Part 7
Cricket slept most of the way home. Sadie sat beside the carrier with one finger hooked through the handle, not the wire. The two refuge photographs rested inside her notebook, separated from the old pages by a blank sheet. Near the Tennessee line, Kate asked Owen if he wanted her to drive.
“I’m all right.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
He looked at the next exit sign, then pulled into a rest area. Six years earlier he would have driven through fatigue because stopping felt too much like admitting a limit. Kate took the keys without comment. In the passenger seat, Owen turned toward Sadie. “I’m sorry I ended the visit before you were ready.”
“Cricket was ready.”
“Yes.”
Sadie looked out at the trucks moving along the highway. “Do you think they remembered her?”
Owen could have given her the answer she wanted. The tigers had approached. Milo had chuffed.
Fern had matched an old sleeping posture and kept a toy from her first weeks. But Gwen’s restraint had been another kind of care, and he would not turn it into certainty now.
“I think something about her was familiar,” he said. “I think they felt safe enough to stay. I don’t know more than that.”
Sadie considered this, then slid the photographs deeper into the notebook. She traced the notebook’s torn corner with her thumb. “That’s more than nothing.”
At home, Cricket walked straight to the workshop. She inspected the empty pen area, drank from the old ceramic bowl Sadie still kept there, and slept for nearly six hours on the moon quilt. After that day she stopped watching every white van that passed the gate.
Owen did not put Delilah’s photograph back toward the wall. He returned to repairing trailers on Monday, answered Gwen’s weekly update on Tuesday, and on Wednesday let Sadie install a double-action latch on a carrier Elise needed for injured wildlife. He held the frame steady and did not reach over her hands when she took longer than he would have.
Over the next fourteen months, Cricket’s kidneys worsened by degrees. Medicine came hidden in tuna until she identified the trick, then in chicken until she identified that one too. Sadie lifted her onto the bed each night. Kate warmed a towel on cold mornings. Owen learned to ask Elise what comfort looked like now instead of what else could be tried.
On a Sunday in late autumn, Cricket refused breakfast and did not complain when the back door stayed closed. She lay on Sadie’s bed with one paw over the girl’s wrist. Elise came to the house near noon. Owen did not ask for another test.
Sadie held Cricket on the faded moon quilt while the old cat’s breathing slowed. Kate sat against the headboard, one hand resting lightly between Cricket’s shoulders. Owen stayed at the foot of the bed until Sadie looked up and made space for him beside her.
They buried Cricket beneath the tulip poplar near the pasture gate. Sadie placed the same frayed blue towel in the grave and kept the moon quilt folded over her arm. Kate added the small brass tag from Cricket’s first collar. Owen lowered the box and waited while Sadie chose where the marker should face.
The old Rusk property was empty now. Honeysuckle covered the concrete pads where cages had stood, and the county had rebuilt the washed shoulder of Briar Road. From the grave, they could see the place Cricket had stopped on the morning after the storm and turned to make sure Owen was following. Sadie set the marker into the soft earth. It leaned left.
“Hold it for me?” she asked.
Owen held it. Sadie pressed soil around the base, checked the angle, and adjusted it once more. Kate stood beside them with her hands in her coat pockets, waiting without hurrying anyone toward the house.
Beyond the fence, Laurel Creek moved under Briar Road with no sound but water.