Page 73 of Hungry Like the Wolf

Magda rose to her feet and skirted the coffee table to stand in front of Nadja. She wrapped her arms tightly around Nadja’s waist, bringing her close against her own body. The dam broke loose then, Nadja’s tears falling fast and hot onto Magda’s shoulder as Nadja clung to her.

“You’re so brave, my love,” Magda crooned. “Even when you’re scared shitless.”

“I’m not scared,” Nadja muttered into the wool of Magda’s sweater.

Magda pulled back, holding Nadja’s shoulders in her gnarled hands, and looked her in the eye. “Of course you are. That’s why you left him. You’re scared of having everything only to have it taken away from you.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Nadja asked, wiping at her tears with the backs of her hands.

“Oh, sure. Fear is human. It’s more than human, actually. It’s animal. It’s the most basic instinct we have. Even more basic than love. It’s the quickest to rise within us.”

Nadja nodded. She was a therapist, for gods’ sake. She knew about human behavior.

“But fear makes us make stupid choices, honey.”

Nadja opened her mouth to argue but stopped when Magda placed a gentle finger against her lips.

“Nope. Stop talking. I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to hear it. Okay?”

Nadja nodded, Magda’s finger still pressing against her lips. Magda dropped her hand.

“You made a stupid choice because you got scared. Fortunately for you, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

“It’s over, Magda,” Nadja said, her voice hoarse from crying and shouting, from life.

But Magda only smiled. She turned and picked up the tea saucer with the sleeping Walter and tucked both carefully into the bottom of her purse. She reached for her coat and slipped it over her arms before walking to the door. Nadja felt frozen, as if her feet had fused with the floor.

Magda paused at the door to the office, her hand on the knob, and turned to Nadja.

“I missed you, honey. It’s been you and me for a long time.”

That brought a small smile to Nadja’s face, something that would have felt impossible had she said anything else.

“It’s still you and me,” Nadja said.

Magda smiled sadly and shook her head. “Come on, honey. You can drive me home.”

Nadja nodded and followed Magda out into the night, the parking lot illuminated by the biggest full moon she’d ever seen, so heavy and huge in the sky that it looked like it could swallow her whole.

She took Magda home and drove to her own house, a little bungalow on a quiet street. Even though the air was cold, she sat on the front porch, looking at the moon, until it rose so high that she couldn’t see it anymore without leaving the safe cover of her porch, until the shadows it cast were short and deep.

Only then did she unlock her house and go inside, surprised by the silence, even though her house had always been silent. Dust motes floated in moonlight from the window, and she sat down heavily on her small sectional couch, wishing with all her might that it was an old wood frame sofa instead and that Robbie would walk in the door and tell her that she’d made a mistake.

But she hadn’t and he didn’t.

And so, with an emptiness in her chest that was almost painful, she laid down on the couch, dragged a crocheted afghan over herself, and did the only thing that she could do.

She slept.

CHAPTER 31

Everything hurt.

Robbie couldn’t remember the last time his body ached like this. Maybe that last fight before he left the MMA circuit, where he’d gotten his ass literally handed to him with his opponent’s compliments. But even that hadn’t been like this.

His bones and muscles and tendons were angry and sore. JJ said that this would get better every shift, that muscle memory would develop and he’d be able to flip back and forth with no more discomfort than a sneeze.

Growing pains, he’d called them. Like Robbie was twelve and about to hit that big growth spurt.