Part 5
Rachel answered on the second ring.
“Noah?”
“There’s a cat at the cabin.” He was already crossing the parking lot. “Derek left her there in November.”
For half a second, Rachel said nothing. Then her voice sharpened. “Alive?”
“I don’t know.”
She met him at home with two insulated blankets, a pet carrier, hand warmers, bottled water, and a cardboard box of supplies from their own cat, who had died the previous spring. Noah loaded snowshoes and a plastic sled into the truck while Rachel called veterinary clinics along the route.
The private road into Pineglass had not been plowed beyond the county turnoff. Noah parked beside a wall of packed snow, strapped on the snowshoes, and tied the sled behind him. Rachel wanted to come, but one of them needed to stay where the phone signal held and coordinate help.
“Call every ten minutes,” she said.
“I will.”
“And if you find her—”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
The first mile passed through open woods. Then the road narrowed between cabins buried to their lower windows. Snow had hardened under a week of thawing afternoons and freezing nights; some steps held him, while others broke through to his shins. The sled bumped and tipped behind him.
At Lot 18, Noah found the red gate beneath a ridge of drifted snow. He dug out the chain with his gloves, entered the code Derek had written, and pulled until the frozen lock released.
The yard beyond was untouched except for bird tracks. Noah stood listening.
“Here, kitty.”
Nothing answered.
He checked beneath the porch first, crawling on one elbow with a flashlight. He opened the cabin and searched every room, though the cold, empty air told him no animal had been inside for months. A water bowl sat dry beside the mudroom wall. On the refrigerator, a faded grocery list remained beneath a magnet shaped like a canoe.
Oat milk. Tea. Winnie treats.
The name made the silence worse. He went back outside and searched the woodpile, the crawl space, and the narrow strip along the lake. There were no fresh paw prints. No disturbed snow. No sound except the scrape of branches and his own breath.
Rachel called as he reached the fence line.
“Anything?”
“Her name is Winnie.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes. “Not yet.”
A chickadee landed on the potting shed roof, shook snow from its wings, and dropped through a gap beneath the eave. Noah would not have noticed the shed otherwise; drifted snow covered its lower walls, and pine boughs leaned across the entrance.
He ended the call and pushed toward it. The door had warped open by two inches. Noah cleared the drift with the edge of his snowshoe and forced the wood back. A sour, damp smell met him—old litter, mold, and animal musk beneath the cold.
Inside, an empty food bag lay flattened near the wall. Brown dust clung to the torn seam. A gray felt cat cave sat in the far corner, its opening black. Noah crouched and shone the light inside.
Empty.
Relief tried to rise before he could stop it. Maybe Winnie had escaped the gate. Maybe someone from another cabin had found her. Maybe the lack of tracks meant she had been gone for weeks, living in a heated barn or sleeping on a stranger’s sofa.
Then the chickadee hopped onto the workbench and pecked at a fold in the old wool blanket beneath it. The blanket was not lying flat.
Noah removed one glove. “Please,” he said quietly.
He lifted the stiff edge. At first, he saw only matted fur. Gray, white, and brown with dirt, wrapped around a body so narrow it seemed built from angles. The cat’s ribs rose beneath the coat like the slats of a broken basket. Her paws were tucked under her chest, and frost had silvered the whiskers around her nose.
Noah’s hand stopped in the air. He had arrived too late.
Anger came before grief, hot enough to make him dizzy. He saw Derek in the conference room fastening his coat, explaining responsibility as though it were a line item that could be transferred with a deed. Noah gripped the bench until the wood pressed crescents into his palm.
Then he made himself touch the cat. Her fur was colder than the air beneath the blanket. He placed two fingers behind one front leg, searching for a heartbeat he could not feel through the mats. Nothing moved.
Outside, the chickadee called once. Under Noah’s fingertips, something fluttered.
He leaned closer. The movement came again, so faint he thought it might be the tremor in his own hand. Then a thread of breath stirred the fur beside Winnie’s nose. “Oh, sweetheart.” Noah slid one palm beneath her head. “I’m here.” One eyelid opened a fraction. The eye beneath it was cloudy and sunken, but it found the shape of him. Winnie tried to make a sound, but no voice came out…
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