Part 2
Hannah caught the swinging door before it struck Vera’s elbow. The phone was still at her ear, and the person on the other end could hear her say, “She let him out. Just now.”
Vera tried to pull the door closed, but Hannah held it for another moment. She gave the dispatcher the direction Finn had gone and agreed to stay with her mother until a warden arrived.
“He comes back,” Vera said.
Hannah released the door. She finished the call, put the phone in her pocket, and carried the untouched soup to the refrigerator.
The warden who arrived an hour later was Luke Mercer. Vera had driven him to elementary school when his mother worked mornings at the mill. He used to fall asleep on the ride home with his mittens still clipped to his sleeves, and she had learned to check beneath his seat before calling the bus empty.
Now he had gray at his temples and a radio that kept interrupting. He examined Finn’s tracks, looked at the photograph Hannah had taken through the kitchen doorway before calling, and asked to see where the animal had slept.
“How long have you had him?”
“Since that first big snow.”
“And how long have you been letting him out?”
“A few days.”
Luke waited. Vera made herself say, “Today’s the third time.”
He crouched beside the wood box without touching it. Ned’s coat still held the shape of Finn’s body. A patch of black hair clung to the lining.
Luke called a wildlife veterinarian named Dr. Lena Ortiz and sent her the photograph. While they spoke, Vera washed the lunch spoons. Hannah stood at the other end of the counter, drying them and putting them away.
“Yes, a Canada lynx,” Luke said when he hung up. “Probably born this past spring. The black coat is very unusual. Dr. Ortiz has seen photographs of that coloring, but never an animal with it.”
“He can hunt,” Vera said. “He watches the hares.”
“Has he caught one?”
She did not answer.
“She needs to assess him. His condition, what he can do for himself, how he behaves around people. He’s been in your kitchen for a month.”
“You make it sound like I put him in a cupboard.”
Luke looked at the deep scratches beside the mudroom door. “I’m trying to work out what chances he has now.”
Vera folded the dishcloth into a small square. She had saved the animal in a storm, and here were three people, counting the veterinarian on the telephone, speaking as though she had brought the storm indoors herself.
Luke explained what would happen if Finn returned. Vera was to call him promptly, keep other people away, and leave any capture to the team. He and Dr. Ortiz would arrange equipment and a place for Finn at a licensed rehabilitation facility. Until then, no food on the porch and no coaxing him back into the house.
“And if he just stays in the woods?” Hannah asked.
“We’ll monitor the area and work with the biologist. But a cat coming to a kitchen for dinner is likely to try that kitchen again.”
Vera’s hands went still on the cloth. Luke wrote his number in large figures and put it beside the telephone.
When he left, Hannah took the emergency pendant out of its box.
“Put that back,” Vera said.
“Mom, please.”
“You’ve had enough things done your way for one afternoon.”
Hannah set it down. Her fingers stayed on the edge of the box for a moment before she turned away.
“I wasn’t asking you to get rid of a house cat,” she said.
Vera pulled a clean saucepan from the rack, although there was no supper to make. “Last spring you said another cat would be one more thing I couldn’t manage.”
“Last spring you were on crutches.”
“For six weeks.”
“And you went down the cellar stairs with them.”
“The breaker tripped.”
Hannah sat down. The chair creaked beneath her, a familiar sound, and for a moment Vera saw the girl who had sat there doing algebra while Ned read the paper.
“You could have called Dean,” Hannah said. “Or me. You could have told me before the neighbor told me.”
Vera put the saucepan back. She had no answer she wanted to give.
Hannah stayed the night. In the morning she warmed the soup for breakfast because neither wanted eggs, and they ate it with toast, as they used to on the first day of school when Hannah was too nervous for cereal. Before leaving, she put Luke’s number under the telephone so it could not slip behind the counter.
Finn came back that evening.
