Part 3
“Luke. Come here.” Vera kept her hand on the latch until she saw Finn turn on the trapped leg with his teeth. Then she stepped back to let the warden look through the glass.
“Don’t try to touch him or the trap,” Luke said, taking out his phone.
“He can’t get up the steps.”
“I understand. Stay inside while I call Dr. Ortiz.”
Vera fetched Ned’s coat from the wood box and showed it to Luke. “He sleeps on this.”
Luke looked from the coat to the animal crouched below them. “You can slide it down. Keep your hands well back.”
She opened the door only far enough to lay the coat on the porch and push it toward the edge with the broom. Finn struck at the moving sleeve, and she withdrew the broom immediately.
The coat slipped over the edge and landed beside him. He crouched against it without taking his eyes off her. His breath came fast enough that she could see his whole side working.
She wanted to tell him he was home. Instead, she stood behind the glass and kept the light low.
Luke went out through the front door and approached from the driveway. He stopped well back from the steps, describing the injury to Lena on the phone. When Finn flattened his ears, he moved farther away.
A broken piece of root was tangled at the end of the chain. When Finn shifted, Luke watched it scrape across the ice, then turned his face away for a moment.
He came back inside. “She’s close. We’re going to keep everything quiet until she gets here.”
“You could take that thing off.”
“Not with him awake and fighting it.”
“He’s hurting himself.”
“I know.”
Vera remained near the mudroom, where Finn could see her through the glass. Now and then she spoke about the things she was doing: putting away the broom, moving the lantern. The dish stayed on the kitchen table. She did not tap it with the spoon.
Twice he tried to climb the steps. Both times he gave up and settled against the canvas with the injured leg stretched in front of him.
Hannah called from the road. Vera said where Finn was and what had happened, then said, “Luke is here. Drive carefully.”
There was a pause before Hannah answered. “I will.”
Dr. Ortiz arrived in the dark. She was a small woman with a heavy equipment case and a paper cup she set on the van’s hood without drinking. She introduced herself as Lena, listened to Luke, and studied Finn from the far end of the porch.
“Vera, I’m going to ask you to stay inside,” she said. “If I need anything from you, I’ll tell you.”
“He knows my voice.”
“I understand.”
It was the second time someone had said that to her, and this time Vera heard how little the words promised. She moved away from the door.
Lena administered a sedative from a safe distance and waited until she judged it safe to approach. Then she examined Finn and signaled Luke to bring the equipment. Vera pressed her fingers against the seam of her skirt while they freed the leg and supported his body for the move into the carrier.
With his head lowered, he looked terribly like the animal she had pulled from beneath the porch. Lena kept one hand steady beneath his neck as Luke shifted the carrier. When a fold of the coat snagged underneath it, they stopped to free the canvas before lifting again. Luke gathered the soiled coat into a bag and put it in the van beside the equipment.
Vera opened the front door as they came around the corner of the house. “His leg?”
“I need imaging,” Lena said. “There’s swelling and a wound. I can’t tell you more yet.”
“Can I come?”
“Hannah can drive you to the hospital we use. You can’t ride with him.” She looked from Vera’s face to her bare hands. “Get warm first. We won’t delay treating him.”
Vera watched the van pull away, then went inside to change before Hannah arrived.
Hannah arrived while Vera was trying to button a clean cardigan. Her fingers had become clumsy, and she had put the second button through the third hole.
“Let me,” Hannah said, reaching toward her.
Vera pulled back. Hannah stopped, her hand still lifted between them, and waited.
After a moment Vera said, “The bottom ones. I can’t see them properly.”
Hannah knelt and began again from the hem. Vera rested a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, feeling the road cold through her sweater.
They drove south with an overnight bag and the soup Hannah had poured into a jar. At first Vera gave directions even though Hannah knew the road. At the second turn, she heard herself and stopped.
“I fed him,” she said. “After Luke told me not to.”
Hannah kept both hands on the wheel. “Did you tell Luke?”
“Today.”
The wipers made a dry stroke across the windshield. Hannah switched them off.
“You asked me to come up on Saturday,” she said. “You let me drive all that way, knowing what I was going to walk into.”
“I thought if you saw how he was with me—”
“You could have told me.”
Vera looked out at the dark shoulder. She remembered Hannah lifting the spoon to taste the soup, relaxed and hungry and pleased to be in her mother’s kitchen.
“I wanted lunch first,” she said.
Hannah glanced at her, then back at the road. “We could have had lunch.”
For a while the only sound was the heater fan. Vera folded and unfolded the corner of the map Hannah kept in the passenger door, although no one had needed it for years.
“I knew what you’d say about him,” she said at last. “And you were right. I just didn’t want to hear it from you.”
Hannah did not rush to make that easier. After several miles, she asked whether Vera needed the heater turned up.
At the hospital, they were directed to a small consultation room away from the waiting dogs. Hannah took the soup to a staff microwave with permission and brought it back in two paper cups. Vera managed a few spoonfuls. It tasted faintly of the jar’s metal lid.
Luke telephoned while they waited. Another warden had followed the marks left by the dragging chain and found where the trap had been set, on Vera’s side of the marked boundary. Faced with what they had found, Dean had admitted putting it there before daylight that morning. He had already spoken to the buyer by then.
Vera looked down at the soup. Dean had stood on her porch with that trap already in her woods, explaining how he meant to help. Luke needed her account of the conversation while she remembered it clearly.
“Will he be coming to my house?” she asked.
“I’ve told him to stay away. Call me if he contacts you.”
Vera gave Luke Dean’s words as accurately as she could. When she finished, she also told him about the bread, the latch, and the mornings Dean had come before sunrise to make sure she could get out.
Luke let her finish. He did not suggest that she had imagined those things.
Lena came in shortly before midnight with Ned’s coat folded inside a clear bag. Finn had a small fracture and injured soft tissue around the trapped leg. She had treated him, but healing would take time, and she would not know yet whether he would recover the strength and movement he needed to hunt.
“He’s stable,” she said. “That much I can tell you tonight.”
Vera reached for the bag. A dark smear crossed the canvas beneath the torn pocket, and she turned that side against her lap.
Lena described the next few weeks: treatment, limited activity, then more space as the leg allowed. If he recovered well enough, he would move to an outdoor enclosure where the staff would keep their distance and assess whether he could feed himself.
“Where would I park?” Vera asked.
Lena stopped. “At the rehabilitation center?”
“Hannah would bring me. I wouldn’t stay long.”
Beside her, Hannah set down her empty cup. Vera could feel her preparing to speak, then choosing to wait.
“For this stage, we need to end his contact with you,” Lena said. “Food will arrive without a person standing over it. We need him using the cover in the enclosure, looking for prey, moving away when staff approach. Visits would work against that.”
Vera smoothed the plastic over Ned’s pocket. “Even once?” “I can’t recommend it.” “How long are you talking about?” Lena drew her chair closer. “If we’re able to prepare him for release, it could be months…”
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