I know it can happen. I’ve read enough manuals to understand that a growl is communication, and not necessarily threat. What it communicates is a clear no. A test of dominance. Yet it feels like a threat. Like I have failed, and she’s questioning my authority. Telling me she’s not a little puppy anymore.
“Storm,” I say as firmly as I can.
Don’t show fear. Don’t show hurt.
She lowers herself to the rock in submission, as if I misheard the growl.
“Storm. Come here.”
Still lying down, she begins belly-crawling toward the edge.
“Goddamn it!”
I don’t mean to curse, but my words ring through the canyon. She whines. Then she continues slinking toward the edge.
My heart thumps. There are only a couple of feet between us, and I want to lunge and grab her by the collar and haul her back from the edge. Yet if she resists at all, we’ll go over.
I keep moving, as slowly as I can, trying to figure out how to get her back without turning this into a deadly tug-of-war.
Please, Storm. Please come back. Just a little. I can grab you if you come a few inches my way.
She puts her muzzle over the edge, and I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep from screaming at her, from startling her into falling. She lies there, looking down. Then she glances back at me. From me to the river below. Her nose works. She whines.
“I know it’s water,” I say as I get down onto all fours. “I know it looks wonderful. If we keep going down the ridge, there’s a basin. You can swim there. I promise.”
I’m talking to myself. I know that. But I hope my voice calms her, even casts some kind of spell luring her from that edge.
Again, though, she looks from me to the river. Sniffs. Whines.
I form a plan. It’s dangerous, but there’s no way I’m taking a chance she’ll go over the edge. I creep along on all fours. When I reach Storm, I rub her flank. My hand travels up her side, still petting, aiming for her collar. I carefully hook my fingers around it.
I won’t pull Storm until I’m farther from the edge, with a better footing. Before I inch backward, I glance down into the gorge. I’m getting a look at what we face, so I will be prepared should we go over. And the moment I look down, I know I do not want to go over. Glacial ice coming off the mountain has been wearing away rock for centuries, and the walls go straight down. Below, there isn’t even a safe amount of water to drop into. It’s a shallow mountain river, more of a stream, filled with rapids and—
There is something in the water. An unnatural shape, unnaturally colored. Long and slender. Black on the bottom. Purple and yellow on top. It’s the purple and yellow that I focus on. It’s a pattern of some sort, and it jogs a memory of me thinking:
I haven’t seen that shirt before. It’s pretty. Far more colorful than usual. Did she bring it with her, tuck it at the back of her closet, an unwanted reminder of a time when she hoped for a brighter future in Rockton.
This is Val’s shirt.
It is the blouse I last saw her wearing.
I tell myself she’s lost it, that maybe she removed it to wash in the stream and it floated away and that’s all this is. All this is.
That’s a lie. An obvious, blatant, ridiculous lie.
I see that blouse trapped on the rocks. I see the black below it—the dress trousers she always wore. I see one shoe. One bare foot, pale against the dark water. I see her arms, her hands, equally pale. I see the brown and gray of her short hair.
I am looking at Val.
At her body.
Battered against the rocks below.
Storm whines. I glance over, and she has her muzzle on the edge, her dark eyes fixed on Val. That is why we’re here. Not because she smelled water and wanted to go for a swim. She has located her target. We set her on a scent, and she has tracked it to its source.
I reach to pet her and whisper, “I’m sorry.”
She nudges me, and then looks at Val again.
Well, there she is, Mom. Go get her.
I can’t, of course. Not from here. I’m not even sure I can get to her from below. It’s a narrow gorge, and she’s trapped on the rocks.
Sure, Val, go ahead and play spy.
It’s okay, Val. Just go with Oliver Brady. You’ll be fine. We’ll get you back.
My fault.
My responsibility.
There is no surge of grief. No tears. I move slowly, looking around for a way to get down, my body numb, the crash of the rapids muted. Storm’s muzzle against my hand feels as if she’s nudging me through a thick glove.
I nod, and I murmur something to her. I’m not even sure what it is. All I know is that I need to get Val out of the water for a proper burial.
Like Brent.
How would you like to be buried, Val? Before you go, just answer me that. In case I fuck up and get you killed, how should you be laid to rest? Any final words you’d like said?
Tears do prickle then, but they feel like self-pity, and I swipe them away with the back of my hand.
I will get her out of the water. I see jutting rock down there, with sparse vegetation, a bit of windblown soil and a place for me to lay her body, safely out of the water. We’ll come for her later. Just get her out before the current dislodges her body and whisks it away.
I survey the cliff. It’s impossible to climb down right here—it really is an edge, with a straight drop below. But if I travel farther down, I see a route with a bit of a slope.
I head to it. Storm follows. I reach the spot and tell her to lie down and then, firmly, to stay. She does, head on her paws.
I crouch at the edge. From here, the route looks steeper than it did farther up. But I can do this. Just a bit of rock climbing. I see the first stone to put my feet on. It’s a half meter down. Easy. Just back up to the edge and lower my feet over.
I do that. I’m holding on to a sturdy sapling with one hand, the other grabbing the rock edge. The rock should be right . . .
It’s not right there. I’m past my waist, and I don’t feel anything underfoot. I glance down. I’m about six inches short, that rock farther than it seemed. I take a deep breath and lower myself until my toes—
My foot touches down and keeps going. I grab my handholds as tight as I can and find my footing before I carefully look. I see my boot and the rock beneath it. A sloping rock. Okay, that’s not what I expected but—
No.
I hear Dalton’s voice in my head.
Hell and fuck, no, Butler. Get your ass back up here now.
I look over my shoulder and see Val’s body.
You feel guilty? Fine. You’re going to risk you own life to get her out of there? Not fine. Stupid. Unbelievably stupid, and you know it. You aren’t saving her. She’s dead. She doesn’t give a damn if you bury her body or not. Get your ass up here, come find me, and we’ll see if there’s a way to do this safely.
He’s right, of course. This is unbelievably stupid.
The second time I met Dalton, he called me a train wreck, hell-bent on my own destruction. I corrected him—that implied I was a runaway train, not a wreck. I didn’t argue with the principle, though. After killing Blaine, I never contemplated suicide. I never tried to die; I just didn’t try to live, either. Didn’t try to stay alive or enjoy that life while I had it. I felt as if I’d surrendered my future when I stole Blaine’s from him.
Now, seeing Val’s body below, I feel as if I have pulled that trigger again. If anything, this is worse, because I didn’t act out of hate and rage and pain. It was negligence. Carelessness. But when I think that, I hear Dalton’s voice again, telling me not to be stupid. Yeah, he understands the impulse—fuck, yes, he understands it—but we aren’t shepherds with our herd of not-terribly-bright sheep. Mistakes were made. Mistakes will always be made. But I didn’t throw Val to this wolf. I tried everything I could to keep Brady from taking her into that forest.
I still accept responsibility for Val’s death. Yet I have to take responsibility for my life, too, for not doing something stupid because I feel guilty. That leaves Rockton without a detective and Dalton without a partner. I have made compacts here, implicit ones, with the town, with Dalton, even with Storm, and those say that I won’t do something monumentally risky and stupid, or I will hurt them, and they do not deserve that.