Part 4
“Are we still allowed to live there?” Nell asked as soon as they were in the pickup.
Daniel put the house key in his pocket. “We have a lease. Losing hours doesn’t end it.” He started the engine, then shut it off again. “I’ll need to find other work if this lasts. Your mom and I will figure out the money.”
“Because I made you tell.”
“I was the one who said I’d take up the trap.”
“But if I hadn’t asked—”
“I’m glad you asked.” He looked through the windshield at the barn. “I wish you hadn’t needed to.”
On the way home, they passed the pump house. New tape crossed the broken platform, farther back from the edge, and someone had chained the safety cabinet open so the equipment inside was visible from the road. Nell looked away before they reached the place where she had dropped her bicycle.
At home Daniel called Kate, then spent the afternoon checking the names in his old customer notebook. From her room, Nell heard him explain twice that he was available for repair work. She heard him leave messages that did not get answered.
That night, Kate spread a towel on the kitchen table and put the bag containing the leash beside it. The leather had begun to dry in a stiff, twisted shape. Nell had meant to clean it after dinner the night before and had not been able to open the bag.
“It’ll be harder if we leave it,” Kate said.
Nell brought a basin. Daniel found the saddle soap in the mudroom and sat across from her, but he waited until she pushed one end of the leash toward him before touching it.
They worked at the mud with damp cloths. Grit had packed itself around the clasp, and Nell used the corner of her thumbnail until the dressing on her palm caught. Daniel offered her a soft brush.
“Benny used to carry that end,” he said.
“He thought it made him in charge.”
Daniel smiled, briefly. “He’d carry it all the way to the corner. Then he’d drop it and expect somebody to pick it up.”
“You always did.”
“So did you.”
She rubbed the leather until a clean red patch appeared. In their old house Benny had slept halfway across her doorway, so everyone had to step over him. Even when his hearing went, he would wake when Nell came home from school and thump his tail without getting up.
“Was he scared?” she asked.
Daniel put down the brush. Kate was folding dish towels at the counter, but her hands stopped moving.
“At the clinic?” he asked.
Nell nodded.
“He didn’t like being carried in. You know how he hated having his feet off the ground.” Daniel turned the wet cloth over in his hands. “They got him onto a pad. I sat down beside him.”
“And then?”
“The vet gave him something to make his breathing easier while she examined him. It helped for a little while. I called your mom.”
Kate set a folded towel on the counter. “I was leaving work. I asked whether you were awake.” She looked at Daniel. “He said no.”
Nell kept looking at Daniel. “Did you check?”
He shook his head.
“I heard the truck. I thought you were bringing him back.”
Daniel leaned forward until his elbows rested on the table. Nell saw the small gray hairs at his temples, the ones she used to pull at when he gave her rides on his shoulders.
“His breathing got bad again before your mom reached home,” Daniel said. “The vet tried to help him, but he couldn’t settle. She told me she couldn’t get him comfortable enough to wait until morning.” He pressed the cloth against the table. “I agreed to let him go. I stayed beside him.”
Nell looked at the worn clasp. She had heard Benny struggling that night; she had wanted the sound to stop too. But she had thought there would be time to see him again.
“You could’ve called me before that,” she said.
“Yes. While the medicine was helping. Or I could have woken you before we left.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought you’d ask me to wait. I didn’t know how I was going to tell you I couldn’t.”
Nell’s throat hurt. She tried to say something and had to wait, staring at the dirty water in the basin while her father sat there and let her take the time.
“I would’ve held his head,” she said. “You wouldn’t have had to do everything.”
Daniel reached toward her and knocked the edge of the basin with his wrist. He caught it before it tipped, then rested his wet hand beside the leash. “I know that now.”
Nell wanted Benny’s weight against her leg, his old breath, the chance to put her hand where he could feel it. She cried with her eyes open, furious at the small kitchen for staying exactly as it was.
Her mother came to stand beside her. Daniel remained across the table, and after a while Nell pushed the clasp toward him because she couldn’t make her fingers work around it. He cleaned the grit from its hinge while Kate rested a hand between her shoulders.
“Don’t decide I’m asleep without looking,” Nell said at last.
“I won’t.”
They finished the leash together and laid it flat on a dry towel. One edge remained rough where the rescue line had pulled against it. Daniel touched the worn spot, then left it alone.
On Friday, Rachel called looking for the best way around the washed-out service road. Her team was planning for the wolf’s eventual release, although the veterinarian had not cleared her yet. They needed to return her within familiar territory, near enough that she could reach the pups without a long detour around floodwater.
Daniel knew the route they wanted. An old farm lane crossed Ellis’s north field and reached a raised track on public land; everything closer from the south led to the damaged crossing. He also knew the drainage cut Rachel asked about as an alternative.
“We used to take a skiff through there,” he said.
Nell, doing homework at the table, looked up. Daniel paused over the map Rachel had sent him.
“Before this storm,” he added. “I can’t tell you what’s under it now. You’d need someone qualified to assess it.”
After the call he showed Nell where the lane crossed the map and where the other routes ran into deep channels. The den was not marked; Rachel had sent only the information he needed.
By afternoon they learned that Ellis had refused access. Rachel would keep looking for a safe alternative. She had also offered to arrange help securing Hazel’s poultry enclosure through a local conservation partner, but Ellis had not agreed to that either.
“He just wants to make it hard,” Nell said.
Daniel folded the map. “He’s afraid it’ll keep being hard after everybody leaves.”
Nell thought of the names crossed out in Hazel’s notebook. She wanted to tell Daniel about what she had said, but he was already calling another repair customer, and she let him finish. Then she asked if he would drive her to the farm.
Hazel met her by the mudroom. Mabel was standing at the front of the crate, pecking at a spoon Hazel held through the open door. Nell had come ready to explain about the pups and the washed-out road, but Hazel stopped her after the first sentence.
“I know what they want.”
“The fence people could help with the coop.”
Hazel let Mabel take the last bit of food and withdrew the spoon. She slid the crate latch shut, testing it with two fingers before turning around.
“And if something gets in again,” she asked, “are you going to tell me to just get more?”
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