Part 6
Earl stepped into the ambulance and took the seat beside him.
“We’ll stop for your pills on the way,” he said. “Unless they were in the house.”
“They were.”
“All right. We’ll tell them that too.”
He spoke to the medic, then settled back. Frank kept his eyes on the folded blanket across his knees. Earl had made the answer so ordinary that he could accept it without having to find a way to deserve it first.
At the hospital, they put a brace on Frank’s wrist and kept him overnight because of the smoke. Tessa came to see him before leaving with the transport crew. Her arm had been dressed, and she’d borrowed a coat several sizes too large.
“They’re receiving Juniper now,” she said. “I’ll call Earl when I know more.”
“You don’t have to keep coming up here.”
“I’m not coming up anywhere tonight. I’m going to sleep in a room with a thermostat.”
Frank looked at the cuff of the borrowed coat. “Good.”
She pulled out her phone. She had a photograph of Juniper in the crate at the road, one eye half-open, the edge of the quilt visible beside her neck. Frank looked at it for a long time.
“You want me to send it?” Tessa asked.
“To Earl,” he said. “I won’t know where it went.”
She did it while she stood beside the bed. Then she put her phone away and left him to rest.
Earl’s guest room had boxes along one wall and a lamp that required a tap before it worked. Frank stayed there through the weeks his wrist healed. At first he got up before Earl and folded every blanket so carefully that his friend began leaving one rumpled on purpose.
The investigators spoke to Frank about Henson, and he told them what he had seen. He didn’t guess about what he hadn’t. Juniper remained in the sanctuary’s care while the ownership questions were handled. Frank had enough trouble remembering his follow-up appointments without trying to keep track of the case as well.
Tessa’s calls came with ordinary limits. Juniper had survived surgery. The foot had been saved, though nobody knew yet how well she would use it. There were more treatments, a setback with the wound, days when she ate and days when she refused.
Frank asked Earl to print the photograph. He kept it inside a kitchen drawer for a while, partly because he didn’t know where to put it and partly because he didn’t want anyone to see him studying it.
One evening Earl found him at the table with it laid flat beside his plate.
“Ruth never would’ve let you feed that thing,” Earl said.
Frank stiffened. Earl was cutting an apple into quarters, paying more attention to the knife than to him.
“She would’ve made you call somebody who knew what they were doing.”
Frank looked down at the quilt in the photograph. Then he remembered a doghouse he’d built for an old dog that hadn’t needed one, and a woman who had let him finish it anyway.
“She’d have told everybody how stubborn I was.”
“They already knew.”
Frank laughed once, unexpectedly. He put his hand over his mouth, and Earl continued cutting the apple until he could take it away again.
By early April, the snow had pulled back from the south-facing side of Earl’s garage. Frank could use his hand for light work. He had begun repairing a pair of drawer runners Earl had been complaining about since before the fire.
Tessa came by on a Saturday. She had arranged a visit to North Pines Sanctuary for them, with permission from the staff who cared for Juniper. Frank had said yes over the phone. That morning, faced with the actual car in the driveway, he stayed in the garage pretending to look for a screw.
“We can leave another day,” Tessa said from the doorway.
He set the screwdriver down. Earl was waiting in the car with a paper bag of sandwiches, holding it on his lap as though the visit might depend on keeping them upright.
“No,” Frank said. “Today.”
The drive took most of the morning. Earl slept for part of it. Tessa asked Frank about the mill, and he told her about a motor that had defeated three repair crews because everybody trusted a label somebody had put on backward.
At the sanctuary, a staff member led them along a service path behind the animal habitats. Juniper’s enclosure had a heated shelter, a separate secure area for her care, and enough space outside for her to choose where she wanted to be. Frank noticed the gates first. He looked at every fastening as they passed.
Juniper was resting near a stand of young pines. She got up when she heard the keeper, favoring the repaired leg as she walked toward the shelter. The limp was plain. So was the ease with which she carried the rest of her body.
Frank stopped several feet behind Tessa.
There was no snow over the tiger’s face now, no cable hiding her foot. She glanced toward the people on the path, then turned away to investigate a branch lying on the ground. She caught it between her paws and bit at the broken end.
“She does that until somebody gives her a different one,” the keeper said. “Then the old one becomes the only branch she wants.”
Earl glanced at Frank. Frank ignored him, but he felt his mouth move.
Juniper dropped the branch and made a low sound. Frank’s body answered before his thoughts did. His shoulders tightened, and his heel moved back on the gravel.
Tessa stood beside him without reaching for his arm.
He stayed. After a while, he asked the keeper whether Juniper could get into her shelter whenever she wanted. The woman showed him the open passage and explained how they kept it available without entering her space.
They ate their sandwiches at a table outside the staff building. Earl had packed three and marked the wrappers because he believed everybody should know in advance whether mustard was involved. Tessa took hers and began telling him about a goat that had dismantled half her waiting room the previous Friday.
Frank listened. Across the path, Juniper lay down in a patch of weak sunlight. He could see her through the fencing, though he no longer needed to stand where he could watch every breath.
“Ruth once brought a chicken into our kitchen,” he said.
Tessa stopped with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. Earl turned toward him.
“It had something wrong with its foot. She put it in a laundry basket. I came home and it was on the counter, eating the corner of my tax return.”
“What did you do?” Tessa asked.
“Tried to get the paper back. Ruth laughed so hard she had to sit on the floor.”
He waited for the familiar part that came after talking about her, the need to shut the conversation down before it reached the service yard and the gate. Earl was smiling at his sandwich. Tessa was asking whether the chicken had recovered.
Frank told her it had, and how it had refused to leave the porch all summer. Earl wanted to know what had become of the tax return. Frank was still telling them when the first slices of apple came around the table.