Free Down River by John Hart

apologize.”
    She stood in front of me, and her face was the softest I’d seen since my return. “It’s complicated, Adam. For five years, all I’ve had is the job. I take it seriously. I’m good at it but it’s not all good. Not all the time.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You get isolated. You see shadows.” She shrugged, dug deeper for the explanation. “Even the good guys will lie to a cop. Eventually, you get used to it. Then you start to expect it.” She was struggling. “I know it’s not right. I don’t like it either, but it’s who I am. It’s what I became when you left.”
    “You never doubted me, Robin, not even during the worst of it.”
    She reached for my hand. I let her take it.
    “She was so innocent,” I said. I spoke of Grace.
    “She’ll get over this, Adam. People get over worse.”
    But I was already shaking my head. “I’m not talking about what happened today. I’m talking about when I left. When she was a child. It was like a light came off of her. That’s what Dolf used to say.”
    “How so?”
    “He said that most people walk in light and dark. That’s the way the world usually works. But some people carry the light with them. Grace was like that.”
    “She’s not the child you remember, Adam. She hasn’t been for a long time.”
    There was something in Robin’s voice. “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “About six months ago, a state trooper caught her doing one-twenty down the interstate at two in the morning on a stolen motorcycle. She wasn’t even wearing a helmet.”
    “Was she drunk?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Was she prosecuted?”
    “Not for stealing the bike.”
    “Why not?”
    “It was Danny Faith’s bike. I guess he didn’t know that she’s the one who took it. He reported it stolen but wouldn’t press charges. They locked her up, but the D.A. dropped the case. Dolf hired a lawyer to handle the speeding charge. She lost her license.”
    I could picture the bike, a big Kawasaki that Danny had had forever. Grace would be very small on it, but I could see her, too: the speed, the torrent of noise, and her hair straight out behind her. Like she’d looked the first time she’d ridden my father’s horse.
    Fearless.
    “You don’t know her,” I said.
    “A hundred and twenty miles an hour, Adam. Two in the morning. No helmet. It took the patrolman five miles to catch up with her.”
    I thought of Grace now, damaged in one of those antiseptic rooms behind me. I rubbed at my eyes. “What am I supposed to feel, Robin? You’ve seen this before.”
    “Anger. Emptiness. I don’t know.”
    “How can you not know?”
    She shrugged. “It’s never been someone I love.”
    “And Grace?”
    Her eyes were impregnable. “I’ve not known Grace for some time, Adam.”
    I was silent, thinking of Grace’s words on the dock.
    Who else cared about me?
    “Are you okay?” Robin asked.
    I was not, not even close. “If I could find the guy that did this, I’d kill him.” I showed her my eyes. “I would kill that motherfucker dead.”
    Robin looked around; no one was close. “Don’t say that, Adam. Not here. Not ever.”
     
     
       Grantham finished his phone call and met us at the hospital door. We walked in together. Dolf and my father were speaking to the attending physician. Grantham interrupted them.
    “Can we see her yet?”
    The doctor was a young, earnest-looking man with black-framed glasses and a thin nose. He seemed small and prematurely bent; he held a clipboard against his chest as if it could armor him from the injuries that surrounded him. His voice was surprisingly firm.
    “Physically, she’s sound enough. But I don’t know that she’ll be responsive. She has not really said anything since she came in, except for once in the first hour. She asked for somebody named Adam.”
    People turned as one: my father, Dolf, Robin, and Detective Grantham. Eventually, the doctor looked at me as well. “Are you Adam?” he asked. I nodded, and my