"No, this is my father's older sister."
"I didn't know your father had a sister."
"Neither did I. Well, I knew he had one, but she disappeared so long ago, everyone assumed she was dead. You can read the letter if you want to. It's in the top right-hand drawer of my desk."
Kate padded down the hallway and brought it back, three pages of cotton bond covered with strong, thick writing. What would a handwriting analyst make of that hand? she thought idly, and sat down on the edge of the bed to read it.
"My dear niece," it began. By the middle of the second page, Kate's face was crinkled up in amusement, and when she came to the end, she laughed aloud. She took a moment to look back over the peculiar document. "A twenty-four-karat loony, isn't she?" she said with a chuckle. "As if you'd jump at the chance to join an old lady you've never met out in the sticks. You could borrow one of Jon's flannel shirts to chop firewood in. That is a truly great letter - I especially like the idea of hiring a PI to gather information about a niece. The throwaway line about malaria is good, too." She retrieved her cold coffee and took a swallow.
"I'm going, Kate."
Kate looked at her for a long minute. "That isn't very funny, Lee."
"No joke. I decided last night."
"You decided last night. When last night?"
"Kate —"
"When? Was it before you decided to give me a taste of what it used to be like? Or after you found you could do it?"
"Don't, Kate."
"Don't what? Don't point out to you that insanity seems to run in your family? How can you even think about it?"
"It's what I need, Kate. I knew it as soon as I read the letter."
"Right, fine, next summer we'll go and visit your loony aunt Agatha, up on her island without any electricity. Next summer, when you can walk and climb stairs and drive the car."
"I need it now, Kate, not a year from now. Sweetheart, I know you don't understand, but I'm asking you to trust me. I need this. I'm suffocating, Kate." She was pleading now, this strong woman who hated to ask for anything. She even put out a hand to Kate's arm. "Kate, please try to understand. I just need to be on my own for a while."
Kate made a huge effort. "Lee, look. I realize progress is slow, and God knows how frustrating you must find it, but throwing up your hands and doing something crazy isn't the answer. If you think you're ready to be on your own, then okay, go on a retreat, hire a cabin in Carmel, or what about that place in Point Reyes where you had that workshop? You've had to learn to walk all over again, one small step at a time. Regaining your independence is the same thing: one step at a time, not jumping off a cliff. Write your aunt, tell her to bring her malaria down for a visit, and then when you've had a few tries at roughing it, go and visit her."
"That makes a lot of sense."
"Good."
"But I'm going now."
"Jesus Christ!" Kate shouted, and slammed her mug down on the bedside table so hard, it dented the wood and sent a spray of coffee to the ceiling. "What the hell kind of game are you playing here? It isn't like you to be so completely pigheaded. You're acting like a child."
"Okay, I'm a child, I'm crazy. While you're name-calling, don't forget 'cripple'. I'm a cripple, right? And I am, but not because my legs don't work and I sometimes pee my pants. I'm a cripple because I can't stand alone. Kate, your life has gone on, but you forget that I had plans for my life, too, plans that all depend on my being able to take care of myself. If I can't take care of myself, how could I —" She broke off, but Kate was too upset to pursue Lee's train of thought.
"Take care of yourself, then. Start cooking again. See more clients. Get back on track. But this…"
"I cannot stand by myself when I'm surrounded by people who want to protect me," Lee cried. "I have to be around someone hard, like Aunt Agatha seems to be. Someone who doesn't love me. I know it's crazy, Kate, but it's something I have to do. I have to try at least. I may only be able to stand it for two days and then scream for help, but I am going to try.
"Kate, don't you see? I want to have a life again. I want to have my independence. I want to have…" She threw back her head and looked defiantly at Kate. "I want to have a baby."
Kate sat stunned. They had talked about it, of course, before the shooting, it was a natural concern of any permanent couple. But Kate had never had any wish to bear a child, and Lee in a wheelchair - well, she hadn't thought…
"Is that what all this is about?"
"All what?"
Kate shrank back from Lee's dry-eyed glare. "I'm sorry, love, I didn't know you were still… interested."
"Because I'm in a wheelchair all my instincts have atrophied, all my desires and drives just vanished, is that it?"
"I didn't mean that, Lee."
"And you don't even get mad at me. Do you know how long it's been since you shouted at me? Eighteen months, that's how long. You pussyfoot around like I'm about to break, you and Jon. I can't breathe!" Her voice climbed until it tore at her throat and at Kate's heart. "I have to get out of here. I have to have some air, or I'm going to suffocate."
And so Kate traded leave days and indebted herself to her colleagues, and drove Lee north to Agatha's. She really had no choice, since she knew that if she refused, Lee would ask Jon. Or hitchhike.
She anticipated a long, tense journey, but to her surprise, as soon as the decision had been reached, Lee seemed to relax.
In the hospital bed, Kate's body, which had begun to worry the ICU nurse with its raised pulse, also relaxed as Kate relived the good part of the trip.
They drove north on the coastal highway, slow but beautiful, reaching the redwoods by the afternoon. They dutifully made the rounds of the memorial groves, oohing at the height of the trees, admiring the immense cross sections with their little flags to mark the birth of Julius Caesar and the crossing of the Mayflower, and wondering at the enormous bearlike figures carved out of redwood with chain saws, which loomed up at the side of the road with a myriad of other beasts and cowboys and figures of St. Francis around their knees. SASQUATCH COUNTRY proclaimed one of them, and BIGFOOT LIVES HERE read another.
They stayed the night in a run-down cabin surrounded by the ageless hush of Sequoia sempervirens, a quiet broken only by the fluting voices of children coming home from the nearby state park's campftre program and later by the huge juddering roars of the logging trucks gearing down two hundred feet from their pillows. At one in the morning, when Lee announced that she had counted forty-three of them since they turned off their lights, and expressed some concern that there might be no trees left if they didn't get an early start the next morning, Kate reassured her that the noise wasn't logging trucks, it was a Sasquatch with digestive problems, and Lee got the giggles and began to sputter childish jokes about Bigfart, and on that high note they fell asleep.