Part 5
By April, the wiregrass had green tips and the mosquitoes had returned to the shallow water. Mara’s ankle still stiffened before rain. Both her wildlife-control and guide licenses were suspended, and she had pleaded guilty to two state wildlife violations, accepting fines, probation, and habitat-restoration work.
Calder Blackwater Outfitters had closed, and Wade’s case had not reached court. At the grocery store, Mara heard people call him a thief who had fooled them and a good employer she had ruined, two versions that required no one to mention the nine reports bearing her name.
Evie’s bear project survived on conservation land, though the university reviewed every location file she had shared with Wade.
Mara left Wade’s cottage in February for a two-room duplex at the edge of Stanton. Evie rented a room across town instead of taking the second bedroom. The dented thermos Wade had returned at the hospital sat in Mara’s highest kitchen cabinet; she had washed it after the move but had not used it or thrown it away.
On scheduled restoration Saturdays, Mara and Evie met a state habitat technician at old lines that investigators had cataloged and the landowners had released for cleanup. Twenty-six sets had come out by spring, but gaps in Mara’s notebooks made the total uncertain. When Mara could not remember a location or a name, she said so instead of giving Evie the likeliest answer.
At first they talked only about tools and routes. By the fourth workday, Evie had begun leaving a second sandwich on the truck hood at noon. Mara ate it without turning lunch into another apology. They still arrived in separate cars, and Evie kept her study files in a locked case, but sometimes she told Mara which cameras had found cubs or how high the river had risen after a storm.
That morning the technician had gone ahead to flag a safe route, leaving Mara and Evie beside the lightning-scarred tupelo. Mara wore the pack from Cypress Cut, its torn haul loop stitched with blue webbing. A pair of heavy cutters now rode in the side pocket where the bait jar once sat.
Evie knelt at the base of the cypress and cleared mud from the chain grown into its bark. “This one’s on your map as C-forty-one.”
“Wade’s old numbering system,” Mara said.
Evie looked up.
“I set number forty-one,” she corrected. “Wade marked the map. My hands put it here.”
Evie went back to the root. “Okay.” She did not smile or touch Mara’s arm; she left the corrected sentence where it belonged and asked which tool they needed next.
They worked the chain free without cutting the living bark. Mara had to sit twice because her ankle would not tolerate the slope. Evie waited the first time; the second, she continued loosening links until Mara was ready to stand.
When the cable finally came away, it left a shallow channel in the cypress, pale as an old pressure mark on skin. Mara coiled the iron and fastened it to the pack frame. The added weight settled across the same bruised places the bear’s pull had once cut beneath her arms.
Evie had moved toward the next flag when she stopped beside a patch of damp sand.
“Mom.”
One bear track crossed the path, softened at the edges by last night’s rain. The right foreprint showed three deep toes and two shallow marks turned inward.
Evie crouched but did not reach for her phone. “Do you think he remembered you?”
Mara studied the print. She could explain the molasses, the strength of a pack strap, and a bear’s memory for places where it had been hurt. None of that told her what the animal had intended.
“I don’t know,” she said.
They did not follow the track. Ahead, the flagged route narrowed where the peat floated over black water, and Mara felt the old urge to take Evie’s sleeve and keep her behind.
Evie crossed first. Mara waited until the wiregrass stopped trembling, then followed, the cut cable knocking against the frame of the pack while the crooked track went on without them.