Although Chyna truly didn't see herself as a hero, many others did. The admiration with which certain influential people regarded her was at last the key that unlocked the bureaucratic heart and got her the permanent custody that she wanted. On a morning late in January, ten months after she had freed the girl from the doll-guarded cellar, she drove out of Sacramento with Ariel beside her.

They went home to the apartment in San Francisco.

Chyna never finished her master's degree in psychology, which she had been so close to earning. She continued her studies at the University of California at San Francisco, but she changed her major to literature. She had always liked to read, and though she didn't believe she possessed any writing talent, she thought she might enjoy being a book editor one day, working with writers. There was more truth in fiction than in science. She could also see herself as a teacher. If she spent the rest of her life waiting tables, that was all right as well, because she was good at it and found dignity in the labor.

The following summer, while Chyna was working the dinner shift, she and Ariel began spending many mornings and early afternoons at the beach. The girl liked to stare out at the bay from behind dark sungla.s.ses, and sometimes she could be induced to stand at water's edge with the surf breaking around her ankles.

One day in June, not realizing quite what she was doing, Chyna used her index finger to write a word in the sand: PEACE PEACE. She stared at it for a minute, and to her surprise, she said to Ariel, "That's a word that can be made from the letters of my name."

On the first of July, while Ariel sat on their blanket, gazing out at the sun-spangled water, Chyna tried to read a newspaper, but every story distressed her. War, rape, murder, robbery, politicians spewing hatred from all ends of the political spectrum. She read a movie review full of vicious ipse dixit criticism of the director and screenwriter, questioning their very right to create, and then turned to a woman columnist's equally vitriolic attack on a novelist, none of it genuine criticism, merely venom, and she threw the paper in a trash can. Any more, such little hatreds and indirect a.s.saults seemed to her uncomfortably clear reflections of stronger homicidal impulses that infected the human spirit; symbolic killings were different only in degree, not in kind, from genuine murder, and the sickness in the a.s.sailants' hearts was the same.

There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses.

Also in early July, she noticed a man of about thirty who came to the beach a few mornings a week with his eight-year-old son and a laptop computer on which he worked in the deep shade of an umbrella. Eventually, they struck up a conversation. The father's name was Ned Barnes, and his boy was Jamie. Ned was a widower and, of all things, a freelance writer with several modestly successful novels to his credit. Jamie developed a crush on Ariel and brought her things that he found special-a handful of wildflowers, an interesting seash.e.l.l, a picture of a comical-looking dog torn from a magazine-and put them beside her on the blanket without asking that she be mindful of them.

On August twelfth, Chyna cooked a spaghetti-and-meatball dinner for the four of them, at the apartment. Later she and Ned played Go Fish and other games with Jamie while Ariel sat staring placidly at her hands. Since the night in the motor home, that terrible anguished expression and silent scream had not crossed the girl's face. She had also stopped hugging herself and rocking anxiously.

Later in August, the four of them went to a movie together, and they continued to see one another at the beach, where they took up tenancy side by side. Their relationship was very relaxed, with no pressure or expectations. None of them wanted anything more than to be less alone.

In September, just after Labor Day, when there would not be many more days warm enough to recommend the beach, Ned looked up from his laptop next door and said, "Chyna."

She was reading a novel and only replied, "Hmmm," without taking her eyes off the page.

He insisted, "Look. Look at Ariel."

The girl wore cut-off blue jeans and a long-sleeve blouse, because the day was already a touch cool for sunbathing. She was barefoot at the edge of the water, surf breaking around her ankles, but she was not standing zombie-like and staring bayward, as usual. Instead, her arms were stretched over her head, and she was waving her hands in the air while quietly dancing in place.

"She loves the bay so," Ned said.

Chyna was unable to speak.

"She loves life," he said.

Choking on emotion, Chyna prayed that it was true.

The girl didn't dance long, and when later she returned to the blanket, her gaze was as faraway as ever.

By December of that year, more than twenty months after fleeing the house of Edgler Vess, Ariel was eighteen years old, no longer a girl but a lovely young woman. Frequently, however, she called for her mother and father in her sleep, for her brother, and her voice-the only time it was heard-was young, frail, and lost.

Then, on Christmas morning, among the gifts for Ariel, Ned, and Jamie that were stacked under the tree in the apartment living room, Chyna was surprised to find a small package for herself. It had been wrapped with great care, though as if by a child with more enthusiasm than skill. Her name was printed in uneven block letters on a snowman gift tag. When she opened the box, a slip of blue paper lay within. On the paper were four words that appeared to have been set down with considerable effort, much hesitation, and lots of stops and starts: I want to live. I want to live.

Heart pounding, tongue thick, she took both of the girl's hands. For a while she didn't know what to say, and she couldn't have said it if she had known.

Finally words came haltingly: "This...this is the best...the best gift I've ever had, honey. This is the best there could ever be. This is all I want...for you to try."

She read the four words again, through tears.

I want to live.

Chyna said, "But you don't know how to get back, do you?"

The girl was very still. Then she blinked. Both of her hands tightened on Chyna's hands.

