Rick wanted to teach her to drive a car, too, but he couldn’t let her drive his, because it belonged to the Portland Police Bureau. She asked what car he had used when he drove to Portland-it wasn’t his police car.
The question seemed to fluster him slightly. “Ah, when I need a car for something like that, I borrow one from a friend.”
Livia had wondered before, and almost asked now. But Rick had always been scrupulous about respecting what she needed to keep private. It would be worse than rude, it would be a betrayal, not to do the same for him. So she said only, “I’m glad you have a friend like that.”
He looked at her for a long moment, almost nervously. Then he said, “Yeah. I think… you’d like him. And he’d like you.”
She shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal. “You could introduce us sometime. If you want. I’m sure I’d like your friends.”
He smiled, looking both frightened and relieved. “Well, maybe he’d let me use his car to teach you to drive. I could ask him.”
They developed an easy rhythm. Livia did the shopping, the cleaning, and the laundry, too. Rick told her it wasn’t necessary, but she didn’t listen. She didn’t want to be a burden, something he took on because of a feeling of obligation, something he felt stuck with. She wanted to be valuable, and it made her feel good to know she was. She liked making the coffee, and had a cup every morning, with milk and turbinado sugar.
Sometimes she went to the port. She would stand and stare out at the water, the containers, the machinery, the ships. Then she would close her eyes and listen to the sounds-the thrum of huge engines, the cries of scavenger birds, the lapping of water on the docks-and try to imagine where Nason could have been taken, try to feel where she could be right that moment. She told herself if she concentrated hard enough, she would remember something, imagine something, conjure something that would help. But nothing ever came.
One day, on the way home from school, she came across a thick branch that had fallen from a tree. On impulse, she picked it up and carved it into a Buddha like the one she had made so long ago in the forest-legs crossed in the lotus pose, one hand down and the other out. She placed it by the window in her bedroom, next to the photograph of her and Nason. And every night, without fail, she looked out at the sky and whispered in Lahu, “I love you, little bird. I will never forget. I will never stop looking. And one day I will find you.”
Rick told her that because he always had his service weapon either on him or within easy reach, it was important for her to learn how to handle firearms safely. “You don’t just childproof your guns,” was how he put it. “You also gun-proof your child.”
Livia was thrilled. She wanted to learn about guns. About all weapons. To her, anything that wasn’t a weapon was a weakness. And she was never going to be weak again.
They went over the four rules of safety: Always assume a gun is loaded until you’ve checked it yourself. Never let the muzzle cross something you wouldn’t be willing to harm. Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. And know your backstop-what a bullet would hit if it were to miss or go through your target.
Safety was important, of course, but she told him she also wanted to learn how to shoot. So they went to the gun range, where he taught her the fundamentals: smooth draw, aggressive stance, firm grip, front sight on the target, press the trigger. She listened carefully and shot well, but afterward, in the parking lot, Rick told her the range was nothing like the street-that adrenaline, ambiguity, bystanders, someone shooting back… the street changed everything.
“Did you ever have to shoot someone?” she asked.
“I did, yeah.”
“Have you killed anyone?”
He nodded. “Two people.”
“Were they bad?”
“Very bad.”
“What did they do?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“You can tell me.”
He looked at her, then nodded again. “One of them was a drug dealer. He was shooting people in a house and we had to charge inside to stop him.”
She felt her jaw clench. “The people in the house… he killed them?”
“All but a little girl named Lucy. He had beaten her unconscious and left her for dead. But she’s fine now. She’s in school and she’s going to be a nurse.” He smiled. “She called me not so long ago, on her eighteenth birthday. She said, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but you saved my life. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.’”
“Did you remember her?”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? I told her, ‘Remember? Lucy, I’ll never forget you.’”
The story brought tears to Livia’s eyes. She wished Rick had been there when the white van had pulled up. Or someone like him.
“Wow,” she whispered.
He looked at her and shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but she could tell the memory had moved him, too. “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes you get to really save someone. Makes all the bullshit worthwhile.”
“What about the other one?”
“Gangbanger determined not to go back to prison. He shot two officers before they could get their guns out, and had my partner pinned down. I flanked him and shot him in the head.”
“You saved your partner?”
“Well, that’s what they said on the commendation, anyway.”
She could tell he was being modest again. “I’m glad you killed them.”
He frowned and said, “I’m not sure you should feel that way, Livia.”
“But they would have hurt more people if you hadn’t killed them. Killing them saved people.”
He nodded slowly, as though reluctant to concede the point. “I guess… I just don’t want you to be glad about killing. You’re so young.”
She felt the dragon stir, and suddenly she badly wanted him to understand. She looked at him. “I wish you could have killed the people who took Nason and me.”
The way he was looking at her, she thought he understood the full meaning of that word, took. He nodded again, slowly, and said, “Point taken.”
“Or I wish I could have.” She didn’t add that she wished she could kill them still. She didn’t want to worry him any more than maybe she already had.
But she did wish it. And if she ever found a way, she would.
43-THEN
That summer, Livia took a knife course with an Oakland instructor visiting Kawamoto-sensei’s dojo-Maija Soderholm, a blonde, dreadlocked, cigar-smoking, heavily tattooed edged-weapons expert Livia thought was the coolest woman she’d ever met. The woman could make a knife move like a fan, like liquid, like a creature with its own mind. Livia realized that as formidable as she was in judo and jiu-jitsu, against someone like Maija, armed with a blade, she would be in terrible trouble. So she resolved to become that kind of trouble herself. She stayed after class to train more, and Maija, impressed by her intensity, spent hours of extra time with her.
One night, Livia asked what it was about edged weapons. “I’m not really sure,” Maija told her. “When I was a little girl, I picked up one of my father’s knives, and it just… spoke to me. It felt right. And I never got over it. I found a Filipino sword master named Sonny Umpad, and started training with him. Sonny taught me that every weapon you put in your hand has a personality, and that a properly designed weapon will tell you its function just by its feel. When he told me that, I knew exactly what he meant.”
Livia told her it was the same with her and jiu-jitsu. The first time she’d put on a gi and grappled on the mat… it all just made sense.
Rick, aware of her new fascination, bought her a knife Maija had designed: the Vaari. It was a gorgeous, handmade weapon with a curved eight-inch blade and a handle wrapped in waxed reindeer leather. Livia practiced with it incessantly, moving it in her hand the way Maija had taught her, with lots of dodges and feints.