Though sweet Trav tried hard to convince the police that I was his assailant, I had an airtight alibi from half the population of Sierra Vista. In the end, he finally confessed that Kidd had beaned him with the clock radio and tied him up to get him out of the way. (Hey, I can’t fault the old man. I wanted to shut Verelli up from the moment I met him.) Being caught in his lies pretty much ended his dream of painting me as the villain.

Unfortunately, that revelation cast suspicion on Kidd’s mental condition at the time of his disappearance, which necessitated more legal dancing around to see whether or not I got to keep the money he paid me. I’m still waiting to find out if it’s mine free and clear, and in the meantime . . . well, bills are piling up. That’s the way things go. We’re not even going to talk about the insurance company. They dropped me like a hot potato.

I came out of the adventure with seventy-two stitches in my left thigh, two in my face, and a torn gastrocnemius muscle in my right calf. Try saying that five times real fast. They glued my gashed knuckles closed. Oh yeah, and there was that case of mild frostbite on my toes (and Estéban’s). Lemme tell you, that baffled them. Dr. Bridget was unthrilled, to say the least.

“God was watching out for you again, it seems.” She gave me that withering female look, the one that makes you just want to crawl into a hole and die out of pure shame, whether you’ve done anything wrong or not.

I was put on bed rest. Within half an hour, it became couch rest, and in another ten minutes, it became lounging-on-the-patio-in-the-sunshine rest. I’m not one to stay flat on my back if I can help it.

My injuries did save me from spending that Saturday chopping an enormous tree into burnable chunks. It came down in my mother’s front yard in the storm, and her birthday party turned into a lumberjack contest. I sat in my comfortable lawn chair, foot propped up on a log, and offered helpful suggestions to my brother and cousins on just how to best go about it. I thought Cole was going to kill me.

“I swear, big brother, somehow you did this on purpose, just so you wouldn’t have to cut up this tree.” Cole swigged from a bottle of Gatorade as he took a break from swinging his splitting maul. Despite the rather perfect spring day, sweat ran off him in rivers.

“You can’t make this stuff up, little brother.” I grinned at him and raised my beer in salute. He just glared daggers at me and went back to work.

Paulo—er . . . Estéban—was also spared the ignominy of physical labor. In fact, he got the hero’s seat of honor for “saving” me from the tornado. I ask you, where’s the justice? He seemed rather overwhelmed by my mother, who is a force of nature in her own right. Motherless boys of the world, beware. She can spot you a mile away. She has meat loaf, and she knows how to use it. I think we left her house that evening with ten plastic containers filled with various foods “absolutely necessary to a growing boy.”

That growing boy also got to spend a good hour on the phone with his mother, most of it in such rapid- fire Spanish that even Mira had trouble following. It ended with tears I wasn’t supposed to see, and our all promising to look after Estéban until he could be returned safely home.

The other phone call . . . Well, I claimed that duty for myself.

That night, when the house was safely locked and everyone else had gone to bed, I hobbled into my den and called Rosaline. She broke down and wept when I told her Miguel’s soul was safe. I even told her about the river stones, and how I’d placed them at the feet of my little Buddha statue. Mira was the only other person who knew. Somehow, I thought the two women would understand.

“Gracias, Jesse. Muchas gracias, siempre.”

“He’d have done the same for me.” It was an uncomfortable call, despite the good news I was delivering. First off, I don’t deal well with crying women. Second, I couldn’t bring her husband back, even as badly as I wanted to. “Listen, if you ever need anything, you only have to call. You know that, right?”

“Sí, I know. You are an angel, Jesse Dawson. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.” We hung up after the usual exchange of greetings for the families, and I sat in the silence for a long time. Eventually, footsteps shuffled in the hallway.

“Is she all right?” Estéban appeared in the doorway, dressed in one of my T-shirts and an old pair of sweats.

I thought about chiding him for eavesdropping, then realized I didn’t really care. “No. But she’ll be better now.”

He scratched at his hand, mostly encased in neon blue fiberglass. “Thank you for calling her. I . . . did not know what to say.” He seemed to find everything else in the room more interesting than meeting my eyes.

He fidgeted with the cast on his arm, and I eyed him critically for a moment. “You’re up late. Is your arm hurting? I can see if Mira has something for the pain.”

That got the reaction I wanted. He straightened instantly, a hint of his usual anger flaring in his dark eyes. “I am fine. It does not hurt.” He was lying, but it was a small balm to his bruised adolescent ego. I let it slide.

“Was there something else, then?”

His jaw clenched as he debated his next words. “Miguel thought very highly of you. I . . . did not believe him. I thought you were just another overhyped gringo.”

I sat at my desk, watching him fidget. He blushed under my direct gaze. “And now?”

“I am grateful you were there. I would not have been able to do it alone.” It came out in a rush, one single breath. Every one of those words had to hurt. A meaner person might have called him on it. I wasn’t that person.

“Miguel was a good man, Estéban. He would have done the same for me.”

“But I do not know that I would have. Before. I would now.”

“You have a long time before you have to be making decisions like that. Just enjoy being a kid a little longer.”

I don’t know if he believed me or not. He nodded a little and shuffled back toward bed.

Ivan arrived on Sunday as he promised, to be greeted with a five-year-old’s squeals of “Djadko Ivan!” My daughter could officially speak more Ukrainian than I. After taking a few hours to spoil Annabelle—the teddy bear was bigger than the child, I kid you not—we adjourned to my closet den to have one of those manly sort of talks.

He examined the pictures and books on my shelves as he spoke. “When you are to being more mobile, I would ask you to be coming with me to Toronto.”

I nodded. “Guy’s place?”

“Tak. I wish to find his weapon. It was not being sent to me, and so there must have been someone he cared about very much. We will to be taking care of them for him.”

I nodded again. I was all in favor of a widows and orphans fund. “Yeah, I’ll come with, no problem.” I eyed my crutches. “In a week or two.”

He turned to face me, idly flipping through the pages of the Hagakure. “As for the other request I have . . . The boy will to be remaining with you. There is no one left in his family to be teaching him.”

Um . . . excuse me? That wasn’t exactly a request by my definition of the word. “Do I look like Yoda?”

Ivan gave me an “I’m wiser than you” smirk. Nothing like having a six-foot-four Ukrainian standing in a tiny little room to stare you down—I need a bigger den for these conversations. “You will be good for the boy. He is to be needing discipline.”

“I’m not training him to fight, Ivan. He’s just a kid.”

He raised one white brow at me. “When you were to being a boy, would you have avoided danger because someone was to be telling you, ‘You are too young’?” He shook his head, amused. “It is better he is to being trained, before he is to be getting hurt on his own.”

I hate it when he’s right, and he’s right a lot. I’m not sure how successful I’ll be, though. To quote the venerable Yoda, much anger I sense in this one. Estéban is a hurt, angry kid. It doesn’t make for the best learning environment. Then again, I wasn’t so different when Carl took me in hand. It could work out—maybe.