Part 3
Clover waited at the open gate until darkness erased the tire tracks. Twice, distant headlights moved between the trees, and twice she ran into the road. Neither car slowed.
Near midnight, Russell returned alone and left the SUV running while he went straight into the cabin. Clover followed him through the mudroom, crying as she circled his legs, but he stepped over her and pulled a duffel bag from the closet. Anna’s sweater, phone charger, shoes, and medication disappeared into it without order.
“She’s alive,” he said when Clover cried again. His face looked gray beneath the kitchen light. “That’s all I know.”
He filled a bowl with dry food and another with water. Then he carried Anna’s legal folder from the dresser, stared at the label for several seconds, and put it in his own briefcase while Clover watched from the doorway.
Russell left before dawn. The gate remained open, but Clover did not follow his car. Every familiar scent led back to the cabin: Anna’s soap in the upstairs bathroom, her tea in the pantry, the cardigan draped across the porch chair. Clover settled beneath that chair and waited for the person attached to them.
At first, waiting had a rhythm. She ate, slept, patrolled the raspberry canes, and hurried to the drive whenever gravel shifted beyond the trees. The chickadee came each morning, hopping along the fence with the confidence of something certain the world would continue.
Russell returned three days later. He brought no Anna. He carried boxes from the cabin, spoke into his phone, and used words Clover knew only by tone: hospital, therapy, insurance, weeks.
Once, his voice softened. “The cat is fine,” he said. “A woman from work took her. You need to focus on getting better.”
Clover sat less than six feet away.
Russell ended the call and looked at her. Something passed over his face—not affection, not quite shame. He opened a can of food, pushed it onto the porch with his shoe, and went back inside.
The visits grew farther apart. Anna had suffered a serious stroke. She moved from intensive care to a neurological unit, then to a rehabilitation hospital near Milwaukee. Russell told people he was managing everything. At the cabin, managing meant collecting valuables, shutting off rooms, and leaving enough food that he could tell himself the cat had a chance.
By October, the nights sharpened. Clover’s coat had grown thick again, though burrs caught in the fur along her belly. She slept in the screened porch when rain came sideways and in the felt bed when the wind found the cracks.
One afternoon, Russell arrived with a contractor who measured the rooms and photographed the lake through the windows. Clover hid under the porch until they left. The next week, a real-estate sign appeared just inside the gate.
At night, she still climbed the porch steps and waited outside the bedroom where Anna had slept. The door never opened, but the narrow gap beneath it held traces of lotion, tea, and the wool socks Anna wore when the floor turned cold. Clover sometimes pushed one paw into that gap and left it there until sleep pulled her sideways against the boards. By morning, frost had gathered on the outside of the glass.
Russell came for the last time before Thanksgiving.
Frost silvered the grass, and the lake had begun to skin over near the shore. He drained the pipes, emptied the refrigerator, and stacked the porch chairs inside. When Clover slipped through the mudroom door, he caught her beneath the front legs and carried her back out.
She twisted once in his hands. He set her down in the screened gazebo at the edge of the yard, where Anna had once placed an old wool blanket during warm summer nights.
“You have shelter,” he said. “You hunt. You’ll manage.”
He brought the gray felt bed, a plastic water dish, and half a bag of bargain kibble. Instead of finding a bowl, he tore the bag open and poured a mound onto the gazebo floor. Pellets rolled beneath the bench and into the cracks between the boards.
Clover followed him back to the cabin. He closed the door in front of her and turned the deadbolt. Through the glass, she watched him lower the thermostat, switch off the lamps, and carry the final box to the SUV.
His phone rang while he stood on the porch.
“Yes,” he said, looking toward the lake rather than at Clover. “She’s safe. I told you, Anna. Stop worrying about the cat.”
A pause followed. His jaw tightened.
“I can’t bring pictures every time I visit you. I have a house to sell and bills to pay.”
He ended the call, slid the phone into his coat, and walked to the gate. Clover trotted after him. She stopped when the chain lifted and the brass padlock—the one he had brought in summer—closed through the bars.
Russell drove away under a sky heavy with the first real snow. Clover remained beside the gate until the cold forced her paws from the gravel. When she returned to the porch, Anna’s cardigan was gone. The cabin windows were dark, the doors would not open, and sleet had begun tapping against the metal lock…
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