Part 6
The bag waited under the cot with a shirt rolled tightly beside Martha’s toothbrush. She put Ben’s construction binder on top, thought about where she was going, and returned it to the dry shelf. She needed clothes for one night. The photographs could stay in the office she had finally made room for them in.
She checked the windows, unplugged the little refrigerator, and secured the empty animal rooms. A trustee had duplicate keys and the list of remaining property checks for the local staff. Martha left another copy beside the telephone and locked the keeper entrance.
No answering movement came from Jonah’s room.
Outside, Tess held two coffees. She gave Martha the one without sugar and opened the passenger door for her, working the latch that sometimes caught.
“You still haven’t fixed that,” Martha said.
“It’s a rain problem.”
Martha looked at the dry sky. Her daughter let herself grin and went around to the driver’s side.
They followed the transport north. When it disappeared around a bend, Martha leaned forward until it came into view again. Twenty miles along, she asked Tess to turn down the air-conditioning. Ten miles later she wanted it back up, and Tess adjusted it without looking at her.
“You’re allowed to complain about me,” Martha said.
“I’m waiting till you give me something worth complaining about.”
Martha laughed, and Tess glanced over, surprised, before returning her eyes to the road. The higher country began replacing the wet bottomland. Pasture, houses, a garden center Martha always drove past: outside it somebody was arranging pots of chrysanthemums on a bench. She wondered which color she would choose if she stopped, then realized she had not first considered whether they belonged near an animal enclosure.
Vivian had a question for Tess before she had introduced herself to Martha. The broad-shouldered intake supervisor met them inside Cedar Ridge’s secured receiving area with mud on one boot and blue ink down her thumb. Martha waited through the exchange, holding her bag. Then Vivian greeted her and explained where she could watch from the keeper side.
“Naomi’s records are here. If you notice anything about either of them, say so.”
Beyond the adjoining intake rooms lay a private fenced yard. The permanent habitats were farther out, behind another line of trees; the lions would settle here first, apart from the resident animals. Martha set her bag down and looked at the shelter over the rooms. The photographs had not shown her all that shade.
Someone operated a gate. Martha waited for the second knock, then remembered that the door she was listening for was back at Mill Branch, ninety miles away. Here the movement finished almost silently.
There was Jonah’s blue ball, waiting farther inside his new room. He gave it a look after emerging from the crate, but did not go to claim it. With his belly held low, he checked a corner, smelled the doorway, and turned toward his way in. Martha kept herself from moving closer along the keeper aisle.
They waited longer for Iris. When she was through, she chose the dividing mesh, and that was where Jonah finally went. A brief touch of noses across the barrier was enough to make Martha aware of the ache in her shoulders. She let them drop.
“We’ll leave them some quiet,” Vivian said. She showed them the staff room, where sandwiches and water had been set out on a folding table beside a bowl of bruised pears.
Martha sat near the door. Tess took a pear without sorting through the bowl, and Martha asked when that had happened.
“When what happened?”
“You eating pears. You hated the grainy bits.”
“I still get a sandy one sometimes.” Tess took a bite. “I’ve been eating them for years, Mom.”
People came looking for Tess’s answers. One asked about feeding; Martha listened to her daughter explain Jonah’s behavior, using her hands as she talked. She waited for the glance that usually invited her to add something. Tess finished without it, and the keeper thanked her and went back to work.
Vivian showed Martha where the night observations would be kept and gave her a number for updates. Sleeping arrangements were straightforward: Tess had temporary staff housing until her apartment was ready, and Martha could use a nearby guest room.
“You don’t have to keep track of me all night,” Martha told her daughter.
“I was hoping to get some sleep myself.”
That evening Martha called the neighbor who had offered to bring her home. When the offer was made, Martha had still insisted she probably would not go on the trip at all. Now she arranged a pickup for the following afternoon and told Tess when it would be.
“I can come by before rounds in the morning,” Tess said.
“I’d like some time with you.” Martha asked whether the apartment might be ready before she left, but Tess said it needed another week. There was a leak to fix.
“Where’s it leaking?”
“Bathroom. A small leak. They have someone taking care of it.”
Tess brought out her phone, and Martha turned it to examine the photographs. A small kitchen, a narrow porch, a place by a window where Tess wanted a table: she moved between them until she reached the view over the rail.
“That might be a pecan tree.”
“I’ll ask.”
“If it is, I could bring you the old nutcracker.” Martha handed the phone back. Tess was still looking at the porch when she put it away.
In the morning the receiving keepers checked the lions, then opened their access to the private yard. Jonah lingered in the doorway. Martha watched from the protected keeper area as Iris went past him onto the grass; he followed her out.
She had expected them to choose the nearest shelter. Iris continued along the fence instead, until she found a spot from which she could see the rooms. Getting down required care with her hip. Jonah gave her a little space and settled beside her, then rolled onto a shoulder as she began washing the fur behind his ear.
Martha stood ready to be noticed. Jonah pressed his head toward Iris’s tongue and grew still, and Iris’s attention remained on him. Another minute passed without either of them turning toward the keeper area.
Her heel hurt. The little stone had been in her boot since breakfast; she had put up with it through the checks and the opening of the gate, always waiting to deal with it after she knew the next thing. There was a bench on her side of the fence. She sat, removed the boot, and shook the stone into the grass.
Tess found her putting the boot back on. She was carrying an empty bucket and said that Vivian had coffee going. Across the yard, Jonah had laid a paw over Iris’s foreleg. Iris let it stay there, her eyes closed.
At the staff-room door Martha reached for the bucket so Tess could work the handle. She followed her daughter inside carrying it, and saw the place waiting beside Tess’s chipped green mug: a second cup of coffee, with no sugar in it.