Part 2
Derek’s first text arrived before Hannah crossed the county line.
Turn location back on.
The second came six minutes later.
This is childish.
Hannah left the phone facedown in the cup holder. Beside her, Winnie shifted inside the carrier when the highway narrowed to two lanes and the tires began to hum over patched pavement. Hannah reached through the wire door at a stoplight, but the cat drew back from her fingers.
That hurt more than Derek’s messages. It also felt more honest.
By the time the road curved around Pineglass Lake, the hard rain had thinned to a cold drizzle. The cabin stood beyond a red gate beneath white pines, its cedar siding dark with moisture. Hannah parked near the porch, carried the cat inside first, and set the carrier in the mudroom with the door open.
Winnie did not come out.
Hannah turned on the heat, filled bowls, spread a blanket near the radiator, and unpacked without trying to coax her. For once, she let someone else decide when it was safe to enter a room.
Near midnight, while rain tapped the metal roof, Winnie stepped from the carrier. She moved low and slowly, sniffing every chair leg and doorway. When she reached the old braided rug in front of the fireplace, she stopped beneath a square of warmth from the floor vent and sat there trembling.
Hannah lowered herself several feet away. “No one’s going to make you do anything tonight.”
Winnie stared at her, then folded her paws under her chest.
The first week passed in small permissions. Winnie slept behind the sofa, then beneath the kitchen table, then finally on the screened porch where afternoon sun warmed the newly exposed skin along her back. Hannah brought her food there and sat nearby with a book, careful not to turn each quiet moment into a test of forgiveness.
Her coat began returning as a silver haze. So did pieces of her old curiosity. A chickadee that visited the porch rail became the focus of long, serious surveillance. A chipmunk near the woodpile earned a tail twitch. By Thursday, Winnie had crossed the yard on her own and discovered the raspberry canes along the fence.
Hannah changed too, though less visibly. She slept through the night. She stopped carrying her phone from room to room. During work calls, she heard herself speak without checking the door. One afternoon, she opened a separate checking account online and transferred the money from a small inheritance Derek had always called “ours.”
She stared at the confirmation screen for several minutes before closing the laptop. Derek arrived Friday after dark.
His SUV ground over the gravel, headlights sweeping across the porch. Winnie vanished beneath the steps before the engine stopped. Hannah felt her own shoulders rise at the sound of his door closing.
He came inside carrying a leather weekender and a grocery bag containing steak, imported beer, and nothing for the cat. “You turned off location sharing.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you tracking me.”
Derek set the bag on the counter. “That makes it sound sinister.”
Hannah held his gaze. “It felt sinister.”
He gave a short laugh, not because anything was funny. “You’ve been alone too long.”
The cabin changed around him. Cabinet doors closed harder. The television filled rooms that had been quiet. He complained about pine needles in the entryway, a coffee ring on the porch table, and the litter box Hannah had placed in the mudroom.
Winnie stayed outside until he went to bed. The pattern repeated through July and August. From Monday morning until Friday evening, the cabin belonged to soft sounds: Hannah’s keyboard, water against the dock, birds in the spruce trees. Winnie’s fur thickened, her appetite returned, and she began sleeping with one paw draped over Hannah’s ankle. Then Derek’s SUV would appear, and both of them would begin measuring the house again.
On the last Saturday in August, a storm rolled over the lake before sunset. Wind bent the birches, and thunder moved across the water in heavy, delayed blows. Winnie waited on the porch step while rain darkened the boards around her.
Hannah opened the mudroom door. “Come on, baby.”
Derek looked up from the couch. “No.”
“She’s terrified of thunder.”
“She’s been outside all summer.”
“There’s a storm.”
“There’s a roof over the porch.” He turned back to the television. “You are not bringing a wet animal into the house.”
Hannah stood with her hand on the knob. Winnie looked from the open door to Derek’s voice and remained outside.
Later, after he fell asleep, Hannah carried an old wool blanket to the three-sided potting shed at the edge of the yard. She tucked it beneath the workbench, added a bowl of water, and sat in the doorway until Winnie crept inside.
“I know it isn’t enough,” Hannah said.
Winnie circled twice on the blanket before lying down. The next morning, an orange tomcat came through a gap beneath the fence. Winnie saw him from the berry patch and rose with her tail fluffed wide. The cats faced each other in the wet grass, trading low, rough warnings.
Hannah was halfway across the porch when the upstairs window flew open. Derek leaned out, barefoot and furious.
“Shut them up.”
Before Hannah could answer, he grabbed one of his heavy leather house shoes and threw it. The shoe struck the fence with a crack inches from Winnie’s head.
Both cats exploded in opposite directions. The orange tom vanished under the boards. Winnie tore through the berry canes, squeezed beneath the gate, and disappeared into the roadside brush.
“Winnie!” Hannah ran after her without shoes, slipping on the wet gravel.
Derek pulled the window down. “She’ll come back when she’s hungry.”
Hannah searched the ditch, the tree line, and the culvert beneath the road. Rainwater soaked the hem of her pajama pants. Brambles opened thin cuts along her wrists, but she kept calling until her voice turned raw. Then, from the black mouth of the drainage pipe, came one small, trapped cry…
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