery store with Jeffrey, and the minute I tell him he goes all angel-blood ninja, paranoid and crouching down right there in the middle of the aisle between the yogurt and the cottage cheese while I call Mom again on my cell. I would have thought Jeffrey was funny if I hadn’t been so freaked out by the prospect of getting killed by a Black Wing, only this time I assume I can’t get killed. If I die here on aisle nine, I’ll never make it to spring and the day at the cemetery.
So Samjeeza’s not here to kill me, I think. But it’s not really me I’m worried about. In spite of all my loony ideas about possible ways that Tucker might die, the one that strikes me as the most likely is that a Black Wing shows up and kills him. To get to me. To punish me, maybe, for turning my back on my purpose. To balance the scales. Or maybe simply because Black Wings are bad and they like to do bad things, such as do away with those the good people care about.
The idea terrifies me. But again the sorrow feeling is gone even before Mom gets there.
Like it never happened. Like it’s all in my head.
A few days later, at Angel Club, Jeffrey’s showing us this trick he can do where he bends a quarter in half using only his fingers. Then of course we all have to try it, first me, and Jeffrey’s none too pleased when I can bend the quarter too, then Angela, who tries so hard that her face turns purple and I think she’s going to pass out, then Christian, who can’t do it, either.