Shadow Prey

like shit.”
    “Thanks,” Lucas said. He kissed her on the lips and eased himself into the bedside chair. “I got him more.”
    “Mmm,” she said. “The legend of Lucas Davenport grows another couple of inches.”
    “So how do you feel?” Lucas asked.
    “Not too bad, as long as I don’t laugh or sneeze,” Lily said. She looked tired, but not sick. “My ribs are messed up. They had me walking around today. It hurt a lot.”
    “How much longer will you be here?”
    Lily hesitated, then said, “I get out tomorrow. They’re going to brace me up. I’m taking Andretti’s plane to New York tomorrow afternoon.”
    Lucas frowned and sat back in the chair. “That’s pretty quick.”
    “Yes.” There was another silence, then Lily said, “I can’t help it.”
    Lucas looked down at her. “I think we have some unfinished business. Somehow.” He shrugged. There was another space of silence.
    “I don’t know,” she said finally.
    “David?” Lucas asked. “Do you love him?”
    “I must,” she said.
    A while later she said, “Will you get back with Jennifer?”
    Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s . . . kind of freaked out after what happened in the house. I’ll see her tomorrow. Maybe.”
    “Don’t come see me off,” Lily said. “I don’t know if I could handle things, if you and David were there at the same time.”
    “Okay,” Lucas said.
    “And could you . . .”
    “What?”
    “Could you leave?” she said, in a tiny, distant voice that squeaked toward despair. “If you stay any longer I’ll cry, and crying hurts . . . .”
    Lucas stood awkwardly, shuffled his feet, then leaned over and kissed her again. She caught his shirt in her hand, pulling him, and the kiss went on, fiercer, with heat, until suddenly she let go and instead of pulling him, pushed against his chest.
    “Get the fuck out of here, Davenport,” she said. “We can’t start this again, God damn it, get the fuck out of here.”
    “Lily . . .”
    “Lucas, please . . .”
    He nodded and took a breath, let it go. “See you.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He backed out of the hospital room, looking into her eyes until the swinging door flapped shut.
    At the nurses’ desk, he asked his friend what time Lily would check out. Ten o’clock, he was told, with an ambulance scheduled to drive to the St. Paul municipal airport, where she would be loaded into a private jet.
     
    Lucas drove out to the airport the next morning in his Ford four-by-four, and sat and watched as Lily was lifted from the ambulance and wheeled in a chair through the gate to the waiting jet. David bent over her, still wearing the blue seersucker suit, his hair rumpled in the wind. He looked like an academic. David.
    They had to carry Lily up the steps to the jet. As they picked her up, Lucas felt her eyes on him, but she never raised a hand. She looked at him for three seconds, five, and then was gone.
    The jet left and Lucas rolled out of the airport toward the Robert Street bridge.
     
    He talked to Jennifer that afternoon. She wanted to set up a visitation schedule, she said, so Lucas could see Sarah. Lucas said he wanted to talk. She asked if Lily was gone and Lucas said yes. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk, Jennifer said, but she would meet him. Not today, not tomorrow. Sometime soon. Next week, next month. She couldn’t forget about those last minutes at the house, when Shadow Love was dying, the baby was hurt, and Lucas wouldn’t let her call . . . . She was trying to forget, but she couldn’t . . . .
     
    That was Thursday. He went to the games group that night, and played. Elle asked him about the shotgun. It was gone, he said. He hadn’t felt its touch since the shootout. He felt fine, he said, but he thought he might be lying.
    Everything should have been fine, but it didn’t feel quiteright. He felt as though he were in the last hours of a prolonged journey on speed, in the mental territory where everything has more contrast than it does in real life, where buildings overhang in a threatening way, where cars move too fast, where people talk too loud, where sideways looks in bars can mean trouble. That lasted through the weekend, and began to fade early in the next week.
     
    A little more than three weeks after the shootout, on a Saturday afternoon, Lucas sat in an easy chair and watched an Iowa-Notre Dame football game. Notre Dame was losing and no amount of prayer would