Part 3
“As soon as he can safely care for him,” Ben said.
The social worker told him Walter was no longer in the hospital. He had moved that morning to a short-term rehabilitation unit and, if his recovery continued, might return home in less than two weeks. He was tired but clearheaded, and he had asked for a call that evening. Ben looked through the doorway at Eli’s unfinished map and the cat beside it.
“Tell him I’ll call at seven.”
Eli waited until Ben put down the phone. “He’s alive?”
“Yes. He had a procedure on his heart. He’s getting stronger.”
“And he wants Skipper.”
Ben could have softened it. He had become skilled at turning frightening facts into words a child could sleep beside. Claire, standing at the sink, watched him decide.
“He does,” Ben said.
Eli erased one edge of Gate Two until a hole opened in the paper.
At seven, Walter Pike’s voice came through Ben’s phone thin and roughened by fatigue. He did not begin with thanks.
“Is he eating?”
“Two cans a day, plus some dry food. The vet said he was a little underweight.”
“He’ll leave the dry food until midnight and then crunch it loud enough to wake the dead. Does he still slap the water before he drinks?”
Ben looked down. Skipper had just touched the surface of his bowl with one paw.
“Yes.”
Walter let out a breath that almost became a laugh. “That’s him.”
He asked about the broken carrier, the old brass tag, the white mark on Skipper’s chest. Each question carried a private fact Ben could not have manufactured from a registration record. Walter said he had been taking a bus to Casco for a long-postponed valve evaluation. A former coworker’s widow outside the city had agreed to keep Skipper while he was being tested, so Walter had brought the cat in a soft carrier.
“I remember the board saying on time,” Walter said. “Then I remember a ceiling I didn’t know. They tell me I spent the first night in intensive care. The procedure was a few days later. My bag came with me, but I couldn’t make sense of the phone until yesterday.”
His speech slowed near the end. Ben heard the effort Walter was trying to hide.
“He’s safe here,” Ben said. “My son has been looking after him.”
“How old is your boy?”
“Ten. We had to clear the cat with his transplant team. He had the transplant last year. He’s stable, but it was a hard year. Skipper’s helped him sleep. Got him moving again.”
Ben heard Walter breathing and disliked himself for filling the pause with Eli’s history, but he did not stop.
“I know the cat belongs to you. I’m not disputing that. I just need you to understand what taking him will mean here.”
“I think I do,” Walter said. “Do you understand what leaving him would mean here?”
Ben had no honest answer.
They agreed Skipper would remain with the Calders while Walter completed rehabilitation. Walter wanted pictures and, when he was stronger, a visit. He thanked Ben then, once, for getting the cat off the platform.
“I didn’t leave him,” he added before they hung up. “If your son thinks I did, please tell him.”
The next afternoon Ben drove fifty-eight miles south to the rehabilitation center. He told Claire where he was going. He did not ask whether Eli wanted to send anything, because he told himself the first meeting should be between adults.
Walter was walking between two parallel rails when Ben entered the therapy room. He was tall even in hospital clothes, with a narrow, weathered face and white hair somebody had clipped shorter than he liked. A therapist walked backward in front of him, counting each step. Walter ignored the offered rest until his knees began to tremble.
“Mr. Pike? I’m Ben Calder.”
Walter looked first at Ben’s empty hands. “You didn’t bring him.”
“They wouldn’t allow it inside.”
“I know. I was checking whether you knew.”
The dry edge in his voice made Ben almost smile. Walter lowered himself into a chair and pressed both palms flat on his thighs until his breathing settled. He was not the helpless man Ben had imagined, nor was he ready to manage at home without help.
Ben showed him a short video. Eli was walking the hallway, one slow circuit at a time, while Skipper followed behind with his tail upright. Walter watched twice. On the second viewing, his thumb rested over the image of the boy.
“He looks younger than ten,” Walter said.
“Hospitals will do that.”
“They’ll do the other thing too. Make a person look older than he is.”
Walter handed the phone back. On a side table beside him lay a legal pad covered with practical notes: grocery delivery, home-health visits, medications, rides to follow-up appointments. A downstairs neighbor named Mrs. Hanley had agreed to check on Skipper every morning. Walter had not waited for Ben to decide whether he was capable.
“I can keep fostering him while you recover,” Ben said. “Longer, if you need.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Or permanently. If it made things easier.”
Walter’s gaze moved to the rubber tips of his walker. “Easier for who?”
“For everybody.”
“No. For your boy, maybe. For you, certainly.”
Ben felt heat rise under his collar. “I’m trying not to put a medically fragile child through another loss.”
“And I’m trying to go home with the animal I’ve lived with for nine years.”
Walter did not raise his voice. He did not have enough breath to waste on that. “You pulled him out of danger, Mr. Calder. I’ll owe you for that as long as I have him. But gratitude isn’t a transfer paper.”
Ben looked at the return date on Walter’s legal pad. He had come prepared to argue that date out of existence.
“You’re right,” he said.
Walter studied him, unconvinced.
His discharge plan still had to be approved, but they chose the second Saturday in May as the likely date. Ben would bring Skipper to Walter’s apartment that morning. If the date changed, the social worker would call. They shook hands, Walter’s grip dry and surprisingly firm.
“Tell Eli before the day comes,” Walter said. “Don’t let him wake up to an empty room.”
Ben promised.
At home that evening, Eli had managed ten hallway circuits instead of six. Claire had made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and Skipper was batting a cork across the kitchen floor. The sound of Eli’s laughter stopped every version of the sentence in Ben’s throat.
Tomorrow, he decided. After school.
The next day Eli ate breakfast without coaxing and spent two hours with his class online. Ben moved the truth to after dinner. Then Claire found him at the kitchen counter with his work calendar open to the second Saturday in May.
“What happens that day?” she asked.
Ben closed the calendar too quickly.
Claire waited, one hand flat on the counter.
“Walter may be discharged,” he said. “I agreed to bring Skipper home.”
“When did you agree?”
“Yesterday.”
Her eyes went briefly to the living room, where Eli was reading on the floor with Skipper against his hip.
“You told me you went to meet him. You didn’t tell me you’d set a date.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
Ben lowered his voice. “I know what stress does to him.”
“So do I,” Claire said. “He still deserved to hear it from us.”
Eli appeared in the doorway. He had heard enough. Skipper stood beside him, tail curved around the boy’s shin.
“Second Saturday in May?” Eli asked.
Ben nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you yesterday.”
Eli’s breathing turned shallow. Claire came toward him, but he lifted one hand. He sat on the floor and put his palms against the cool tile, using the grounding exercise his hospital psychologist had practiced with him. Skipper sniffed his sleeve. Eli did not grab for him.
Ben crouched several feet away. Every impulse told him to offer a new bargain, another week, a conversation with Walter, anything that would stop his son’s face from folding in on itself.
“I asked Walter if Skipper could stay,” he admitted. “He said no. He had every right to.”
“You asked without me?”
“Yes.”
Eli shut his eyes. His next breath was uneven, but deeper.
“I said you were sick because I thought it would change his answer,” Ben said. “That wasn’t fair to you either.”
Claire sat on the floor beside their son without touching him. The kitchen clock made three small clicks before Eli opened his eyes.
“I’m still sick,” he said.
“You still need care,” Claire said. “That isn’t the same as being unable to decide anything.”
Eli stood. He went to the mudroom and returned with the hard-sided carrier. He added Skipper’s brush and the cork from the kitchen floor beside the old dispatch sweatshirt.
Then he looked at Ben. “What time are we taking him home?”
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