Part 5
“Let me sleep on it,” I told Claire. She accepted that without asking me to name a day. We finished the pie, and after she left I put the two plates in the sink rather than wash them at once.
I dreamed June was walking between the pines with the cub beside her. She kept turning to see whether I was following. In the dream she said I’d done well, in the brisk, impatient way she spoke when she wanted me off the couch. I woke before dawn with the same empty room around me. I still missed her, and there was no reason to pretend that a new job would cure it. Later that morning I reached Walt on the radio and asked him to tell Claire I would come.
The room over Alder Creek Veterinary Clinic had a refrigerator that rattled each time its motor started. I could hear the kennels below when the dogs settled for the night. I placed a photograph of Nora and June beside the bed, unpacked, and went downstairs to find the mop. Claire pointed me toward a kennel I’d missed, and I cleaned it again. On another day I held an old hound steady while she examined him. She had the newest assistant watch how I kept my hands low and gave the dog room to see me.
“Owen won’t talk you through every move,” she told the girl. “Pay attention to where he’s standing.”
Silence had come easily at the cabin. At the clinic I had to learn when it was useful and when somebody needed me to ask a question.
Claire showed me how she read an X-ray and let me observe while she repaired a torn ear. I scrubbed the room afterward. If I didn’t know what an instrument was for, I left it alone until I could ask. I liked the weight of ordinary work: towels to fold, patients to feed, a floor that stayed clean only until the next animal arrived.
Her daughter Tess came after school with red braids and mud on her rubber boots. She was twelve. The first time she turned toward me over the sink, I had to study the bowl I was drying until I could trust my face. Then she informed us that a rescued kitten should be named Chainsaw, because that was the noise he made at mealtimes. June would have picked a prettier name. I laughed anyway, and Tess took my laughter as permission to put CHAINSAW on his cage card.
We were stacking clean towels when she asked whether the bear was alive. I said he had walked into the woods with his mother, and that I hoped he was. She asked whether I’d loved him. I folded a towel twice before answering yes.
“He had you when he needed you,” she said. “Now she’s there.”
I could not tell her what winter would bring him. I told her instead how his mother had examined the leg before they left. Tess wanted to know which leg and how he had walked. When she’d heard enough, she went to find out whether Chainsaw had turned his bedding over again.
Summer brought small errands I no longer arranged to avoid people. I began greeting the woman at the grocery register by name, and I remained at an old forestry friend’s birthday dinner long enough to help clear the table. Claire noticed without congratulating me for entering a room. After my fifty-second birthday, she asked while we were closing if I had considered veterinary school.
I thought she was joking. She knew about my old forestry degree and the years that had passed since I’d opened a textbook. She helped me identify the science courses I’d have to make up, then left the decision with me. I signed up for classes around my clinic shifts. Upstairs at night, I sometimes went over a page three times and came down in the morning to ask her what I’d missed.
I earned a B on the first important exam. Claire brought champagne to the back steps after closing. Inside, Tess was deciding how best to fit my marked paper on the refrigerator. Claire said she knew how hard I’d worked.
I nearly called it only a B, caught myself, and thanked her.
The court fined Curtis over the threats and the attempt to hunt the bear illegally; a six-month jail term was suspended. Nolan passed on the result. Curtis complained about me for a while and moved away. Much later, Walt heard he’d taken a warehouse security job. That was more news of him than I needed.
Walt still came by roughly once a month. He brought fish or mushrooms, tracked pine needles over Claire’s clean floor, and never offered to stop visiting simply because I’d moved to town. One winter he said he’d found two sets of bear prints by the creek. A smaller hind print had landed a little crooked. I asked whether he had seen the animals. He hadn’t. I asked again before he left, and he gave me the same honest answer.
I drove Claire up to the cabin the next spring. Water had left a brown streak overhead, and the window beside the cot was cracked. I worked on both while she warmed lunch over the old stove, opening the right cupboards as if she’d always known them. I said the place felt changed when she was there. She turned toward me. I couldn’t decide whether I meant the room or the years I’d spent alone in it, and she let my words stand.
After lunch she embraced me. I stood stiffly at first, then put my arms around her. Later we walked to the grassy spot where the cub had waited for his mother. Dandelions had come up near it. Claire asked if he might remember me. I said it would be safer if he didn’t, though I had asked Walt about those tracks all winter.
The mattress smelled damp, so that night we laid sleeping bags beside the stove. The fire dropped low. Claire said my name and waited for me to turn toward her. Across the narrow strip of floor between us, she asked, “Do you have room in your life for me?”
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