I was about to break the silence by saying something like “I can see where Sam got his reading habit” when Beck said, almost apologetically, “When you spend a lot of time inside, you do a lot of reading.”
I remembered, then, abruptly, what Sam had told me about Beck: This was his last year as a human. He would never read these books again. My words were stolen from me, and then I just looked at Beck and managed, stupidly, “I love books.”
He smiled, like he knew. Then he looked at Isabel, who was craning her neck as if Jack must be stuffed on one of the shelves. “Jack’s probably in the other room, playing video games,” Beck said.
Isabel followed Beck’s gaze to the doorway. “Will he tear out my throat if I go in there?”
Beck shrugged. “No more than usual, I’d think. That’s the warmest room in the house, and I think he feels more comfortable in there. Though he still changes every so often. Just pay attention.”
It was interesting how he talked about Jack—more animal than human. As if he were advising Isabel on how to approach the gorillas at the zoo. After Isabel had vanished into the other room, Beck gestured toward one of the two squashy red chairs in the room. “Have a seat.”
I was glad to settle down into one of the chairs. It smelled of Beck and a few other wolves, but mostly of Sam. It was so easy to imagine him down here, curled in this spot, reading and developing an obnoxiously large vocabulary. I rested my head against the side of the chair to pretend I was curled in Sam’s arms and turned to look at Beck, who sat down in the chair opposite. Not properly, but crashed back into it with his legs kicked out. He looked tired. “I’m sort of surprised Sam kept you a secret all this time.”
“Are you?”
He shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t be. I didn’t tell him about my wife.”
“He knew. He told me about her.”
Beck laughed, short and fond. “I shouldn’t be surprised about that, either. Keeping a secret from Sam was impossible. Not to be cliché, but he could read people like a book.”
We were both referring to him in past tense, like he was dead. “Do you think I’ll ever see him again?”
His face was faraway, unreadable. “I think this year was his last. I really do. I know it’s mine. I don’t know why he got so few years. That’s just not normal. I mean, it varies, but I was bitten a little over twenty years ago.”
“Twenty?”
Beck nodded. “In Canada. I was twenty-eight, a rising star at my firm, and I was hiking on vacation.”
“What about the rest of them? Where are they from?”
“From all over. When I heard that there were wolves in Minnesota, I thought there was a good chance they could be like me. So I went looking, found out I was right, and Paul took me under his wing. Paul’s—”
“The black wolf.”
He nodded. “Do you want coffee? I could murder for coffee, if you don’t mind the expression.”
I was intensely grateful. “That would be wonderful. If you point me in the direction of the pot, I’ll make it.” He pointed it out, hidden in a cranny between the shelves, next to a tiny refrigerator. “And you can keep talking.”
He sounded humored. “What about?”
“The pack. What it’s like, being a wolf. Sam. Why you changed Sam.” I paused, coffee filter in hand. “Yes. That one. I want to know that one in particular.”
Beck crumpled his face in his hand. “God, the worst one. I changed Sam because I was a selfish bastard without a soul.”
I measured coffee grounds. I heard the regret in his voice, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook. “That’s not a reason.”
Deep sigh. “I know. Jen—my wife—had just died. She was a terminal cancer patient when we met, so I knew it was going to happen, but I was young and stupid and thought maybe a miracle would happen and we’d live happily ever after. Anyway. No miracle. I was depressed. I thought about killing myself, but the funny thing about having wolf in you is that suicide doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Did you ever notice that animals don’t kill themselves on purpose?”
I hadn’t. I made a note of it.
“Anyway, I was in Duluth in the summer, and I saw Sam with his parents. God, this sounds awful, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t like that. Jen and I talked all the time about having kids, even though we both knew it would never happen. Hell, she was only supposed to live for another eight months. How could she have had a baby? Anyway, I saw Sam. There he was, with his yellow eyes, just like a real wolf, and I was totally obsessed with the idea. And—you don’t have to tell me, Grace, I know this was wrong—but I saw him with his silly, vapid parents, them just as clueless as a pair of pigeons, and I thought, I could be better for him. I could teach him more.”
