River’s End

through a strange world where the light glowed eerily green and nature came in odd, primitive shapes.
    Even the sounds and smells were foreign, potent and ripe. Dampness clung to the air. He’d have been more comfortable in a dark alley in East L.A. He caught himself glancing over his shoulder and wishing for the comforting weight of his weapon.
    “You ever get lost in here?” he asked Olivia.
    “No, but people do sometimes. You should always carry a compass, and stay on the marked trails if you’re a novice.” She tipped up her face to study his. “I guess you’re an urban hiker.”
    He grinned at the term. “You got that right.”
    She smiled, and the humor made her eyes glow. “Aunt Jamie said that’s what she is now. But you can get lost in the city, too, can’t you?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, you can.”
    She looked away now, slowing her pace. “It was nice of you to come. I didn’t think you would. I wasn’t sure you’d even remember me.”
    “I remember you, Livvy.” He touched her arm lightly, felt the stiffness and control a twelve-year-old shouldn’t have. “I’ve thought about you, wondered how you were.”
    “My grandparents are great. I love living here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. People come here for vacation, but I get to live here all the time.” She said it all very fast, as if she needed to get out everything good before she turned a corner.
    “You have a nice family,” she began.
    “Thanks. I think I’ll probably keep them.”
    Her smile came and went quickly. “I have a nice family, too. But I ... That’s a nurse log,” she pointed out as nerves crept back into her voice. “When a tree falls, or branches do, the forest makes use of them. Nothing’s wasted here. That’s a Douglas fir, and you can see the sprouts of western hemlock growing out of it, and the spread of moss, the ferns and mushrooms. When something dies here, it gives other things a chance to live.”
    She looked up at him again, her eyes a shimmering amber behind a sheen of tears. “
    Why did my mother die?”
    “I can’t answer that, Livvy. I can never really answer the why, and it’s the hardest part of my job.”
    “It was a waste, wasn’t it? A waste of something good and beautiful. She was good and beautiful, wasn’t she?”
    “Yes, yes she was.”
    With a nod, she began to walk again and didn’t speak until she was certain she’d fought back the tears. “But my father wasn’t. He couldn’t have been good and beautiful, not really. But she fell in love with him, and she married him.”
    “Your father had problems.”
    “Drugs,” she said flatly. “I read about it in newspapers my grandmother has put away in our attic. He took drugs and he killed her. He couldn’t have loved her. He couldn’t have loved either of us.”
    “Livvy, life isn’t always that simple, that black-and-white.”
    “If you love something, you take care of it. You protect it. If you love enough, you’d die to protect it.” She spoke softly, but her voice was fierce. “He says he didn’t do it. But he did. I saw him. I can still see him if I let myself.” She pressed her lips together. “He would have killed me, too, if I hadn’t gotten away.”
    “I don’t know.” How did he answer this child, with her quiet voice and old eyes. “It’s possible.”
    “You talked to him. After.”
    “Yes. That’s part of my job.”
    “Is he crazy?”
    Frank opened his mouth, closed it again. There were no pat answers here. “The court didn’t think so.”
    “But did you?”
    Frank let out a sigh. He could see how they’d circled around now, see parts of the roofline, the glint of the windows of the inn. “Livvy, I think he was weak, and the drugs played into that weakness. They made him believe things that weren’t true and do things that weren’t right. Your mother separated from him to protect you as much, probably more, than herself. And, I think, hoping it would push him into getting help.”
    But it didn’t, Olivia thought. It didn’t make him get help, it didn’t protect anyone.
    “If he wasn’t living there anymore, why was he in the house that night?”
    “The evidence indicated she let him in.”
    “Because she still loved him.” She shook her head before Frank could answer. “It’s all right. I.understand. Will they keep him in jail forever?”
    There are so few forevers, Frank thought. “He was given a sentence of twenty years to life, the first fifteen without possibility