Part 4
Martha could not get one hand out of her wet sweatshirt sleeve. Tess waited until she freed it, then took her own turn at changing; they had finished the sandwich between them. In the office cabinet Martha found an old Mill Branch sweatshirt and pulled it on. Under the embroidered bobcat, her own clumsy stitches were still holding a tear closed.
There was room now to feel how cold she had been. Naomi sent out requests for supplies, and Martha carried them as far as the treatment access, leaving the veterinarian space to examine and treat Jonah. By evening she could see some easing in his breathing. She kept wanting to ask whether that was enough, though it remained plainly different from his breathing before the flood.
The next line on the feed sheet belonged to Iris. Martha watched her leave the dividing mesh to accept a little food, then go straight back to where Jonah lay on the other side. She entered the amount, pressed the pen point against the end of the number, and finally lifted it. Here was a record she could keep without guessing what came next.
They could stay in those two rooms overnight. Grant and the responders had checked them, shut off the damaged passage, and diverted the main flow away from the building. With the immediate jobs covered, Martha went out to see the loading yard for herself.
The crate had support under it again. What she had to look at was the space beneath that support, the hole where she had swept concrete earlier in the day. She stood on the permitted side of the cordon, following the flood mark along the wall. She could no longer pick out a single marigold.
Grant came up beside her, squelching slightly despite having changed his socks. He reminded her that nobody could enter the damaged section until it had been assessed. Martha said she only wanted to look, and he accepted that without moving out of her way.
He held out the construction binder. Its cover was ruined, but the photographs had been separated with dry paper.
“Tess asked me to find somewhere warm for these.”
Martha opened it. At the edge of one photograph, almost hidden by a steel panel, a child held a level in both hands. Tess, perhaps twelve, helping with the wall Martha remembered building with Ben. All these years Martha had recalled those evenings as time she and her husband stole from their other work. Her daughter had been there in red shoes, waiting for someone to need the level.
“She used to make such a fuss about wet feet,” Martha said.
Grant looked toward the keeper entrance. “She hasn’t stopped long enough to mention them today.”
He went back to the drainage, leaving Martha with the binder. She carried it inside against her dry sweatshirt, careful now of the loose photographs.
At ten Naomi ended the discussion about a morning departure. Jonah would be assessed after the night, and his condition would determine the journey. Cedar Ridge had confirmed that the two places were being held for them. Neither animal had to leave to satisfy a date on a form.
Martha felt an almost buoyant relief. There would be another morning with Iris and Jonah here, another set of names to write on the feed sheet. She caught Tess looking at her and dropped her eyes to the table.
“I want him better,” she said.
“I haven’t said you don’t.”
“Well, you’re looking at me.”
Tess put an empty pitcher in the sink. She kept hold of it for a moment, her fingers resting inside the rim, before turning around.
“When he’s ready, I’m still going. I need you to know that.”
Martha stared at her. “Of course. We’ve discussed the job.”
“You asked Grant how much the passage would cost to replace.”
An owner needed to know about damaged property. Martha could have said that and been telling part of the truth. She glanced toward the door instead, waiting for a cough or a scrape that would let them postpone the conversation.
Tess went on. “I’ll help with him. And the transfer, and the files, whatever still needs finishing. I won’t help start it all back up.”
“I never asked you to give up your job.”
“Sometimes you ask me to stay. Sometimes you just tell me what won’t get done if I leave. I don’t always know how to answer that.”
Martha looked at the pitcher Tess had set down. She had wanted her daughter to love this work enough to choose it. Tess had chosen it, at a place with other keepers and a position she had earned, and Martha had spent nine days treating the choice as something done to her.
She sat at the table. A dried footprint showed beneath the opposite chair, and she worried at its edge with the toe of her shoe.
“I keep thinking about getting up,” she said. “After they’ve gone. I get up and come here. What am I getting up for then?”
Tess pulled out the other chair, but she did not sit immediately. Martha waited for a reassuring list, some occupations a daughter might invent for a mother who had become a problem to solve.
“I don’t have that figured out,” Tess said at last.
Martha almost told her to try harder.
Instead she drew the binder toward her and opened the photograph of the child with the level. Tess sat down to look.
“You remember those shoes?” Martha asked.
“I wore you down for them.”
“Your father thought the soles were ridiculous.”
“He put them on his hands.” Tess smiled toward the photograph. “Walked them right across the plates.”
Martha could see him doing it at the dinner table, the red sneakers advancing past the food until Tess laughed milk out through her nose. For a moment she could remember the ridiculous walk of those shoes without immediately counting the years since his death. She flattened a curling corner of the photograph with her finger.
Near midnight Jonah moved closer to the mesh. Iris lifted her head, sniffed toward him, and lowered it again. Naomi let Martha watch through the observation window before sending her to the office cot for two hours; Tess would take the next watch.
Martha placed her boots beside the cot where she could reach them. Through the wall came her daughter’s low voice asking Naomi about a reading on the chart.
Martha started to sit up, listened to the answer, and eased herself back onto the pillow.
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