Vera heard him against the mudroom panel while the news was on. Through the glass she saw the snow caught in his cheek fur and the steady amber eyes looking past her toward the kitchen. When she moved, he rubbed the side of his head against the frame.
She went to the telephone, then stopped. If she called Luke, he would come with people Finn did not know. There would be a crate, a truck, a room somewhere with a drain in the floor.
She could feed him once without letting him in.
She put the dish outside and closed the door. Finn ate with his ears turning toward the woods. Before bed she washed the dish and slid it beneath the others in the cupboard.
For the next two evenings, she did the same thing. When Luke phoned, she told him she had seen tracks but could not say where the animal was now. That much was true by daylight, which was when she chose to think about it.
On the fourth afternoon Dean arrived with his plow and did not shut off the engine. He stood on the porch holding a thermos, watching her face instead of looking past her into the house.
“Heard the wardens were here.”
“People hear plenty.”
“That black cat came around my shed. I saw it under the light.”
Vera held the door against her hip. “Then keep your rabbits shut up.”
“They are shut up. I spent Sunday fixing the wire.” He lowered the thermos. “You knew he wasn’t a house cat before you started letting him out?”
The repaired latch was at Vera’s shoulder, bright screws against old paint. She looked at it instead of answering him.
Dean wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. “I called a fellow I know who keeps exotic animals. He’s got fenced runs, heated sheds. Said he’d take a black one alive.”
“You told somebody about Finn?”
“I asked a question. You can’t keep him in the kitchen, and I can’t keep patching wire.” He glanced toward his truck. “The fellow would pay for catching him and bringing him down. Enough for that pump.”
“So that’s what this is.”
“It’s work, Vera. Catching him, hauling him. I don’t see the state offering to fix my shed.”
She looked again at the screws he had put in her latch. “You could have sent me the bill for the wire.”
“That won’t stop him coming back. This fellow can feed him. Keep him somewhere he won’t get into things.” Dean lowered his voice, the way he did when explaining a repair she had questioned. “I thought you’d be glad there was somewhere for him.”
“Would he ever get out?”
“Out where? He’s got enclosures.”
Vera pictured Finn at the kitchen window, his ears turning toward the hares beneath the firs. She had brought him indoors because he could not lift his head. Now Dean was offering to have him kept behind wire for the rest of his life.
“Don’t come back here for him,” she said.
Dean’s expression hardened. He took his thermos down the steps and drove away without clearing the ridge at the mouth of her driveway.
This time Vera called Luke. She repeated Dean’s words, including the part about money, and Luke asked exactly when he had said them. He would speak to Dean immediately. In the meantime, the recapture arrangements were ready; they needed a reliable account of Finn’s visits.
Vera looked at the cupboard where she had hidden the dish.
“He’s been here every night,” she said.
Luke was quiet long enough for her to hear his truck’s turn signal.
“Have you been feeding him?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I’m coming to the house after I speak to Dean. Dr. Ortiz will come up too. Don’t put anything else out until we get there.”
She said she understood. Then she called Hannah at work and asked whether she could come that evening.
“Has something happened?”
“I need to tell you some things.”
Hannah did not ask them over the telephone. She said she would leave as soon as somebody could cover the end of her shift.
Luke arrived while it was still light. Dean had told him the buyer was only a possibility and denied trying to catch the animal. Luke had warned him to leave Finn alone. He checked the yard, then came inside to speak to Lena again.
Vera took Finn’s dish from beneath the others in the cupboard and set it on the kitchen table. For the next hour she stayed beside it while Luke made calls in the front hall. The windows darkened until she could see her own reflection above the sink.
At about the time Finn usually came for his food, Vera heard something scrape outside. Too heavy for a paw, it dragged once, stopped, then dragged again. She took the lantern to the mudroom.
Finn was at the bottom of the steps. His left forepaw did not touch the snow, and a length of chain trailed beneath him. When he tried to climb, the metal caught on the lowest board and pulled him backward. Vera raised the lantern. A steel trap was still closed around his leg…
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