The Face of Death Read Online Free PDF

DOING, SMOKY?”
    Elaina is asking me this. She showed up about twenty minutes ago, and after going through the requisite hugs with Bonnie, she’d maneuvered me off so that we were sitting alone in my living room. Her gaze is frankness and kindness and klieg lights. She faces me head-on, piercing me with those brown eyes. “No bullshit allowed,” that look says.
    “Mostly good, some bad,” I say without hesitation. Being less than honest with Elaina never occurs to me. She is one of those rare people, the ones who are kind and strong at the same time.
    She softens her gaze. “Tell me about the bad.”
    I stare back at her, trying to find words for my new demon, the devil that romps through my mind while I sleep. I used to dream about Joseph Sands, he chuckled and chortled and raped me again and again, killed my family with a wink and a smile. Sands has faded; the nightmares now center around Bonnie. I see her sitting on a madman’s lap, a knife at her throat. I see her lying on a white rug, a bullet hole through her forehead, a crimson-angel spreading beneath her.
    “Fear. It’s the fear.”
    “What about?”
    “Bonnie.”
    Her forehead clears. “Ah. You’re afraid something’s going to happen to her.”
    “More like terrified. That she’s never going to talk and end up nuts. That I’m not going to be there when she needs me.”
    “And?” Elaina asks, nudging me. Pushing me to put the real terror, the guy at the bottom of that dark barrel, into words.
    “That she’s going to die, okay?” It comes out sounding snappish. I regret it. “Sorry.”
    She smiles to show me it’s fine. “All things considered, I think your fear makes sense, Smoky. You lost a child. You know it
can
happen. For goodness’ sake, Bonnie almost died in front of you.” A gentle touch, her hand on mine. “Your fear makes sense.”
    “But it makes me feel weak,” I reply, miserable. “Fear is weakness. Bonnie needs me to be strong.”
    I sleep with a loaded gun in my nightstand. The house is alarmed up the wazoo. The dead bolt on the front door would take an intruder an hour to drill through. All of it helps, but none of it dispels.
    Elaina gives me a sharp look and shakes her head once. “No. Bonnie needs you to be
present.
She needs you to love her. She needs a mother, not a superhero. Real people are messy and complicated and generally inconvenient, but at least they are there, Smoky.”
    Elaina is the wife of one of my team members, Alan. She’s a beautiful Latin woman, all gentle curves and poet’s eyes. Her true beauty comes from her heart; she has a fierce gentleness to her that says “Mom” and “Safe” and “Love.” Not in some silly, Pollyanna way—Elaina’s goodness is not sappy-sweet. It’s inexorable and undeniable and full of certainty.
    Last year she was diagnosed with stage-two colon cancer. She’d had surgery to remove the tumor, followed by radiation and chemo-therapy. She’s doing well, but she’s lost the hair that had always been so thick and unstoppable. She wears this indignity the way I’ve learned to wear my scars: uncovered and on display. Her head is shaved bald and isn’t hidden by a hat or bandanna. I wonder if the pain of this loss hits her out of the blue sometimes, the way the absence of Matt and Alexa used to hit me.
    Probably not. For Elaina, hair-loss would take a backseat to the joy of being alive; that kind of straightforwardness of purpose is a part of her power.
    Elaina came to see me after Sands took away my family. She barreled into my hospital room, shoved the nurse aside, and swooped down on me with her arms wide. Those arms captured and enfolded me like an angel’s wings. I shattered inside them, weeping rivers against her chest for what seemed like forever. She was my mother in that moment; I will always love her for it.
    She squeezes my hand. “The way you feel makes sense, Smoky. The only way you could be free of fear altogether would be to not love Bonnie the way