Granted, he was the type of journalist whose strength was writing and not so much action. At the Minneapolis newspaper, my job was to write and coordinate the entertainment supplement. Maybe in college I would have dreamed of being a brave journalist, but once Paul came into my life, a lot of things changed. Plus, it had been a long time without having what the slang calls “a casual conversation,” so I was also feeling a little self-conscious. I was afraid that someone would ask me what I was doing and I would let slip that I had found an injured werewolf in the woods and brought him to my house, as if nothing had happened.

Now you can tell that I needed sleep?

The energy drink gave me a nice boost of sugar and energy, so by the time I got back to the jeep and put the key back in the ignition, I noticed that my hands weren’t shaking and I no longer felt tired or sore. What’s more, I even smiled at all the bags of things I had packed in the back seat, as if they were great feats. I had spent a fortune, but for some reason I wasn’t worried. I started back, opening a second can of Red Bull.

Obviously, I couldn’t go to sleep.

Epic things were happening around me.

***

I well remember speeding past the police and ranger stations, which were practically right next to each other, on the way back to my cabin. Sheriff McCord’s truck was at the entrance to the police station. A good guy and very nice, the sheriff. He and his lovely wife visited me quite regularly when they patrolled the area; he was a very kind and astute fellow.

For something like two seconds, I thought about stopping there.

Probably because something told me that the police couldn’t do anything against a creature the size of that werewolf, and it wasn’t worth bothering. I felt miserable for a moment and mentally scolded myself. How could I think about such things when I had two helpless children under my roof? I should have been more focused on the next step, not on having one finger on the 911 speed dial all the time.

The truth is that I didn’t see Mirko capable of hurting anyone. Or his father, at times. By then, I was already convinced that somewhere else they were normal people and had normal lives. Hadn’t the little guy shown himself to be civilized? Something told me that they were not harmful beings, or that I had to be afraid of them; maybe we could fix everything by talking. Of course, this argument lacked solid foundations, and it was only a matter of time until fear finally found me again. I knew that very well.

I decided not to stop at the sheriff’s station; it didn’t make sense.

I couldn’t stop thinking about those two well-placed shots.

***

I stopped at the truck stop at the edge of town and asked the guy in charge of the pumps to put half a tank of fuel into the jeep. The cashier at the gas station was an Indian man named Ajay, very nice, and I kept his name in mind because in some ways he reminded me of Apu, the owner of the market from The Simpsons. He always had this gesture of giving you a blessing when you paid him, a gesture that made me smile and more than once had made me feel better on a particularly difficult day. And that day I was very nervous; I thought that maybe one of Ajay’s blessings would help me calm down. But when I entered the self-service, it turned out that there were two men next to the register talking to him.

Frustrated, I walked around the displays, grabbing a packet of chips and another can of Red Bull from one of the refrigerators for later. I didn’t have much to do while they pumped my gas, so I absentmindedly flipped through a magazine, and as I scanned the shelf, I saw one about motherhood. On the cover it had a smiling baby and, in big red letters, a featured article about new mothers.

For a moment, I was tempted to take it for any useful information it might contain, but the next second I told myself I was overreacting. Besides, I had read tons of those magazines when I was pregnant; I figured I could take care of a little girl even with my poor practical knowledge of the subject.

Angry with myself, I left all the magazines in their places and took my purchases to the checkout. As soon as they saw me approach, the two men who were talking to Ajay stepped aside and turned their backs on me, staring at a cigarette display.

“Hello, Ajay. Good day.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Johanna. Thanks for coming. Fuel for the brain?”

He gestured toward the can of Red Bull and the chips.

“Yes, well… you know. I was just going to look for the essentials.” I smiled with an ironic gesture. I glanced at the two men behind me and then turned to Ajay while he was writing down the entire purchase on the register. “Can you also give me a bag of candy, the milk kind? And Jamie is putting half a tank into my jeep.”

“Sure, here you go.”

Ajay put the bag on the counter and avoided looking at me the entire time. That was strange; usually he was a very nice and smiling man, but he seemed a little nervous. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, perhaps no more than forty. Something cold ran down my spine, especially when he looked somewhere behind me and cleared his throat. I feared I had walked into the drive-thru just as a robbery was happening, and my heart started racing.

I looked Ajay in the eyes, and he looked at me in turn, suddenly smiling with a grimace that seemed forced to me. The register printed the ticket and the money changed hands. I put the purchases inside a small paper bag, calmly.

“Bad day, Ajay?” I asked, like someone who didn’t want to push the issue.

“The Mets lost,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. “And you? How is work as a writer going?”

“It has its days, too. Will you give me your blessing?”

He smiled a little brighter that time and raised his hand to place his thumb on my forehead (at that point where, according to his culture, the mythical “third eye” was located), the other hand on my right shoulder, and recited something in his native language that sounded pretty good. I gathered the small bag to my chest and clutched the wallet in my free hand, instinctively.

Once again I looked over my shoulder at the two guys behind me, and I caught one of them—blond, with long hair—also looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He was very tall. I only saw one side of his face; his profile was angular and very masculine, his eyes an interesting light blue tone. He seemed foreign. The one with him still had his back turned; he also had long hair, but a very shiny black color, and he was very thin, although shorter than his friend. It seemed to me that the latter had something purple hanging from his waist, but I didn’t stay to look at it for long. If they were a couple of thieves, then I didn’t want them to remember my face and come rob me later.

Although a secret malevolent corner of me smiled, imagining that those two entered my house and were greeted by a gigantic white werewolf.

“See you soon, Ajay. Thanks for everything,” I said loudly, and then lowered my voice as I passed by the two men. “Goodbye.”

