Winter Garden

She laughed. “Right. ”

“You ready to go?”

“I think I got what I needed, yeah. ”

“Does this mean we can go lie by a pool for a week?”

“There’s nothing I’d rather do. ” She put her camera equipment away and repacked their gear while Danny spoke to the village elder and thanked him for the pictures. She set up her satellite phone on the desert floor, unfolding the silver wings and positioning it until she found a signal.

As she expected, the magazine offices were closed, so she left a message for her editor and promised to call from the Chobe River Lodge in Zambia. Then she and Danny climbed back into the busted-up old Land Rover, drove through the lunar landscape of Kaokoveld, and hopped on a plane headed south. By nightfall, they were at the Chobe River Lodge, on their own private deck, watching the sun set over a herd of elephants on the opposite shore. They were being served gin and tonics while a hundred yards away lions were hunting in the tall grass.

In a bikini that had seen better days, Nina stretched out on the luxurious two-person lounge chair and closed her eyes. The night smelled of murky water and dry grass and mud baked to stone by the unforgiving sun. For the first time in weeks, her pixie-cut black hair was clean and there was no red dirt under her fingernails. Pure luxury.

She heard Danny coming through their room toward the deck. He took an almost imperceptible pause before each step, a tiny favoring of the right leg, which had taken a bullet in Angola. He pretended it didn’t bother him, told people there was no pain, but Nina knew about the pills he swallowed and the way he sometimes couldn’t find a comfortable position in which to sleep. When she massaged his body, she put extra effort into that leg, although he didn’t ask her to, and she didn’t admit that she’d done it.

“Here you go,” he said, putting two glasses onto the teak table beside her.

She tilted her face up to thank him and noticed several things at once: he hadn’t brought a gin and tonic. Instead, he’d put down a straight shot so big it was practically a tumblerful of tequila. He’d forgotten the salt, and worst of all, he wasn’t smiling.

She sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“Maybe you should take a drink first. ”

When an Irishman told you to take a drink first, there was bad news coming.

He sat down beside her on the lounger. She eased sideways to make room for him.

The stars were out now, and in the pale silvery glow she could see his sharp features and hollow cheeks, his blue eyes and curly hair. She realized in that moment, when he looked so sad, how much he laughed and smiled, even when the sun was broiling or the dust was choking or the gunshots were exploding in the air. He could always smile.

Except now he wasn’t.

He handed her a smallish yellow envelope. “Telegram. ”

“Did you read it?”

“Course not. But it can’t be good news, now, can it?”

Journalists and producers and photojournalists the world over knew about telegrams. It was how your family delivered bad news, even in this satellite phone and Internet age. Her hands were unsteady as she reached for the envelope. Her first thought was, Thank God, when she saw that it had come from Sylvie, but that relief died as she read on.

NINA.

YOUR FATHER HAS HAD A HEART ATTACK.

MEREDITH SAYS IT LOOKS BAD.

SYLVIE.

She looked up at Danny. “It’s my dad. . . . I need to go now—”

“Impossible, love,” he said gently. “The first flight out of here is at six. I’ll get us tickets to Seattle from Johannesburg. Is it best to drive from there?”

“Us?”

“Aye. I want to be there for you, Nina. Is that so terrible?”

She didn’t know how to respond to that, what to say. Relying on people for comfort had never felt natural to her. The last thing she wanted was to give someone the power to hurt her. Self-preservation was the one thing she’d learned from her mother. So she did what she always did at times like these: she reached down for the buttons on his pants. “Take me to bed, Daniel Flynn. Get me through this night. ”

Interminable was the word that came to mind to describe the wait, but that only made Meredith think terminal, which made her think death, which brought up all the emotions she was trying to suppress. Her usual coping mechanism—keeping busy—wasn’t working for her now, and she’d tried. She’d buried herself in insurance information, researched heart attacks and survival, and come up with a list of the best cardiologists in the country. The second she put her pen down or looked away from the screen, her grief came rushing back. Tears were a constant pressure behind her eyes. So far, though, she’d kept them from falling. Crying would be its own defeat and she refused to give up.