Page 16 of Caution to the Wind

Over the lullaby of her voice, Dad’s angry words rose like a tidal swell. “I told Daiyu you weren’t fit to take care of our Mei, but she assured me you were a doctor and well-respected.” His eyes cast over Henning with obvious suspicion, eyeing the overlong hair, the tattoo on the inside of his wrist revealed by his rolled-up cuffs. “Mei even mentioned you have a connection to that godawful Fallen Motorcycle Club.”

“Brothers,” he corrected automatically, too weary to be caught up in Dad’s passion. “Men I met in the sandbox.”

Dad bristled. “Where was your training last night, then? How could you have let this happen to our little girl? Have you considered your affiliation with them could be the reason my daughter wasattacked?”

“Dad!” The shout tore from me with more force than I’d known I could muster. My ribs ached fiercely, and for a moment after, I thought I’d throw up from the pain. Beside me, Cleo finally jerked into wakefulness, curling into me instinctively. “Don’t you dare!”

My voice was hysterical, thready with panic and fury so formidable I felt it steam up my throat from the inferno in my belly. It made my ribs and belly ache, my blood pounding too hard in the broken bones in my finger and foot, but I was glad for the drug-muted pain. It reminded me I was alive when Kate was not.

“How dare you talk to him like that? How dare you make this about me when Henning and Cleo just lost Kate. Wh-when I just lost Kate too. None of this happened toyouso just shut. Up! And leave all of us alone.”

Silence followed in the wake of my outburst like a mushroom cloud after an atomic hit. My dad looked shaken and pale, his normal unflappability disturbed by my uncharacteristic outburst. Ma shot him a disappointed glower as she sat on the edge of my hospital bed and gathered me carefully in her arms, kissing me on the brow.

Henning just looked shell-shocked, but I think that had more to do with losing Kate than anything else.

“If you want to stay,” I continued, voice shaking now but chin held high as I locked eyes with my father. Talking back to your elders wasn’t done in Chinese households. Even though my dad was French-Canadian, it was almost exactly the same in his culture, and in the Marchand household, Ma and Old Dragon ran the roost. Still, this was too important not to make clear. “You have to be nice to Henning and Cleo. I don’t know why I have to tell you that when they just lost Kate, but I guess I have to.” I paused, mouth curling under in a pout I was embarrassed to display. “You should be happy I’malive,and you have Henning to thank for that.”

“We’re staying,” Ma said immediately, settling back against the pillows and reaching one arm over to place on Cleo’s head. “Florent, take a seat.”

Dad hesitated, his dark eyes flashing to Henning with blatant hostility.

“Now,” Ma suggested mildly, but there was iron backing the words.

Dad took Henning’s abandoned chair, but he sat.

And all of them stayed in that room until I fell back asleep.

Unfortunately, it meant I didn’t hear my dad make a promise to Henning he would prove capable of keeping.

“If my daughter ever comes to harm in your presence again, Axelsen,” he warned without taking his eyes off my sleeping body. “I’ll end you.”

Florent Marchand wasn’t like Henning. He didn’t know how to kill a man in forty-five different ways or how to save him in just as many.

But he did know how to end a man’s life without ever spilling a drop of blood.

And five years later, he did exactly what he promised.

HENNING

Five Years Later

2015

My kid was tooold to be picked up from school by her dad, but she didn’t say a thing when I still insisted at the start of her grade twelve year that I’d be there every fuckin’ day to get her. Cleo was smart in the ways of people, quiet and keenly observant. She didn’t need me spellin’ out why I felt the overwhelmin’ need to protect her from anythin’, even somethin’ as innocuous as walkin’ the ten miles home each day.

Doctors and nurses who had the tough jobs, on the front line of life and death, didn’t have the luxury of pickin’ up their daughters from school.

Which was why I was no longer a doctor.

Technically, I still had the designation. I did my time at school, made the grade, passed the exams, and spent three years in residency.

But then, Kate died.

She died and left me with her twelve-year-old grievin’ daughter whose one constant her entire life had been her mother.

How could I be a single parent to her when I worked all hours at the hospital? When I made crap money ’cause yeah, doctors made serious cake, but not ’til they’d finished their residencies and specialties, and I was still two years off from that. I’d already used my dad’s life insurance policy to pay off Kate’s debt after I married her, buy our cookie-cutter house on the city’s outskirts, and pay for Kate’s GED and real estate courses.

So, I said goodbye to being a doctor and a reservist in the military.