Page 45 of Torch Songs

In this case, all their teenaged children—and Guthrie couldn’t keep up with who was who—as well as Mr. Larkin’s coworkers and the entire sheriff’s department had put their brains together for a way to help search and rescue get everybody out of a pit designed to trap people at the bottom.

On the one hand, it boggled the mind. It defied emotion. Guthriecould notwrap his brain around it.

On the other, Tad—the man who had made love to him and cared for him and shown up at his shows and made him laugh and… and given himhope—was injured at the bottom of a black hole, looking up at the stars, not knowing that Guthrie and April had come all this way to see about getting him out.

Guthrie had to give his boy hope.

Livvy, as Maureen had called Olivia, directed Guthrie to a neat little house at the end of a long drive. It was surrounded by forest, but it had a lawn and planted flowers that were fragrant even in the cool dark of the woods. There was a second story, probably for bedrooms, but the bottom half was ranch style, and as Livvy detailed all the things wrong with the place—the absolutely impractical fireplace, the old kitchen, the carpeted stairs—all he could hear from her was how much she loved it here, even though she and her husband lived with Berto and his brother a couple of miles away.

Thiswas the house she’d grown up in.Thishouse was where she knew she’d be safe. The other house was what she was building into a home. He hadn’t known the girl an hour, but this much he knew.

And this house had three cats and an enormous blond dog that full-out body hugged her when they walked in the door.

“Nice,” Guthrie said, squatting down to pet an enormous ginger tom who had slipped in with the other cats after Livvy was done making out with the dog and let him out to pee.

“You have a cat?” she asked.

He grunted and changed his attention to a tiny calico.

“No.” The little darling let him smooth back her whiskers, and he remembered his and Tad’s conversation about cats and wanted to cry. “I got a day job, and I take gigs and sleep on people’s couches and shit. It’s… it’s no damned good for having a cat.”

“Or a boyfriend,” she said, voice quiet, and he had to give her points for observation.

“Or a boyfriend,” he agreed.

“But you came,” she said.

“I did,” he said, mostly to the third cat, a pudgy torti who demanded his attention. “He was supposed to show up to my gig last night, but he called to say he couldn’t make it. This morninghis sister showed up at my work just… freaked the fuck out. Said something about a shooting, and she couldn’t get her brother on the phone and…. And I walked out on the best day job I ever had. Told them I’d be out for a few days, and we drove up here.”

Boy, cats were great. Didn’t demand emotional commitment, didn’t care that you were baring your soul—or that you’d probably just lost your job.

“Surprised yourself?” she asked, sounding like she’d been there.

“Yeah.” Oh fuck. The day was crashing down on him. “I-I didn’t think I was there yet. Didn’t think I’deverbe there. And suddenly….”

“Seeing his face was the one thing that was going to keep your world from turning black,” she said, voice laden with compassion, and he glanced up at her.

“Yeah,” he said again. “I….” He stood, not ready for this conversation. “Tell me what to get out of the garage. I can throw it in the back of the truck and we can make them comfy for the night.”

“Fair,” she said with a sigh. She was exhausted—any fool could see that. But what she said next made him love her with all his heart. “I’ll go through their drawers for some old clothes. How big’s your guy? Larx is mid-sized, Aaron’s a little bigger.”

He didn’t even think about it. The plaid flannel hoodie that had kept him sane—Tad’sshirt that he’d hugged around his body all day—slid off his shoulders, the shock of the cool night almost painful. Tad would know this shirt. He’d know Guthrie was there.

“Put this in the basket,” he said. It was time to get cooking.

She kept him on his toes, showed him where the sleeping bags were, told him what to grab while she was packing. It was as cool in the mountains as it had been in San Rafael, without the constant ocean wind. Everybody who’d gone down into thecanyon had been wearing short sleeves and cargo shorts or khakis, and a lot of that had been bled on. Or, Olivia told him, baffled, somehow completely lost.

“My father was reportedly wearing half a shirt,” she said as she came out to the garage with a flat of water and a case of Gatorade, which she set on the work counter while she took a breath. “I… I have no idea why that is. Why would you be at the bottom of a gravel pit where the earth itself wants to kill you with only half a shirt? I… I’m boggled.”

“He was wearing a whole shirt on the news-blog footage,” Guthrie said. He’d gathered it had been her father in the picture, wearing the makeshift harness. She said that’s how they all knew he was concussed; apparently he was a runner and insanely fit, and he’d be running up the side of the canyon wall if something hadn’t been wrong with him.

“Iknow!” she said, throwing her hands in the air, all exasperation. “I have the pictures on myphone. And now in spite of all the worry, I want to know. What in the hell did he do with the bright yellowStar WarsT-shirt I gave him for his birthday?”

Guthrie chuckled then, liking her very much. “Go do what you’re doing,” he told her. “Unless there’s anything you all can’t bear to part with, I’ll finish up here.”

“You could burn the garage down,” she told him rashly, “as long as my dad and Aaron get home. You… you have to see them together. Like a team. They’re teaching Elton and me what it means to parent, and they’redoing it to uswhile we get ready to have our own squid.” Her hand rubbed her stomach absentmindedly. “Ugh. I’ve got to hurry. I need to eat and take my meds and….”

“Blood pressure?” he asked, suddenly ready to chivvy the girl to the cozy living roomimmediately. She was at the tail end of her pregnancy.So muchcould be going on right now.

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