Lonesome Lawmen

Two-2

The sun climbed slowly at first, finally springing free of the mountains to throw warm light across the park bench Dani had been sitting on since the first rush of adrenaline gave out. Dry air felt cool against her face, the polar opposite of New Orleans in August. It was pleasant to be dry instead of soggy, to sit gazing at a spare aspect rather than a lush one.

She wasn’t afraid. She had seen Dark Lord leave, chillingly confidant that he’d completed his bloody task. No, this was shock. She should know. She’d been here, done this when her baby died—

In a tree above her head, a bird trilled a cheerful morning song. Startled by the sound, Dani looked up at the tree and got blinded by the painful yellow halo of sun behind it.

It shouldn’t be there, not after what happened.

“Dismantle the sun, pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods: For nothing now can ever come to any good . . .”

The poem by Auden emerged from the past. Right for the moment, right to remember it now when she was once more a surprised survivor in life’s lottery. Richard had read it at Megan’s funeral ten years ago. There seemed a perverse symmetry in linking the poignant past to the painful present. Richard was such an important part of both, more so even than Steven, his brother, who was Meggie’s father and Dani’s ex-husband. Odd to know now, when it was too late, who was important and who wasn’t.

Odder to be alive when she should be dead. Three times should be out. Sure wasn’t a charm to find herself once again upright and looking at death. The three deaths swirled through her mind on the other side of shock’s cushion, beckoning her to join them where fear and pain no longer ruled. Soon . . .

She heard a muted roar as a fire engine trundled the length of the park across from her, then turned ponderously into the flow of traffic. She had watched it arrive. Now it was leaving, followed by the ambulance carrying the bodies of the men and woman who had died to keep her alive.

When it was out of sight, she picked up her backpack from the park bench with the same automatic reflex that made her grab it from the closet floor and added it to the weight of their deaths on her shoulders.

Glad to still be in shock, she turned east, toward the rising sun and the cluster of skyscrapers that was downtown Denver.