Mortal Danger

more than she had realized. However, it didn’t seem to be a problem, since they were both extremely health oriented and she didn’t think John would do anything in enough excess to damage his body. He liked wine, but most Californians did.
    Sometimes she saw bursts of inexplicable fury in John, not unlike his anger over his friend taking his parking space in her driveway. Kate blamed it on the times he’d had too much to drink; he attributed it to low blood sugar, fatigue, or some other problem that was out of his control. Once, when they still lived in San Diego, John took a hammer and smashed a ring he’d given her to bits. He put holes in the walls with his feet and his fists. And he was full of road rage, too, furious if another driver cut him off.
    But his tantrums faded away as quickly as they came.
     
    When the Brandens’ legal separation was a fait accompli, John moved in with Kate. Neither of them was anxious to get married, but they did foresee a bright future as friends, lovers, and partners. When his divorce was final, it seemed that they had smooth sailing ahead, and they really were going to make it together.
     
    With the divorce, John’s ex-wife and his younger daughter no longer worked at the Bayview Medical Center. His older daughter, Tamara, had taken over the clinic. Even though the Lakhvirs’ lawsuit was settled, John didn’t go back.
    Somehow, they had accomplished an almost tranquil transition, although John was insistent that he didn’t want to stay in his present situation; he had too many plans, and he wanted to travel with Kate, to enjoy life a little now that they were both in their forties.
    She was very happy living with him, working besidehim. There was a kind of magic in John that inspired other people, allowing them to see possibilities they hadn’t considered. As much as they had talked through long evenings, there was so much about him that she didn’t know. Although there were things in his past that he didn’t want to elaborate on, he occasionally gave her short scenarios about his years as a boy and younger man. He seemed to have worked and studied very hard to become the man she knew now.
    Kate knew that John’s father, for whom John was named, had died in 1986, but he didn’t care to speak about him much. A pall seemed to descend over John whenever she asked about his father, so she didn’t press him. His mother was elderly and ill, and lived close by in the San Diego area. She had lived with John and Sue, but of course they couldn’t expect John’s ex-wife to be responsible for taking care of his mother any longer.
    Kate liked John’s mother, and often brought her small gifts she picked up in the cities she flew to. Sometimes Kate brought to work the cozy slippers that the older woman had crocheted, which she would sell to the other flight attendants. That tickled John’s mother, and she accepted Kate as a member of her family.
    John was a devoted son and very considerate of his mother, who had a series of heart attacks. He visited her in her assisted-living apartment often, and he and Kate frequently took her out to dinner.
    When John’s mother died of her final heart attack in 1992, she left him a half million dollars in her will. John’s sister, Marilyn*, his only sibling, lived in the Point Loma area of San Diego. Kate had never met her—John and shehad been estranged for years. Kate wasn’t sure why, but John sometimes said she had betrayed him, turning him in to “some” authorities (Kate was never sure if it was the police or someone else) when he and his family had lived with Marilyn and her husband after they’d left Florida. He also said she and her girlfriends had humiliated him when he was only a boy, making him take his clothes off, tying him up, and laughing at him.
    But that was such a long time ago, and Kate suspected he might be confused about things that had happened when he was a child.
    With his inheritance from his mother, John finally had the freedom to travel and plan what he would do for the rest of his life. He’d closed down his practice at Bayview in 1993, Tamara had set up her own business, and John decided not to start another California clinic.
    He and Kate embarked on a long trip. They drove to Arizona to see her father. Then they went wherever the wind took them, heading up the Oregon coast and north along the Washington shoreline on the Pacific Ocean. In some places, now, the beaches became less welcoming and