Part 4
Ruth put the keys back into Leah’s hand. “Will you drive?” she asked. Her daughter took them, and Ruth climbed into the back beside Gus.
He slept most of the way home. At a stoplight Leah lowered the radio because an advertisement had become too loud, then raised the fan one setting. Ruth watched her daughter’s hand return to the wheel and remembered teaching her to drive in Tom’s truck, both of them furious before they reached the first intersection. Tom had taken over the lessons. Ruth had never asked what he did differently.
That afternoon she sent Leah a message when Gus ate and another when she spoke to Dr. Hsu. She almost added Nothing to worry about to the second one. Instead, she included the question she’d asked him about getting Gus outside.
By Friday morning he needed more help to stand. Ruth called as soon as the clinic opened and described the night, including the two times he had got up and failed to settle where he usually slept. The veterinarian examined him that morning. Leah came on her lunch break and heard the assessment with Ruth.
His comfort was becoming harder to maintain. They adjusted his care and agreed on what to do if he could no longer rest despite it. Dr. Hsu also explained how a home visit could work if euthanasia became the kindest option, and what to do if Gus needed help sooner than he could arrive.
Ruth asked whether that meant they were already late.
“We have him resting now,” he said. “What matters is how he does from here. Call when it changes. You won’t be bothering me.”
At home Gus found a comfortable position and slept. Leah had to return to work, but she left after Ruth agreed to call her as well as the veterinarian if he worsened. She made Ruth say which number she would use, because the office kept her personal phone in a drawer during appointments.
The afternoon passed in small jobs. Ruth took a stack of upholstery samples off a low shelf so she could reach the medicine sheet without leaning across Gus. She put fresh water down and answered a customer’s question about a dining chair. The customer apologized for calling; Ruth said Thursday would be fine, then looked at the calendar and corrected herself to the following week.
At four, Gus carried one of her slippers into the kitchen.
He had always taken the left one. Tom claimed Ruth must walk more interesting places with that foot. She let Gus keep it until he dropped it beside his bed, then sat on the floor and worked her hand gently through the thick fur behind his ears. For a while he leaned into her fingers. When he turned his head away, she stopped.
Elena called near suppertime. Mabel had spent part of the afternoon in the shared space with Nell and had rested while the older giraffe browsed. There had been an awkward moment at a feeder, nothing the keepers hadn’t been prepared to manage. Elena wanted Ruth to know how the calf was doing, and to ask how Gus was.
Ruth gave her the whole answer. She had to begin again once, but Elena waited.
“Would there be a quiet time tomorrow?” Ruth asked. “If he’s comfortable enough. I’d like him to have one more visit there.”
“We can leave the yard available. You don’t have to come.”
Afterward Ruth laid a clean cover beside the back door. She told Leah about the idea when her daughter came after work. Leah asked how Gus had been, and Ruth showed her what she had written down instead of making the case for the visit.
There were three unfinished covers on the dining table. Leah opened one and found the edge Ruth hadn’t bound yet, then asked where she kept the matching tape. She had worked summers in the shop through high school and knew the machine well enough to hear when its tension was wrong.
“That one’s awkward,” Ruth said, reaching for it.
Leah kept hold of the fabric. “I can do awkward.”
Ruth let go. She sat on the kitchen floor with Gus while her daughter carried the bundle out to the workshop, and found herself listening for mistakes in the familiar clatter. Twice she started to get up. Gus’s chin was warm against her knee, and she stayed.
“I’ll come by in the morning,” Leah said. “We’ll see.”
Gus slept well enough that night. In the morning he ate some breakfast and asked to go outside, then followed Ruth toward the mudroom when she picked up the folded cover. She set it down, waiting to see whether he wanted his bed instead. He stayed by the door.
They helped him into the car. Ruth drove this time; Leah sat in back where she could watch him. The clean cover lay on the passenger seat, folded with all the corners inside, the way Ruth had folded every completed order for thirty years.
Ash Creek was a short drive through the flat outskirts of town. Ruth knew the places where the pavement had settled and slowed well before them. By the time they reached the road along the refuge’s outer fence, Gus had put his head in Leah’s lap and fallen asleep.
“How is he?” Ruth asked.
“Sleeping.”
She could see the staff-yard awning beyond the workroom roof. She had arranged that bed herself, measured the space, sewn the cover twice because the first closure rubbed. Under it, Gus had stopped watching for Tom’s truck. Mabel had lain down across the lane and allowed a bucket to pass behind her without getting to her feet.
Ruth wanted to see them there once more. She wanted a last visit she could recognize afterward, with a beginning and an end, instead of discovering days from now that some ordinary departure had been the last one.
In the mirror, Leah shifted her arm to support Gus’s head. His ear lay folded backward against her wrist. She eased it straight and kept still.
The refuge turn was coming up. Ruth lifted her foot from the accelerator, then imagined getting him upright, down the ramp, across the yard, onto the bed, and back again when she had finally had enough of looking.
“Would you text Elena?” she asked. “Tell her we aren’t coming.”
Leah looked up in the mirror. Ruth waited until her daughter had nodded, then kept the car on the road past the turn.
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