"There's a way," Chyna a.s.sured her.

The girl's hands gripped Chyna's even tighter.

"There's hope, baby. There's always hope. There's a way, and no one can ever find it alone, but we can find it together. We can find it together. You just have to believe."

The girl could not make eye contact, but her hands continued to grip Chyna's.

"I want to tell you a story about a redwood forest and something I saw there one night, and something I saw later, too, when I needed to see it. Maybe it won't mean as much to you, and maybe it wouldn't mean anything at all to other people, but it means the world to me, even if I don't fully understand it."

I want to live.

Over the next few years, the road back from the Wild Wood to the beauties and wonders of this world was not an easy one for Ariel. There were times of despair when she seemed to make no progress at all, or even slid backward.

Eventually, however, a day came when they traveled with Ned and Jamie to that redwood grove.

They walked through the ferns and the rhododendrons in the solemn shadows under the ma.s.sive trees, and Ariel said, "Show me where."

Chyna led her by the hand to the very place, and said, "Here."

How scared Chyna had been that night, risking so much for a girl she had never seen. Scared less of Vess than of this new thing that she had found in herself. This reckless caring. And now she knows it is nothing that should have frightened her. It is the purpose for which we exist. This reckless caring.

THE HUSBAND.

by Dean Koontz #1 New York Times New York Times Bestselling Author Bestselling Author Available Now What would you do for love?

Would you die?

Would you kill?

THE HUSBAND.

Available Now

chapter 1.

A MAN BEGINS DYING AT THE MOMENT OF HIS birth. Most people live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.

Eventually, Mitch.e.l.l Rafferty would be able to cite the minute that he began to recognize the inevitability of his death: Monday, May 14, 11:43 in the morning-three weeks short of his twenty-eighth birthday.

Until then, he had rarely thought of dying. A born optimist, charmed by nature's beauty and amused by humanity, he had no cause or inclination to wonder when and how his mortality would be proven.

When the call came, he was on his knees.

Thirty flats of red and purple impatiens remained to be planted. The flowers produced no fragrance, but the fertile smell of the soil pleased him.

His clients, these particular homeowners, liked saturated colors: red, purple, deep yellow, hot pink. They would not accept white blooms or pastels.

Mitch understood them. Raised poor, they had built a successful business by working hard and taking risks. To them, life was intense, and saturated colors reflected the truth of nature's vehemence.

This apparently ordinary but in fact momentous morning, the California sun was a b.u.t.tery ball. The sky had a basted sheen.

Pleasantly warm, not searing, the day nevertheless left a greasy sweat on Ignatius Barnes. His brow glistened. His chin dripped.

At work in the same bed of flowers, ten feet from Mitch, Iggy looked boiled. From May until July, his skin responded to the sun not with melanin but with a fierce blush. For one sixth of the year, before he finally tanned, he appeared to be perpetually embarra.s.sed.

Iggy did not possess an understanding of symmetry and harmony in landscape design, and he couldn't be trusted to trim roses properly. He was a hard worker, however, and good if not intellectually bracing company.

"You hear what happened to Ralph Gandhi?" Iggy asked.

"Who's Ralph Gandhi?"

"Mickey's brother."

"Mickey Gandhi? I don't know him, either."

"Sure you do," Iggy said. "Mickey, he hangs out sometimes at Rolling Thunder."

Rolling Thunder was a surfer's bar.

"I haven't been there in years," Mitch said.

"Years? Are you serious?"

"Entirely."

"I thought you still dropped in sometimes."

"So I've really been missed, huh?"

"I'll admit, n.o.body's named a bar stool after you. What-did you find some place better than Rolling Thunder?"

"Remember coming to my wedding three years ago?" Mitch asked.

"Sure. You had great seafood tacos, but the band was woofy."

"They weren't woofy."

"Man, they had tambourines. tambourines."

"We were on a budget. At least they didn't have an accordion."

"Because playing an accordion exceeded their skill level."

Mitch trowled a cavity in the loose soil. "They didn't have finger bells, either."

Wiping his brow with one forearm, Iggy complained: "I must have Eskimo genes. I break a sweat at fifty degrees."

Mitch said, "I don't do bars anymore. I do marriage."

"Yeah, but can't you do marriage and and Rolling Thunder?" Rolling Thunder?"

"I'd just rather be home than anywhere else."

"Oh, boss, that's sad," said Iggy.

"It's not sad. It's the best."

"If you put a lion in a zoo three years, six years, he never forgets what freedom was like."

Planting purple impatiens, Mitch said, "How would you know? You ever asked a lion?"

"I don't have to ask one. I am am a lion." a lion."

"You're a hopeless boardhead."

"And proud of it. I'm glad you found Holly. She's a great lady. But I've I've got my freedom." got my freedom."

"Good for you, Iggy. And what do you do with it?"

"Do with what?"

"Your freedom. What do you do with your freedom?"

"Anything I want."

"Like, for example?"

"Anything. Like, if I want sausage pizza for dinner, I don't have to ask anyone what she she wants." wants."

"Radical."