Duke whined, then clambered over the seat back separating him from Tanya. He sniffed her from her bare feet to her face, then licked her cheek. “Good boy,” she murmured. Her reflexes dulled, her hand patting the air where the dog was the moment before. Duke lay down by her feet, and she burrowed her toes into his thick coat.
At the intersection Lucas turned towards town and the hospital. “No,” Tanya said. “Take me home.”
“Where were you?”
No answer.
“Who let you walk home like that?” As the silence stretched, he snapped, “Goddammit, Tanya.”
“I just want to go home, Lucas.”
They were three-quarters of a mile from the cabin. She might have made it on her own. Then again, she might not have. “These new friends of yours sure do care about you if they’ll let you walk yourself home in your condition. You could have passed out and died of hypothermia.”
He saw her fingers tighten in Duke’s fur. “Like you care,” she slurred.
“I do care,” he said. “I would have come to get you. You know that.”
Then Alana’s quiet voice. “Lucas.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and swung the Blazer around, then white-knuckled it the rest of the way to the cabin. “The door’s usually open,” he said to Alana. She opened it wide as he jockeyed the unresisting Tanya out of the backseat. A light shone dimly from the open front door. Her knees gave way when he put her on her feet, so he slipped his shoulder under her arm and gripped her waist to walk her through the glazed air, into the cabin.
“I couldn’t get the overhead light to work, and it’s freezing in here,” Alana said. “I think she left the windows open when she went out. I closed them, but—”
“Start a fire,” he said as he dumped his cousin on the sofa.
“You do that,” she replied. “I’ll take care of her.”
A simmering cauldron of emotions seethed inside him, so he took the prudent step back. “She needs to be on her side in case she vomits.”
“I’m aware of the protocol,” she replied. She went on her knees next to Tanya and turned her. Tanya’s hand grazed Alana’s shoulder before flopping to the floor. While Lucas crumpled newspaper for tinder and built up logs and kindling, Alana gathered the blanket from Tanya’s unmade bed and a knitted throw from the back of the rocking chair.
“This looks like your grandmother’s work,” she said as she laid the blankets over Tanya’s unconscious form.
“It is,” he said.
Alana eased the flip-flops from Tanya’s bare feet and considered them for a moment, then went to the kitchen and turned on the water. While it warmed, she went into the bedroom again and returned with two pairs of socks and a tube of antibacterial ointment. After searching the cupboards for a stainless steel bowl, she found a clean cloth and sat on the end of the sofa by Tanya’s feet. She immersed the rag, wrung it out, then started cleaning the dirt from Tanya’s ravaged feet.
Fear trapped him on his knees by the fire. “I’m sorry you had to see her like this,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she replied softly.
“She used to be amazing. Now I’m afraid someone’s going to find her frozen to death in a ditch, and I’ll have to zip her into a body bag.”
Water dripped into the bowl. “Maybe she will be amazing again someday,” Alana said as she drew the cloth between Tanya’s toes. The unconscious woman stirred slightly, and Alana stopped. When she settled, Alana continued, that bright shiny hair slipping forward again. “Is she an alcoholic?”
“She’s a drug addict. Started with pot and moved on to Vicodin. Percocet. Anything else that dulls the pain. She’s been to recovery twice, tried to quit on her own I don’t know how many times. Drinking is usually the first sign she’s slipping. Drugs come next. Then another trip to recovery.” He left out the long, slow trip through the hell of using. “The whole process takes a couple of years because she’s tough. Each time she swears she’s got it beaten.”
Alana made another one of those soft noises. For a stretch of time, the fire cracked and popped, and Alana removed blood and dirt from Tanya’s skin. Washing finished, she gently patted Tanya’s feet dry, then began dabbing ointment on the cuts. That task done, she pulled the cotton socks over defenseless toes, then worked the wool socks up over those, finally tucking the blanket around her feet.
She carried the bowl to the kitchen, where she carefully rinsed it out. Lucas pushed to his feet, gathered the towels and tossed them in the overflowing laundry basket. “Should we stay with her?”
“No,” he said without elaborating. He turned off the kitchen light and closed the door behind them. They rode in silence back to Walkers Ford. The town was eerily quiet, streets empty.
“Do you do this much?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
He thought about that as he drove, trying to figure out how to distill over a decade as a cop into phrases that would make sense to someone who lived and died by research. “Instinct, mostly. Years of experience gone gut deep.”