Part 2
“For the paperwork,” Beth said. “I gave you until Friday to show me the paperwork.”
Rachel turned toward her. Frank took a breath as if he had been offered something useful.
“After she sent me your message, we talked it through. She understood there wasn’t going to be an overnight solution.”
“You sent him my voicemail?” Rachel asked.
Beth could hear the animal drinking again, slower now. She wanted everyone to attend to that sound.
“I thought if he heard exactly what concerned you—”
“Did you send the part about reporting it?”
“Yes.”
Rachel handed back the binoculars. She placed the strap carefully in Beth’s palm so it would not fall.
“Don’t tell me the rest while I’m trying to work.”
She moved along the outside of the pasture fence to get a view through the other windows. Beth followed for several steps before Rachel held up her hand without turning around. Beth stopped.
Frank came to stand beside her. His breath smelled of the peppermint disks he kept in the truck, the same ones Sam used to complain about finding in every coat pocket.
“How long has the lion been here?” Beth asked.
“August.”
“And the others?”
He rubbed at a white water mark on his jeans. “The servals came with her. The bobcats before that.”
The exotic cats had come from a traveling wildlife show whose owner was ill and selling the property. Frank had agreed to temporary care, but the promised money had stopped. The hawks were the two birds he’d told Beth about.
He looked toward the barn. “There was supposed to be a place for the lion in Tennessee. I went down and looked at it. The fencing wasn’t right. I wouldn’t leave her there.”
Beth believed him. He had once driven two hundred miles to retrieve an owl after finding out that a volunteer was keeping it in a dog crate beside a television. He had been furious for days, not about the drive but about having believed the volunteer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“I thought I could finish fixing it before there was anything to tell.”
He glanced at Rachel, who was on the phone beyond the fence. “Not everyone who says they have a rescue has somewhere safe to put a lion. Ask her that.”
Rachel ended the call and came back. “He’s right about that.”
Frank’s chin lifted slightly.
“We can’t house her at Ridgeway,” she continued. “Dr. Foster’s arranging an emergency holding space with a facility equipped for her. That doesn’t change whether she can stay here.”
Rachel asked when the lioness had last eaten a full meal and what medications Frank had given her. Then she asked about the enclosure doors.
He answered with growing precision, calling the lioness Nell. One serval climbed the divider when frightened; both latches had to be checked. The young female bobcat hid behind her den box. She was the one with the injured right front paw.
Rachel wrote on the back of an envelope from her truck. “And the mother?”
“Got past me last night during a pen change.”
“With that lead on her?”
“I used what I had.”
“She was on my mother’s arm this morning.”
Frank’s mouth tightened. “She used to come to the front when I brought food.”
He said it softly, almost fondly. Rachel paused with her pen against the envelope, then added another line.
The adult had gone back outside and was crouched in the weeds beyond the lean-to. A call from her young made her ears turn; the voices at the gate did not. Beth watched until the cat lowered herself out of sight.
A state wildlife officer arrived with a sheriff’s deputy. He introduced himself as Daniel Mercer, checked whether anyone had been bitten, and inspected the barn from outside. After speaking with Dr. Foster by phone, he stationed the deputy at the gate and told Frank that nothing was to be moved without the team’s direction. Frank gave him the keys but held on to the ring for a second longer than necessary.
Beth recognized the square brass key to her kitchen door among them. She had given it to him when Sam first became too weak to be left alone.
“Does anyone else work here?” Mercer asked.
“I’ve been on my own for three weeks,” Frank said.
Beth looked at him. He had sat in her kitchen twice in those three weeks, once tightening a loose table leg while she complained about heating oil. He had asked whether she was sleeping. She had asked whether he wanted more pie.
Mercer walked him a few yards away to continue the questions. Rachel returned to her truck and took out a roll of tape and spare gloves.
“I can do something,” Beth said.
“There’s a yellow bag behind my seat. Clean towels. Bring it to the gate and leave it there.”
The bag was heavier than she expected. An unopened sandwich lay on the truck’s passenger seat, beside the empty cup Rachel had brought from work.
Beth carried the towels with both arms. She put them exactly where her daughter had said, then went back for the sandwich without asking. When Rachel passed, Beth held it out.
Rachel looked at the package. “It’s egg.”
“I know.”
“You hate the smell.”
“I don’t have to eat it.”
Her daughter took it. She ate three bites while listening to a message, folded the wrapper over the rest, and put it into a pocket of her coveralls.
Dr. Foster arrived with two animal-care staff and an equipped transport trailer. She was a tall woman with close-cropped gray hair, and she read Rachel’s notes before asking Frank to point out the enclosure doors. By early afternoon, the crew had secured a protected passage through the feed aisle. With the adult bobcat still outside, they secured temporary panels across the damaged windows and the gap in the siding, closing her routes back into the work area.
Beth waited by the fence while supplies went in. Beyond the lean-to, the female shifted through the weeds, searching along the wall that had admitted her that morning.
Rachel laid a towel under a metal tray before setting it down. Frank, watching from beside the truck, nearly raised a hand to point out the same thing. He had taught her that at twelve, when she followed him with a red lunch cooler full of mice and insisted she could help feed the injured hawk.
Dr. Foster came outside and pulled off her gloves.
“Nell needs treatment here before we can travel,” she said. “She’s very weak. Moving her will be a risk, and leaving her is a risk we can’t accept.”
“What do you need from me?” Beth asked.
“Access. Space. And permission to alter the stall.”
The veterinarian led her only as far as the protected entrance and pointed down the aisle. Behind the new barrier, the old oak stall front narrowed the route to a gap Beth had walked through thousands of times with a bucket against her leg.
“The transport equipment won’t clear it. We need to remove that section.”
Beside the latch, almost invisible beneath Frank’s newer hardware, ran a row of pencil marks. Sam had measured Rachel there every birthday until she left for college. The highest mark was on the board the veterinarian was pointing to.
“That post supports the old gate,” Beth said. “Yes. It has to come out too…”
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