Part 6
Five years later, the flood marker at the Alder River needed replacing.
Ice had bent the old post downstream, and spring runoff had scoured the paint until Mae could no longer read the upper numbers from the bank. At seventy-four, she no longer carried steel posts down a frozen slope. Erin carried them. Mae brought the drill, the bolts, and the red throw bag.
They worked on a cold March afternoon before the thaw. Erin now covered a wider district and wore reading glasses for paperwork, though she denied needing them for anything else. She visited every few months. Sometimes she stayed overnight; sometimes she repaired a gate, drank one cup of coffee, and left before either woman spoiled the visit by demanding too much from it.
Their habits had changed in small, unglamorous ways. Erin called after every late drive because she had once said she would. Mae waited for that call instead of sending three messages and calling the highway patrol. When they argued, one of them usually returned to the subject before the next holiday.
The wolf program shared only what it could about Mica. He survived his first summer, remained with the foster pack through his second year, and then dispersed. During a routine capture in his third year, the team took a genetic sample and fitted a temporary tracking collar. The sample later matched the swab taken in Mae’s barn; the collar followed him north and, months later, back into the Alder drainage before detaching as designed the next summer. No verified image came after that.
That history could establish where he had lived. It could not tell Mae what, if anything, he remembered about twelve days at the beginning of his life.
Erin held the replacement post steady while Mae drove the upper bolts. The lower bracket sat beyond a strip of shelf ice that looked solid and was not. Mae studied it, then put the drill back in its case.
“We’ll finish that one after breakup,” she said.
Erin glanced once at the shelf ice. “After breakup.”
Once the drilling was done, Erin pulled off her work gloves and put on new red wool mittens. Mae had knitted them for Christmas, her first red pair since Danny’s mitten came back from the river. One cuff was half an inch longer than the other. Erin had noticed and worn them anyway.
They mounted a weatherproof box above the high-water line and placed the throw bag inside. Erin took it out again before Mae could ask.
“We test it,” she said.
She looped the line around an alder and tied the anchor knot correctly. Mae checked it once. Erin threw the bag toward a dark patch of current beyond the ice. It struck the center of the channel and the river pulled the line straight.
As Erin began to draw it in, she stopped.
Across the river, a wolf stood among the larches.
The coat was pale along the shoulders and darker on the back, ordinary gray in shadow and almost cream where the late sun reached it. A dark female emerged behind him, followed by two younger gray wolves that shouldered each other at the edge of the trees.
Mae felt Erin move closer, not touching her but near enough that their sleeves met.
“Do you think that’s him?” Erin asked.
The pale wolf looked across the water. He made no move to approach. His ears moved once toward their voices, then toward one of the young wolves as it pressed against his flank.
“I think so,” Mae said.
The dark female entered the trees. The younger animals followed after one last shove between them. The pale male remained for a moment with his nose lifted into the air above the river.
Mae did not call his name. He turned and went after the pack.
Erin fed the wet rope back into its red bag, one loop at a time. Her mittens darkened where the line touched them. Mae held the bag open. By the time they snapped the buckle shut, the far bank was empty.