Part 6
“Ed,” Caleb said slowly, “what’s over there?”
Ed’s mouth opened, then closed. He looked toward the shed behind his chicken coop, a low metal building with one side patched in plywood and a blue tarp flapping over the roofline. The wind lifted the tarp with a wet snap.
“Nothing that should matter,” he said.
Ranger barked again.
Leah straightened. “Mr. Lawson?”
Ed’s face had gone the color of old paper. “I set a live trap this morning.”
Caleb stared at him.
“Before I came over,” Ed said quickly. “Before I knew about the babies. I put it behind the shed because something had been getting into the feed. I meant to go back and close it.”
“You forgot,” Caleb said.
“I got busy over here.”
Ranger lunged toward the fence, and this time Caleb went with him.
They moved as a group through the side gate between the properties. Ed fumbled with the latch, cursed under his breath, and led them past the coop. The hens inside shifted and murmured, warm shapes behind wire and straw. Caleb saw the trap behind the shed before Ed pointed.
It was empty.
The door stood open.
Relief hit for half a second before Ranger yanked toward the shed wall. Not the trap. The shed itself. He pressed his nose near a gap where the bottom sheet of metal had bent outward, then backed up, whining.
Leah crouched and shone her flashlight beneath the wall.
Two eyes flashed back.
The mother raccoon had wedged herself halfway under the warped siding, likely trying to avoid the trap or reach the smell of feed. Her injured hind leg seemed caught in a twist of old garden netting tangled beneath the shed. She hissed when the light touched her, but the sound was weaker than before.
Ed whispered something Caleb did not catch.
The little kit in Leah’s towel cried from the box Caleb carried. The mother raccoon heard it and strained toward the sound. The netting pulled tight around her leg.
“Don’t pull her,” Leah said at once. “She’ll hurt herself worse.”
Ed backed away, both hands on his head. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know she’d go under there.”
Caleb wanted to be angry. Part of him was. But anger would not free the raccoon, and Ranger already had enough fury for all of them. The dog stood rigid at the end of the leash, not barking now, just staring at the trapped mother as if he could hold her in place with his eyes.
Officer Pierce knelt beside Leah. “Can we cut the netting?”
“Maybe. I need space and nobody making sudden moves.”
Ed moved first. “I’ve got tin snips. And bolt cutters.”
“Bring both,” Leah said.
He ran.
Caleb stayed where he was, holding Ranger with one hand and the box with the other. The kit inside shifted and cried again. The mother raccoon answered with a rasping sound that made Ranger whine.
“Easy,” Caleb told him.
The dog did not look at him.
“I know,” Caleb said. “I know you found her.”
It took twenty minutes, though it felt longer. Ed returned with tools, and Leah used what she needed while Officer Pierce angled the flashlight and Caleb kept Ranger back. No one spoke more than necessary. The rain soaked through Caleb’s collar and ran down his spine. Mud swallowed the edges of everyone’s boots.
At last, the netting loosened.
The raccoon jerked free, scrambling backward so fast that Caleb nearly lost sight of her. She vanished beneath a stack of pallets leaning against the shed. Leah exhaled but did not move toward her.
“Let her settle,” she said.
Ed stood in the rain with the cutters hanging from one hand. He looked at the torn netting on the ground, then at the trap behind him. For the first time all day, there was no argument ready in his face.
“I did that,” he said.
Caleb had no comforting answer.
The kit cried again.
The mother raccoon emerged from beneath the pallets, one careful inch at a time. She was limping badly now, but she was moving. Leah lowered the box to the ground and stepped back.
Ranger held still beside Caleb.
The mother approached the kit. She sniffed it once, twice, then lifted it by the scruff. For a breath, Caleb thought she might head away from the nesting box and into the woods, too frightened of them all to return to the shelter he had built.
Instead, she turned toward Caleb’s yard.
They followed at a distance, barely breathing, as she limped through the gate and across the wet grass. At the nesting box, she disappeared inside with the last baby.
Ranger sat down in the mud.
Caleb sank beside him before thinking better of it. He wrapped one arm around the dog’s soaked shoulders. Ranger leaned into him hard, still staring at the box.
“You were right,” Caleb whispered against his fur. “You were right from the beginning.”
Ed stood a few feet away, rain dripping from the brim of his cap. “I’ll take the trap down.”
Nobody answered. He did it anyway.
By the time they returned to Caleb’s porch, the yard had gone nearly dark. Leah checked the nesting box from a distance and said the mother was inside with all five kits. The injured leg was a concern, but if the raccoon stayed alert and protective, there was still a chance she would manage.
“She’ll need quiet tonight,” Leah said. “No dogs near the box. No people hovering. No traps. No feed left out. Let her be a mother.”
Ranger made a low sound at the word mother.
Caleb looked toward the trees and thought of Annie’s gloves hanging by the mudroom door.
“I can do quiet,” he said.
But quiet did not mean easy…
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