“Have a good day, Mrs. Johanna!” Ajay greeted me, but he didn’t sound very happy.

I think one of the suspicious-looking guys said goodbye to me, but I didn’t hear him correctly. I hurried out of the store and ran into the pump boy, who gave me back the keys to the jeep. I looked back at the drive-thru and saw the cashier talking to the two guys. The blond blocked my view of the brunette, but they didn’t seem to be bothering Ajay, just talking to him. Maybe they were friends. The place had cameras. Shouldn’t they have acted faster if they were stealing? I assumed that Ajay was nervous about his friends visiting him during work hours, for fear that his boss was going to reprimand him.

Anyway. The shock passed once I saw the blond relaxing against the counter, as if nothing was happening. Maybe nothing was happening, and my tired mind was playing tricks on me. I got back into my vehicle and left the bag on the passenger seat. I decided not to tell the pump boy to call the police, because a moment later the two guys left the store and walked away calmly. It didn’t seem like they took anything, and Ajay was sweeping the floor of the self-service.

But it was incredible how my hands were shaking again.

I took a few minutes to collect myself as I followed the two men as they drove away, up the road toward town, in the rearview mirror. Yes, one of them was definitely wearing something purple, the dark one, but they were too far away for me to know what it was. And why did I suddenly care about any of that? I needed to sleep; it was more than evident that I was becoming paranoid. However, returning home included returning to face a reality that was quite unreal and for which I did not feel prepared, again. So when I entered my property, I parked the jeep again near the porch. Running away was not the solution.

And meanwhile, there were two children who needed me.

***

I completely forgot about the gas station thing when I opened the door again and realized that the dirty dog smell in my house was even more intense than I had thought.

“For God’s sake!” I exclaimed, and covered my nose well with the edge of the scarf. “But how can it stink so much here?”

Mirko came running toward me as soon as he heard me speak.

His face was lit up with joy and his ears stood straight up on his head; he was jumping.

“Mrs. Johanna! You went back!”

“Hey! Of course I’m back, honey. I live here.” I smiled at him, although at the same time I was trying with all my might not to inhale the smell of dirt and carrion that was in the room. “Won’t you help me carry the bags to the kitchen? I have something to show you.”

That “honey” left my lips like someone wishing a “good day,” just like that.

I didn’t let the boy leave the house in broad daylight, just in case. I took the trouble to go to the jeep and return with everything I had bought. As I became aware of the amount of packages I was carrying, I began to wonder how much I had spent on those things that I had no reason to buy.

And again, what was I doing? What was I going to gain from that?

Well, maybe I would have the satisfaction of knowing I had done a good deed and being able to tell a great story once they were gone—if they were leaving. A rush of cold wind hit my back and made me shiver from head to toe for an instant. It would soon snow again, and my head was buzzing with activity. I was dominated for a moment by an imperative need to write, to channel at once everything that was emerging in uncontrollable gushes. I reviewed in my mind the following ideas to capture while I brought the packages to the house two or three at a time, ironically, as if it were any other day.

When I came in with the last bags of groceries, my eyes went to the fireplace, looking for the giant bundle covered in the blanket.

The werewolf was no longer where I had left him.

I backed slowly toward the door, which I had closed behind me, and my hands began to shake. The bags fell to the floor when I saw the blanket on the couch. Luckily, the only thing that got hit were the packages of diapers for Sasha. And my heart and my jaw, which hit the mosaic tremendously, because fear immediately got under my skin when I couldn’t find Ivan’s shape anywhere. Mirko joined me again and hurriedly picked up the things I had dropped, looking at me carefully.

I noticed him for a moment. He moved his nose, sniffing me.

“Why are you afraid, Mrs. Johanna?” he asked me, in an anguished tone.

“Mirko, where… where is your dad?” I said slowly.

It was the moment of truth, and I was so scared I could have screamed.

The wolf-child stood up with the bags clutched to his chest, digging his little claws into the soft surface of the diaper packages, and looked at me with bright eyes again, as if everything were flowers and candy. I was overwhelmed with excitement and would have liked to have been able to share his joy, but no.

“He’s in the kitchen, with my sister! He’s already better!” he said, and as he spoke he mixed his voice with some enthusiastic yelps. “We were waiting for you! Come with me, my dad wants to meet you. He is very grateful to you!”

At that moment, Mirko stretched out a paw-hand; he wanted to grab my fingers.

And I was so insensitive as to frantically pull my arm away and step aside.

The look the boy gave me seemed to darken into an adverse feeling. I could feel it in every fiber of my body; I would pay my rejection with the same coin. Why did I do that? He had already held my hand once. I still remembered the rough touch of the grayish pads that were on his palm and covering the inside of his fingers. The warmth of his hand was human, despite its strange texture.

I don’t know what I was thinking, really.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Johanna?” he asked, cautious. “Don’t you want to see my dad, now that he’s awake?”

I don’t know how, either, but I managed to hear the creak of a chair.

From one second to the next, he was behind the boy. He was so tall, standing like that. I would say more than two meters, too much for my small one meter sixty-seven. With all that white hair, dirty with mud and blood, I probably would have mistaken him for a real monster, but he wasn’t that scary. Tall and big, threatening, yes, but ugly, not at all. He was an animal—a creature, a non-human being, after all—with an imposing, formidable appearance. Heavy, exuding great strength.

The thick muscles on his arms and chest stood out in pronounced curves beneath the thick layer of hair, but it was possible that the hair made them even bulkier to the eye. His eyes were light blue like the child’s and bright, fixed on my face. I was forced to remain still in my place while he sniffed the air very slowly, a forced snore emerging from his throat with each exhalation.

Surely, he was looking for the smell of my fear.