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Just great. They got me out of the car before it blew up.
She wanted to say it, to roll her eyes and push past him. But his eyes were dark with concern, his hands hovering halfway between his body and her own, as if he wanted to hug her but he just wasn’t sure how she’d take it.
Becca swallowed. She wished he’d jingle his keys and act like this was a hassle. It was hard to keep walls up against someone who truly gave a crap.
But maybe it was just the shock. Had Mom made it sound bad so he’d rush?
“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice sounded like she’d been swallowing gravel. “I just ... I want to go home.”
“We can go back to my place—”
“No!”
He flinched, and she shut her eyes. “No—just—I don’t have any clothes there. I want to go home.”
“You have keys?”
Her keys were in her car—and probably melted into a ball of steel by now. She shook her head. “Mom will give me hers.”
But her mom didn’t like that idea. “Becca, go home with your father. You’ve had a rough day, and you shouldn’t be alone—”
“I just want to get into some dry clothes and go to bed.” She shoved herself off the stretcher. A patient down the hallway started screaming, and Becca clamped her hands over her ears. “Please, just take me home. Please—”
Arms wrapped around her, stroking the hair back from her face. For a bare instant she thought it was her mom—but then she felt the strength in those arms, the solid wall of her dad’s chest.
“Calm down,” he said, his voice a gentle rasp. “I’ll take you home.”
His voice sparked another memory, of an eight-year-old Becca who’d found a half-dead bird in the backyard. She’d been near hysterical, sure her father was going to have to kill it—so she hid with it in her bedroom, trying to feed it sliced Velveeta and bits of hot dog.
Her mom had been furious when she found out. A bird! In her house!
But her dad had talked Becca out of her closet, then taught her how to set the bird’s wing and nurse it back to health.
“Becca?”
His breath touched her hair. Becca realized she’d been leaning on him for what felt like a while.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
Becca couldn’t make herself look out the windshield. Rain freckled the glass, stealing any visibility. Cars seemed to be moving too quickly, every oncoming pair of headlights a collision waiting to happen.
She stared down at her dad’s hand, resting on the center console.
“What happened to your wrist?” she asked, just to make her brain focus on something other than the sound of tires on wet roadway.
He cleared his throat. “Tree came down in the storm. Trapped a buck up against one of those electric fences. I was the closest one, so I took the call. Poor thing was fighting like hell.”
Now she regretted asking. “So you killed it.”
He hesitated. “No.”
Now she swung her eyes up. “Are you lying?”
“No. I’m not. We hit him with a tranquilizer, patched him up, and let him go.” He glanced away from the road. “Just what do you think I do, Becca?”
She had no idea—all she had were old memories and the patch on his sleeve. She hunched her shoulders and looked at the glove compartment.
“Wild animals can be dangerous,” he said. “Sometimes they’re too dangerous to treat and rehabilitate.” He paused. “And sometimes they’re not a threat at all.”
