Part 4
June was waiting at the kitchen table when Rowan came in, an oxygen line trailing from beneath her nose to the concentrator by the pantry door. She had dressed for the day but left one slipper unfastened. That small failure worried him more than the set of her mouth.
He removed his wet boots on the mat. River grit had worked through his socks and collected between his toes.
“Vic called me,” she said.
“I figured.”
“The sheriff called first. Vic called when he realized the sheriff had made it sound like you were dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sit down.”
He sat beside the sink. June irrigated his cuts under clean running water, washed the surrounding skin with soap, and reminded him to check when he had last received a tetanus booster. She had raised two boys, worked twenty-seven years in a school cafeteria, and learned respiratory illness slowly enough to distrust quick fixes. Her hands shook when she dressed the cuts across his knuckles, but her voice did not.
“They said you found two people.”
“Vic and I did.”
“And a cat.”
“Cat found them first.”
June wrapped gauze around his palm. Her gaze moved to his bare wrist.
“Where’s Danny’s cord?”
“Caught on the car. I cut it.”
She paused with the tape between her fingers. Rowan waited for grief to change her face. Instead she finished the bandage and pressed the tape flat with her thumb.
“Good,” she said.
He pulled his hand away. “Good?”
“You came home without it.”
“That’s not the same as being glad it’s gone.”
“No. It isn’t.” June sat across from him. “I’m glad you saved those people. I’m glad enough to thank God until He gets tired of hearing me. I’m not glad you went onto a flood river before you knew they were there.”
“The skiffs would have torn loose.”
“Then the skiffs would have torn loose.”
“One of them pays for most of April.”
“Don’t make my medicine the reason you had to go. I heard you telling Vic that on the porch.”
Rowan looked toward the concentrator. The machine gave its soft mechanical sigh.
“It’s true.”
“Maybe,” June said. “But you’re using it to excuse what you did.”
He had no answer he could give without turning it into an argument. June seemed to know that. She reached for the loose strap of her slipper and fastened it.
“Danny died,” she said. “You didn’t. I have lived fifteen years with one son in the ground and one son trying to climb in after him whenever the river gives him an excuse. Saving strangers doesn’t make that easier to watch.”
The concentrator sighed again. Rowan stared at his bandaged hand until the white gauze blurred.
A truck door closed outside. Vic entered without knocking, carrying Rowan’s tool roll and the folded PFD. He set both on the counter.
“That prop strike bent the shaft and opened a lower seal,” he said. “Gear oil came out milky. Won’t know about the bearings until we open it.”
“You should be home.”
“My wife said the same thing. She used more colorful nouns.” Vic looked at June. “You all right?”
“I’m breathing.”
“Show-off.”
June’s mouth softened despite herself. She rose to make coffee, giving the men a privacy neither had asked for.
Vic lowered himself into the chair beside Rowan. “Claire’s sister called the station and said we could have an update. Claire’s stable. Evan’s in step-down for his lungs and the cold. Nobody’s making promises about the pregnancy, but the first scan didn’t show an obvious problem.”
Rowan nodded.
“Chief also says what we did bought them time.” Vic rubbed both hands over his face. “She says next time we call and stay in the boat.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
Vic dropped his hands. “Next time, you call first and wait for backup.”
Rowan looked at him.
“You were ready to go through that hatch,” Vic continued. “No line. No backup. If I hadn’t caught your wrist, you’d have made three people for the rescue crew to haul out.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Because somebody stopped you.”
June poured coffee into three mismatched mugs. She placed one before Vic and one before Rowan, then carried her own to the window.
Vic turned his mug in both hands. “The day Danny went in, I told you to stay on the bank because he was already beyond your reach. I saw where he was from the road. I never told you that part because I thought it would sound like an old man trying to make himself feel better.”
Rowan’s chair scraped the floor. “You don’t know what I could have reached.”
“No,” Vic said. “And neither do you.”
They faced each other across a table scarred by years of hot pans and homework. Vic did not apologize for the sentence. Rowan did not forgive it.
June stared through the window at the wet yard. “Coffee’s getting cold.”
Vic drank. After a moment, Rowan did too.
Three days later, the county veterinarian let Rowan into the kennel room behind the clinic. Marlow had warmed, eaten half a can of prescription food, and been cleared of anything worse than torn claws, bruising, and exhaustion. Evan remained hospitalized, and Claire was staying nearby with her sister while doctors continued to watch her concussion and breathing.
The clinic had called the emergency contact on the cat’s tag. Claire had asked whether the fisherman who found him might visit until she could come herself.
“He’s been hiding from everyone,” the technician warned. “Don’t take it personally.”
Marlow occupied the farthest corner of a stainless-steel enclosure. His fur had dried into soft gray layers, making him look twice the size he had on the river. When Rowan crouched, the cat’s yellow eyes opened.
“You clean up expensive,” Rowan said.
Marlow did not move.
Rowan sat on the floor instead of reaching in. He told the cat the lower-unit bearings in the old outboard were ruined. He told him June had eaten toast for lunch and pretended it was because she wanted toast. He did not mention Danny.
After several minutes, Marlow stood. He approached the enclosure door one careful step at a time and pushed his nose through the bars.
Rowan offered the back of his bandaged hand. Marlow sniffed the bandage, then rested his forehead against Rowan’s knuckles and stayed there…
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