After her leg was shattered in the storm, I was the one who’d led us into a spider’s nest of criminal assholes, putting both of us in jeopardy. The fishing shack we’d gone to wasn’t what it appeared to be-not to us, or to the idiots who were looting camps after the storm. When armed muscle for the real owners showed up, we got caught in the crossfire. The result was the loss of Sherry’s limb. I would never forgive myself.

So what Sherry Richards wanted to do these days, we did. If she wanted to get out of the house, I brought her here, a peaceful six-mile loop of macadam off the old Tamiami Trail on which folks could ride through a true Everglades meadow. To me, it was breathtaking: green-gold saw grass spread out to the horizon and lit by a rising sun in the morning, standing lakes of shallow water in the rainy season rippling in the wind and alive at times with hovering dragonflies and darters and the occasional bream that scooped up the insects from below. When I’d point out these marvels of nature to Sherry as we cruised along, I got mostly an uninterested nod. Such observances were not her idea of breathtaking anymore.

The first time we came out here, I’d walked alongside her, both of us breathing the humid, earth-cleaned air. I watched her carefully to make sure she didn’t overheat in the South Florida sun. I carried lots of water and kept my cell phone in my pocket, ready at all times. I’d had to jog to keep up with her and drank most of the water myself. The next trip, I ran the entire six-mile loop; she was waiting for me at the end. Finally, I rented a bike, and we’d been doing it that way ever since. Sherry was a triathlete before her amputation. Now she was a driven, disabled triathlete with a chip on her shoulder.