Part 6
The next morning, Ben called Maggie before the coffee finished brewing. She answered on the first ring.
“Blood or property?”
“Neither.”
“Then I need a minute to adjust.”
Ben looked through the glass at the wet deck. Two sizes of paw print crossed the boards and continued into the yard. He told her about the call from beneath the cedar, the young bobcat, and Walter standing between it and the door. He also told her about the turkey.
“You put it away?” Maggie asked.
“I did.”
“That must have hurt.”
Ben rubbed a thumb across the chip in his mug. “More than it should have.”
“No,” she said. “Probably about as much as it should.”
He sent Nora the photograph. She would not confirm more than the image allowed: an adult female and a juvenile traveling together, very likely mother and offspring. The younger cat looked healthy. Walter’s condition appeared good. Ben had done the right thing by leaving them alone.
He printed one copy of the picture and put it in the junk-drawer envelope with the three hairs. Then he carried the package of turkey to Wes’s house, where Lucy used it for sandwiches after school.
The bobcats did not return together that fall.
Walter appeared twice at the brush line. Once she crossed the far end of the yard while Ben and Wes were stacking firewood, and neither man called to her. The second time, Ben was alone at the kitchen table. Walter sat beyond the stump, washed one front paw, and left before he finished his coffee.
In November, the first real snow arrived overnight. It covered the deck, softened the broken weeds, and filled the yellow grass patch where the shelter had once stood. Ben woke early and found Walter’s broad, round tracks crossing the far end of the yard toward the creek. They never turned toward the door.
Ben stood there with his hand on the curtain. A year earlier, he would have gone outside with food, called softly, and tried to turn the tracks toward him. Now he let the coffee drip and watched the pale morning settle over the yard.
At noon, Maggie arrived with two casserole dishes and a complaint about the road. Wes and Lucy came ten minutes later carrying pie. It was not Thanksgiving—Maggie had her children and grandchildren to feed the following week—but Ben had invited them to his house because waiting for a holiday had begun to feel like another way of avoiding people.
He had almost canceled that morning. One casserole would have been enough, the dining table was too small, and Wes had strong opinions about carving meat that Ben had cooked. Each reason sounded sensible in isolation. Together they sounded like this house before anyone arrived.
So Ben put a leaf in the table, accepted Maggie’s casserole without telling her where to set it, and let Lucy place four mismatched napkins beside the plates. When Wes asked for a honing steel, Ben handed it over. Nobody followed Ben’s plan because he had not made one.
The kitchen became too warm. Wes claimed Ben’s carving knife was dull. Maggie reorganized the serving spoons without permission. Lucy discovered the hallway floorboard that made a noise like an offended duck and stepped on it until three adults threatened consequences none intended to enforce.
For most of the meal, the photograph stayed in its envelope. Ben had imagined bringing it out after the plates were filled, explaining where each animal had stood and what he had chosen not to do. Instead, Lucy described a classmate who ate paste, Wes argued that the Lions could ruin any promising season, and Maggie asked whether Ben still had the map to a lake their father used to fish.
Ben answered the questions he was asked.
The envelope remained in the drawer.
Halfway through dinner, Lucy pointed toward the darkening yard. Walter stood between two pines at the edge of the snow.
Everyone turned. Ben lifted one hand, not to greet the bobcat but to keep Lucy seated. She remembered. The room grew quiet without anyone being told.
Walter watched the house for several seconds. Behind her, farther among the trees, another shape moved between the trunks. It was there and gone too quickly for certainty.
“Is she coming up?” Lucy whispered.
“Maybe,” Ben said. “Maybe not.”
Walter chose not to. She turned, placed each paw inside the dark marks of the trail that had brought her, and walked back into the pines.
Ben stayed at the window until the ragged ear disappeared. Then Maggie touched his sleeve and asked whether he planned to let the potatoes get cold.
He returned to the table.
Behind him, new snow began filling Walter’s tracks. Lucy stepped on the loose floorboard again, the hallway gave its ridiculous squawk, and Ben was still laughing when the woods went dark beyond the glass.