Part 2
By Friday afternoon, the cottage outside Baraboo smelled of pine needles, lake damp, and porch boards warming in the sun. Claire set the carrier on the top step instead of carrying it inside, because Grant was standing behind her with both hands on his hips, waiting to see whether she would argue.
Poppy sat at the back of the carrier with her shaved sides tucked against a folded towel. The air here did not taste like elevator metal or exhaust from LaSalle Street. It moved, cool and green, through the small holes in the plastic door.
Claire unlatched the gate and crouched. “Come on, sweet girl,” she whispered. “This is better. I promise.”
Poppy did not move until a little brown sparrow landed on the porch rail, tilted its head at the carrier, and gave one sharp, impatient chirp. The sound was so sudden that even Grant looked over.
The sparrow hopped twice along the rail, scattering dust from its feet. Poppy stretched her neck toward it. One paw touched the porch boards, then the other, and soon she was standing in sunlight, blinking at the grass.
For the first few days, every breeze made her skin jump. She walked low through the yard, slipping beneath raspberry canes and between the legs of the old wooden picnic table. The Wisconsin cottage sat on a quiet seasonal road with a small apple tree near the back fence, a weathered gazebo at the edge of the yard, and fields beyond the property line that filled with crickets after dark.
Claire changed there, too. Away from the condo and Grant’s schedule, her shoulders loosened. She drank tea on the porch in bare feet and watched Poppy stalk the sparrow each morning with an seriousness that made her smile. The bird always escaped. It would lift off just before Poppy reached it, land on the fence, and carry on as if the whole chase had been a polite misunderstanding.
From Monday to Thursday, the cottage belonged to Claire and Poppy. On Friday evenings, gravel cracked under the tires of Grant’s black SUV, and the yard seemed to tighten before the engine even stopped.
Grant did not chase Poppy. He did not need to. The swing of his overnight bag, the way he shut doors, the way his voice carried through the screens were enough to send her under the porch steps. He insisted the cottage stay “fur-free,” which meant Poppy slept outside whenever he was there. Claire waited until he turned on the television, then folded an old wool blanket inside the gazebo, where three paneled walls kept out most of the wind.
“It’s only for the weekend,” Claire murmured, setting a bowl of water near the blanket. “I’ll bring you in Monday morning.”
By late summer, Poppy’s coat grew back in soft silver patches. She discovered beetles under the porch, moths around the back light, and field mice in the grass beyond the apple tree. Sometimes she left her catches on the stone step, close to the door, where Claire would find them at breakfast.
Grant found them once instead. He stared at the small offering beside his coffee mug, then swept it into the bushes with the stiff broom.
“Disgusting,” he said.
Poppy watched from under the picnic table, ears back, while Claire stood in the doorway and said nothing.
In October, an orange stray slipped under the fence and tried to claim the raspberry patch. Poppy met him with her back arched and her tail full. The warning that came from her throat was low and rough, a sound Claire had never heard from her.
“Poppy,” Claire called softly from the porch. “Come here, baby.”
But Poppy did not come. The orange cat took one step too many, and the two of them vanished into the leaves beneath the raspberries. The fight lasted only seconds before an upstairs window slammed open.
Grant leaned out in a white T-shirt, hair mussed from sleep. “Get out of there!”
He grabbed one of his heavy house slippers from the floor and threw it hard. It hit the fence inches from the cats with a flat crack that sent the orange stray shooting beneath the wire and Poppy racing for the gazebo.
Grant shut the window. Claire stood at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the banister, breathing shallowly.
Later that month, on a Sunday afternoon cold enough for frost to gather along the shaded fence, Claire dropped a mug on the kitchen tile.
Poppy heard the shatter first. Then she heard Grant say Claire’s name in a way she had never heard him say it before, all the smoothness stripped from his voice. A chair scraped. Feet moved too fast. The front door opened and stayed open.
The ambulance arrived with red lights flashing against the apple tree.
Two paramedics came out carrying Claire on a stretcher. Her face looked pale beneath the clear oxygen mask, and one hand slipped toward the edge as they moved her down the porch steps. Poppy crept from behind the raspberries, searching for the familiar smell beneath the sharp burn of medical plastic and antiseptic.
Grant locked the door with shaking hands. He turned toward the driveway, nearly tripped over Poppy, and shoved her aside with the side of his shoe.
“Move,” he snapped. “Not now.”
The gate clanged behind him. The SUV tore out after the ambulance, spitting gravel against the fence, and the cottage settled into a silence so complete that Poppy could hear the sparrow rustling somewhere in the bare raspberry canes. She waited on the porch until the last sound of tires disappeared from the road. No key turned in the lock…
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