Page 115 of Lone Wolf

He was angry.

The alley was dark, clogged with trash and forsaken homeless encampments. Evan parked on the street and searched on foot, his flashlight picking across ripped nylon tents, stained blankets, soaked shanty walls built of Amazon delivery boxes.

He heard movement down at the end, a rustle of what sounded like a paw against an empty beer can.

The beam darted across an overturned shopping cart and found a pair of eyes in the depth of the alley.

A coyote.

There was a tuft of fur stuck to his claw.

He looked well fed.

Brianna’s living room.

A few minutes past midnight.

Sofia was next to her mom on the couch, shoulders hunched with anticipation, her palms pressed together and smashed between her knees. Brianna sat sideways, stroking Sofia’s hair, but Sofia paid her little mind. She was all in on Evan.

It was Saturday night, but Evan had a feeling Brianna would’ve let her daughter stay up late even on a school night to hear the update.

Awkward on his feet, he was unsure how to begin.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

“Loco’s dead, isn’t he?” Sofia said. She refused to lift her gaze.

“Likely,” Evan said.

Bri looked at him sharply. What was wrong with his answer?

Sofia rocked herself a bit and then stood up, her hands stretching into starfish and then clenching into tiny fists. To her side, the shoe-box shrine to the homely dog endured, the veladora low on wax and incandescence, guttering to an end. On the other wall hung a framed travel poster for Paris, one of those bright retro numbers with the tip of the Eiffel piercing a cabaret moon. According to Andre, Bri and Sofia had never been east of Las Vegas, the poster like a window to another universe.

Sofia’s face broke. The fierce, ugly beauty of pure grief. “You said you could find him.” Her voice, blurred through a constricted throat.

Evan said, “I know.”

“You promised. You promised you could find him.” Moving to anger but it was weak cover for what was beneath. “Everyone promises. Everyone—”

A breath screeched in horribly and then she was sobbing. She came at him, struck at him weakly, miniature fists smacking his stomach, his chest. “Where’s my dad? Where’s my dad? I wish my dad was here!”

“I know,” he said.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She kept striking him and Bri watched from the couch and there were tears on her face and there was not a goddamned thing either of them could do.

“I want my dad!” Sofia shouted. “I want my dad!”

Evan put his hands gently on her shoulders as her punches grew weaker and weaker and then she was crying into his chest messily, fingers clutching his shirt.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

52

The Waiting Nothingness