Part 3
Wes did not answer that night. By breakfast, he had drawn three possible skid routes on the back of the cutting map. Anna canceled her Saturday plans and stayed.
By midmorning, the forester Mason brought to the property had shown them why avoiding the swale alone would not be enough. The fallen chestnut sat inside a narrow corridor connecting the creek to six hundred acres of unbroken woods. Cut the large trees on both sides, and the den might remain standing while the cover that made it useful disappeared.
They walked the tract together—Wes, Anna, Mason, and the forester, a compact woman named Ruth Saylor who measured slopes with an instrument clipped to her vest. Mason did not argue with the bobcat sign. He pointed out instead where wet ground would bog his skidder, where a turn was too tight for the log truck, and where changing the route would force him onto the rocky north ridge.
“I can take the marked poplar and oak up there,” he said. “But it’s less volume, slower hauling, and no easy access to the landing.”
“How much less?” Anna asked.
Ruth gave them the estimate. The revised harvest would net Wes less than half the original amount. After he returned part of Mason’s advance and paid the cost of moving equipment, there would be enough to replace the leaking section of roof or rebuild the failing porch steps, but not both.
Mason took off his cap and rubbed sawdust from the band. “I agreed to selective cutting because Ellen hated clear-cuts, and because you taught me better. But I’ve turned down two jobs for this week. I can’t carry the whole loss.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Wes said.
“You asked me Friday. You’re answering me now. Those aren’t the same thing.”
It was a fair distinction. Wes looked toward the swale, where his temporary open pipe waited for another storm to clog it. He had spent years believing that taking responsibility meant solving a problem before anyone saw him struggle with it. Too often, what he called responsibility arrived in other people’s lives as a finished decision.
He accepted the revised amount and wrote Mason a check for the mobilization cost. The check came from the emergency account Anna had helped him build after Ellen’s bills were paid. His hand hesitated only once.
“The roof first,” Anna said. “You can use the back steps until spring.”
“I can manage the steps.”
“I know. That isn’t the question.”
Wes started to refuse the help he heard beneath her words. Instead, he handed her the property folder. “Delaney mentioned a local land trust. Would you look at the easement papers with me? Before I sign anything.”
Anna held the folder against her chest, but her face did not soften on command. “I’ll look. I won’t agree just because you feel guilty about the wire.”
“I don’t want you to.”
Anna opened the folder at the kitchen table and began writing questions in the margin. Wes sat across from her instead of taking it back.
The next five days rearranged the property in small, deliberate ways. Mason pulled every orange ribbon from the bottomland and marked the north ridge in white. Wes built a new drain cover from smooth steel bars set far enough apart for small animals to pass, then asked Ruth to inspect it before he bolted it down. Anna cleared blackberry canes from the outlet while leaving a thick screen along the animal trail.
Delaney called once each evening. The kitten’s wound remained clean. She climbed the mesh in her enclosure, killed the mice provided for her, and struck at the feeding panel whenever a person approached. Delaney reported each act of hostility with satisfaction.
On Wednesday she brought the kitten back in a covered carrier. A wildlife officer met them at the meadow and checked the release site. The officer also reviewed Ruth’s revised map and confirmed that the north-ridge work lay outside the quiet corridor required for the reunion attempt. They placed a small temporary enclosure beneath trees a hundred yards from the fallen chestnut, supplied it with water and a dark shelter, and draped three sides so the kitten could hear and smell the woods without seeing the people who tended the door.
The plan was to give the mother one night to find her. If she did not appear, they would reassess before opening the enclosure. If she reacted aggressively, or if the other kittens were no longer nearby, Delaney would take Mica back.
“Case twenty-six forty-one,” Delaney corrected when Wes said the name.
“You know which one I mean.”
“That’s what worries me.”
She was adjusting the remote-release cable, not looking at him. Wes understood that her bluntness was a fence she had built for animals that would die if affection made them easy to approach. He did not ask to see inside the shelter.
Anna and Wes watched the enclosure camera from the kitchen. The image showed only a square of silver-green woods and the dark mouth of the shelter. Every so often, the kitten crossed the frame too quickly for the camera to hold her. Her injured foot touched the ground, though she favored it after climbing.
Near midnight, Anna made coffee. Wes told her she should sleep.
She set his mug beside him. “Don’t decide that for me.”
The sentence was quiet. It opened the old room between them.
Wes kept his eyes on the screen. “Your mother asked for you that afternoon. Not at the end. Earlier, when you were getting the medication. She said you looked tired.”
Anna lowered herself into the chair beside him.
“I thought I could spare you the last part,” he continued. “That’s what I said in that office, and some of it was true. But I also wanted one thing that was only mine. I wanted to be the person holding her hand when she went. I didn’t know I wanted that until I’d already taken it from you.”
The refrigerator cycled on. Somewhere beyond the kitchen wall, an owl gave a single low note.
“I can’t give the hour back,” Wes said.
“No.”
“I should have woken you.”
Anna wrapped both hands around her mug. “Yes.”
He had imagined that admitting the selfish part would either destroy what remained between them or earn an absolution he did not deserve. Anna did not forgive him or leave. She moved her chair close enough that both of them could see the same screen, and neither spoke until the alert.
At 1:14 a.m., the camera changed.
The mother bobcat stepped into the frame from the creek side. She circled the enclosure once, nose working along the ground, then settled just beyond the wire. A larger kitten appeared behind her, followed by a second. The third remained somewhere outside the camera’s reach.
Inside the shelter, Mica made the thin, rising trill Wes had first heard at the drain. The mother answered…
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