Black Hills

since I was working two jobs if I could get the extra work, and angling for overtime when I could get it. But that wasn’t why I didn’t come back more than I did. I sold the bike because I couldn’t afford it. I sold blood to make rent some months.”
    “For God’s sake, Coop, if things were that bad why didn’t you—”
    “Tap my grandparents? Because they’d already given me a start, and I wasn’t going to take more money from them.”
    “You could’ve come home. You—”
    “Come back here a failure, with barely enough to pay for a bus ticket? I needed to make myself into something, and you should understand that. There should’ve been money, a cut from my trust, when I turned twenty-one. I needed it, to get a decent place to live, to have a breather so I could work on the job and make that mark. My father tied it up. He was so pissed that I’d gone against his decisions, his plan for me. I had some money, what my grandparents gave me—what was left of it—my savings. He got my accounts frozen.”
    “How?”
    “It’s what he does. He knows people, he knows the system. Add that to the fact I’d screwed up in college, tossing money around like it was confetti. That’s my fault, nobody else’s, but I was young, stupid, in debt, and he had me by the balls. He figured I’d fall in line.”
    “Are you telling me your father cut you off financially, cut you off from even what was yours, because he wanted you to be a lawyer?”
    “No.” Maybe she’d never understand. “He did it because he wanted control, because he wouldn’t—can’t—tolerate anyone defying that control.”
    Since she was listening, Coop eased back. “Money’s a weapon, and he knows how to use it. He’d release some of the funds if I . . . well, he had a list of conditions, and it doesn’t matter now. I had to get a lawyer, and it took a lot of time and money. So even when I got what was mine, I owed a lot of it in legal fees. I couldn’t let you come to New York and see the way I was living back then. I needed to put everything I had into the job. I needed to make detective, to prove I was good enough. And, Lil, you were flying. Getting articles published, traveling, making the dean’s list. You were amazing.”
    “You should’ve told me. I had a right to know what was going on.”
    “And if I had? You’d have wanted me to come back, and maybe I would have. With nothing. I’d’ve hated it. And I’d have blamed you sooner or later. Or you’d have given it all up and come to New York. And we’d have hated each other sooner. If I’d told you, Lil, if I’d ask you to stick with me until I made something, there wouldn’t be a Chance Wildlife Refuge. You wouldn’t be who you are now. Neither would I.”
    “You made all the decisions.”
    “I’ll cop to that. You agreed with them at the time.”
    “I said I did because all I had left was pride.”
    “Then you should understand that’s all I had.”
    “You had me.”
    He wanted to touch her, just his fingertips on her face, something to smooth away the hurt in her eyes. But it wasn’t the way.
    “I needed to be someone, for myself. I needed something to be proud of. I spent the first twenty years of my life wanting my father to love me, to be proud of me. Just like my mother, I guess. He’s got a way of making you want that approval, then withholding it so you want it more, and feel . . . less, because it never really comes. You don’t know what that’s like.”
    “No, I don’t.” She saw, so clearly, the boy she’d first met. Those eyes, those sad and mad eyes.
    “I never knew what it was like to have someone care about me, for me, feel pride in me for anything until I came out here that summer to stay with my grandparents. After that, in some ways, it was even more important to get it from my own parents. From my father most of all. But I was never going to get it.”
    He shrugged that off, something over, something no longer important. “Realizing that changed things. Changed me. Maybe I did get harder, Lil, but I started going after what I wanted, not what he wanted. I was a good cop, and that mattered. When I couldn’t be a cop anymore, I built up a business, and I was a good investigator. It was never about the money, though let me tell you it’s damn, fucking hard not to have any, to be afraid you won’t make the rent the second month running.”
    She stared out over the canyon where the rocks rose in silent power toward the