I didn’t say anything, and Beck leaned his forehead into his hand again. His voice was centuries old. I didn’t say anything, but he groaned. “God, I know, Grace. I know. But you know the stupid thing? I actually like who I am. I mean, not at first. It was a curse. But it came to be like someone who loves summer and winter. Does that make sense? I knew that eventually I’d lose myself, but I came to terms with that a long time ago. I thought Sam would get over it, too.”
I found the mugs in a little cubby above the coffeemaker and pulled two of them out. “But he didn’t. Milk?”
“A little. Not too much.” He sighed. “It’s hell for him. I made a personal hell for him. He needs that sort of self-awareness to feel alive, and when he loses that and becomes a wolf…it’s hell. He is absolutely the best person I’ve ever met in the world, and I absolutely ruined him. I have regretted it every day for years.”
He might’ve deserved it, but I couldn’t let him get any lower. I brought him a mug and sat back down. “He loves you, Beck. He may hate being a wolf, but he loves you. And I have to tell you, it’s killing me to sit here with you, because everything about you reminds me of him. If you admire him, it’s because you made him who he is.”
Beck looked strangely vulnerable then, his hands wrapped around the coffee mug, looking at me through the steam above it. He was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “The regret will be one of the things I’ll be glad to lose.”
I frowned at him. Sipped the coffee. “Will you forget everything?”
“You don’t forget anything. You just see it differently. Through a wolf’s brain. Some things become completely unimportant when you’re a wolf. Other things are emotions wolves just don’t feel. We lose those. But the most important things—we can hold on to those. Most of us.”
Like love. I thought of Sam watching me, before we had met as humans, and me watching back. Falling in love, as impossible as it should’ve been. My gut squeezed, horribly, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak.
“You were bitten,” Beck said. I’d heard this before, this question without a question mark.
I nodded. “A little more than six years ago.”
“But you never changed.”
I related the story of getting locked in the car, and then explained the theory of a possible cure Isabel and I had developed. Beck sat quietly for a long moment, rubbing a small circle in the side of his mug with one of his fingers, staring blankly at the books on the wall.
Finally, he nodded. “It might work. I can see how it might work. But I think you’d have to be human when you got infected for it to work.”
“That’s what Sam said. He said he thought if you were killing the wolf, you shouldn’t be a wolf when you were infected.”
Beck’s eyes were still unfocused as he thought. “God, but it’s risky. You couldn’t treat the meningitis until after you were sure the fever had killed the wolf. Bacterial meningitis has an incredible fatality rate, even if you catch it early and treat it from the beginning.”
“Sam told me he’d risk dying for the cure. Do you think he meant it?”
“Absolutely,” Beck said, without hesitation. “But he’s a wolf. And likely to stay that way for the rest of his life.”
I dropped my eyes to my half-empty mug, noticing the way the liquid changed color just at the very edges of the rim. “I was thinking we could bring him to the clinic, just to see if he’d change in the heat of the building.”
There was a pause, but I didn’t look up to see what expression Beck wore during it. He said gently, “Grace.”
I swallowed, still looking at the coffee. “I know.”
“I’ve watched wolves for twenty-odd years. It’s predictable. We get to the end…and it’s the end.”
I felt like a stubborn child. “But he changed this year when he shouldn’t have, right? When he was shot, he made himself human.”
Beck took a long drink of coffee. I heard his fingers tapping the side of the mug. “And to save you. He made himself human to save you. I don’t know how he did it. Or why. But he did. I always thought it must have had something to do with adrenaline, tricking the body into thinking it was warm. I know he’s tried to do it other times, too, but he never managed it.”
I closed my eyes and let myself imagine Sam carrying me. I could almost see it, smell it, feel it.
“Hell.” Beck didn’t say anything else for a long time. Then, again: “Hell. It’s what he would want. He’d want to try.” He drained his coffee. “I’ll help you. What were you thinking? Drugging him for the trip?”
I had been thinking about it, in fact, ever since Isabel had called. “I think we’ll have to, right? He won’t stand it otherwise.”
“Benadryl,” Beck said, matter-of-fact. “I’ve got some upstairs. It’ll make him groggy and put him enough out of it that he won’t go crazy in the car.”
“The only thing I couldn’t work out was how to get him here. I haven’t seen him since the accident.” I was cautious with my words. I couldn’t let myself get hopeful. I just couldn’t.