Part 3
The siren grew louder until the whole yard seemed to pulse with it. Molly flattened herself beneath the leaves. Red light flashed across the cabin windows, across the grass, across the pale boards of the gazebo where her blanket waited in the shade.
An ambulance stopped outside the gate.
Two paramedics hurried up the walk with a stretcher between them. The back door of the cabin had been left open. From inside came Grant’s voice, not angry now, but thin and clipped in a way Molly did not know. She crept forward as far as the porch steps, searching for Claire’s scent under the new chemical sting of rubber gloves and antiseptic.
The paramedics came out carrying Claire.
She lay very still, her face pale against the stretcher straps. A clear oxygen mask covered her mouth and nose. One hand slipped toward the side, loose and open, as if she had dropped something invisible. Molly stepped onto the walkway.
Claire did not call her.
Grant came behind them with his phone pressed to his ear. His shirt was untucked. His hands shook so badly he missed the lock on the front door twice before the key finally turned.
“Yes, I’m following them,” he snapped into the phone. “No, I don’t know. They said possible stroke. I’m not a doctor.”
Molly moved toward the stretcher as the paramedics lifted Claire into the ambulance. The doors shut with a heavy sound that made her jump. She stood in the middle of the walkway, the world suddenly too bright, too loud, too full of people leaving.
Grant spun from the door and nearly tripped over her.
“Move!” he barked.
His shoe struck her side, not a full kick but hard enough to send her stumbling into the grass. Molly scrambled up and looked back. Grant was already at the gate, keys in one hand, phone in the other, his SUV chirping awake before he reached it.
The ambulance pulled away. Grant followed.
The siren faded toward the highway, and the yard returned to the sound of insects.
Molly waited.
At first, waiting made sense. Claire sometimes left for groceries and came back with bags that smelled of bread and peaches. Claire left for walks and came back with pine needles stuck to her shoes. The cabin door was closed now, but Molly knew the rhythm of return. She sat on the porch until evening, then moved to the gazebo when the air cooled.
By morning, the cabin still held its breath.
A bowl on the porch had a little dry food in it. Molly ate slowly, then drank rainwater from a saucer under the downspout. She slept through the warm part of the day and woke whenever a car passed on the distant road. None of them turned into the driveway.
Days folded into one another. Sometimes Grant came, but only in brief, hard bursts. He carried boxes out of the cabin. He spoke on the phone in the yard, saying words Molly could not understand: ICU, rehab, bills, insurance, sell. He never opened the door for her. Once, she followed him across the patio, and he looked down as if surprised she still existed.
“Not now,” he muttered, stepping around her.
Then he was gone again.
Summer loosened. The nights sharpened. Molly’s fur had grown back thick, but the cold found the places fear had hollowed out. The chickadee still came in the mornings, hopping along the fence, its small black head flashing between branches. Molly no longer hunted it every day. Sometimes she simply watched. The bird was a moving thing in a yard that had become too still.
Grant returned in mid-November.
The yard was brittle with frost. The SUV rolled in slowly, breaking the skim of ice over the ruts. Grant got out wearing a wool coat and a face that looked older than it had in September. He left the engine running while he opened the back and pulled out Molly’s gray felt cat cave from the condo, a plastic litter pan, and a half-torn bag of the cheapest dry food.
Molly watched from beneath the gazebo bench.
Grant carried everything into the gazebo and set it on the frozen boards. He did not crouch or call her. He opened the food bag by ripping it with both hands, spilling brown pellets across the floor instead of finding a bowl.
“Claire’s still in critical care,” he said, though no one had asked him anything. His voice sounded empty, scraped clean of patience and guilt alike. “I don’t have time for this.”
He went into the cabin for less than half an hour. Water coughed through pipes as he shut the place down for winter. Boxes thumped against the porch. A drawer slammed. When he came back out, he locked the cabin, then the gate, and finally fastened a heavy padlock through the chain.
Molly stepped out from under the bench when the SUV backed away.
The food lay scattered across the boards. The cat cave smelled faintly of the condo, of detergent and old sunlight through glass. She sniffed the pellets, ate a few, and lifted her head when the chickadee landed on the edge of the table. It hopped down, pecked at a crumb, and chirped once.
Molly did not chase it.
The SUV disappeared between the pines. The gate stood locked behind it, the chain pulled tight around the metal bars. For a long while, Molly stared at the place where the car had been. Then she understood the gate was not keeping the world away from her. It was keeping her inside…
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