Part 7
By May, Eli could button his shirt with both hands, though his right shoulder stiffened in cold weather and two fingertips still felt as if they belonged to somebody else.
He had not moved back to the cabin or sold it. Instead, he rented a small place twelve minutes from Nate’s house—close enough for Sunday dinners and far enough that nobody could accuse him of enjoying them too much.
One Saturday, Rosa Alvarez arrived at Nate’s house carrying a large brown envelope. Eli, Nate, and Sadie were repairing a birdhouse at the kitchen table. Sadie had used too much purple paint, and Eli had decided not to tell her.
Rosa placed the envelope in front of him.
“A camera near the north side of Split Rock took this three nights ago.”
Inside was a color photograph.
The lynx stood on a fallen lodgepole at the edge of a spring meadow. Without snow around it, the coat was not empty black but layered with charcoal, dark brown, and a faint silver sheen along the ruff. Its injured leg bore weight. Above the paw, a pale ring showed where the cable had cut the fur.
The animal faced away from the camera, head turned just enough for one yellow eye to catch the invisible flash.
Sadie leaned over Eli’s shoulder. “That’s him?”
“Could be.”
Rosa nodded. “Same size. Same coat. The scar is in the right place.”
“Does he have a name?” Sadie asked.
“No.”
“We should give him one.”
Eli studied the photograph. “He managed this long without us.”
Sadie considered that and seemed to accept it.
“Did he save you?”
Nate looked at Eli but did not answer for him.
“The machine you gave me brought the rescue team,” Eli said. “The lynx and I stayed under the same roof for a while.”
Sadie touched the pale mark in the photograph without pressing her finger to the animal itself.
That autumn, the three of them drove up to Eli’s cabin to close the shutters before the first serious storm. Nate repaired the generator. Sadie collected pinecones and arranged them along the porch rail according to rules she refused to explain.
Eli packed June’s red-and-black blanket behind the truck seat.
Clouds gathered over the Swan Range earlier than forecast. Wind moved through the trees, carrying the first dry grains of snow.
Nate looked toward the sky and then at Eli.
“We should go,” Eli said. “Road will be bad after dark.”
Nate nodded.
Before locking the cabin, Eli took the spare key from its hook and put it on Nate’s ring. He kept the other one.
Sadie met him at the porch steps with the satellite messenger. Its orange cord was freshly braided where the old one had frayed.
“You keep forgetting this,” she said.
Eli clipped it to his coat.
“I know.”
At the bend where the road dropped toward the valley, he looked once into the lodgepoles. The trees held only snow and shadow.
Sadie slept against his good shoulder. Nate drove with both hands loose on the wheel, and the orange cord lay bright across Eli’s coat.