The tearing sound came from the bedroom again: Ruth pulling another used sheet off the lint roller.
Willa crouched beneath the laundry rack, her gray tail tucked around her feet. Beyond the doorway, a man’s shoes moved across the floor, stopped, then moved again. She knew those shoes. She pressed farther back among the hanging towels.
“Hold still a second,” Ruth said.
Grant stepped away before she could reach his trouser leg. He had dressed for work in a dark blue suit, and pale hairs showed plainly against the wool. His briefcase landed on the bed with a thump.
“I paid to have these cleaned. Yesterday.”
“I can get it off.”
“You keep saying that.” He brushed at his knee with the back of his hand. “Then I get to the office looking like this.”
Ruth had a dish towel looped over one wrist. She twisted it once, loosened it, and tried again with the roller. This time he let her crouch beside him, though he kept looking at his watch.
Willa had lived in the Pittsburgh apartment for six months. With Ruth, she could stretch her full length on a lap and knead until she fell asleep. There were small sealed trays of food, fingers that scratched beneath her chin, and a screened balcony doorway where she could watch pigeons crowd the neighboring roof.
Grant made her measure every crossing of a room. Sometimes he stamped beside her just as she settled down. Once, when she had been sleeping on an armchair, he lifted the cushion and sent her tumbling onto the floor. After that, she waited for his footsteps to fade before coming out.
Ruth peeled off the last sticky sheet and held it between two fingers.
“There. You’re all right now.”
Grant picked up his briefcase.
“Do something about that coat before tonight. Otherwise I’m putting her outside the apartment. Somebody else can deal with her.”
The door closed hard. A spoon rattled against the cup beside the coffeemaker.
Ruth remained kneeling by the bed for a moment. Then she came down the hall and sat on the laundry-room floor, leaving her hand open near Willa’s hiding place.
By evening, a stranger had spread a nonslip mat over the kitchen counter and arranged her equipment on a towel. She smelled of other animals and spoke softly. Willa rubbed her cheek against the woman’s fingers before the woman lifted her.
Then came the collar around her neck, the firm hold, the electric hum.
Willa tried to turn away from it. Her claws dragged over the mat. Ruth stood close enough to see but did not pick her up, even when Willa cried and pushed against the plastic cone.
The groomer paused, steadied her, and began again.
Soft gray clippings collected beside the sink and clung to Ruth’s damp hands. When Willa was finally lowered to the floor, she fled with an unfamiliar coolness running along her sides. Her great padded coat was gone, reduced to a close layer that offered little protection from the air-conditioning vent.
She squeezed into her felt sleeping cave in the laundry room.
For three days she stayed there except for brief trips after the apartment grew dark. Ruth left food near the entrance. Willa ate when nobody watched, then backed inside again.
On Friday, Ruth lowered herself beside the cave and laid two fingers gently against Willa’s clipped shoulder.
“I’ve got your carrier out,” she murmured. “We’re going to the lake. Just think of all that sunshine.”
Willa kept her nose beneath the folded edge of her bed, but she did not pull away from the fingers.
The cabin stood in a wooded pocket of northern West Virginia, two hours from their apartment. Ruth opened the carrier on the porch, and Willa stepped into air that smelled of wet bark, sap, and the soil beneath the steps.
No hallway narrowed around her. No doors slammed nearby.
She lowered one paw into the grass, then another. Sun warmed the short fur along her back. Somewhere under the porch, a beetle scraped through a dry leaf.
By the following afternoon, she was following moving things across the yard: the quick black shine of an insect, a butterfly’s uneven passage, leaves turning on their stems. Ruth sat above her with a mug balanced on one knee.
A brown sparrow discovered the low shrubs near the fence.
Willa flattened herself behind a clump of grass. The bird dropped down, scratched once, and tilted its head. She gathered herself. Before her hind feet left the ground, the sparrow was already rising toward an oak branch.
It happened again near the porch, and again beside the raspberry canes. The bird always landed close enough to bring her creeping forward. Ruth’s quiet laugh drifted down from the steps.
During the week, Willa slept indoors. She could follow Ruth from the kitchen to the little bedroom or lie across the warm boards near the open door.
On Fridays, tires ground into the gravel.
Willa learned to leave the porch before Grant climbed out. His arrival brought bags, a computer, the shut bedroom door, and Ruth’s quick glance around the floor to make certain the cat was gone.
The gazebo became Willa’s place on weekends. It stood behind the cabin, with close wooden lattice around three sides and a roof that kept most of the rain away. While Grant unpacked, Ruth carried out a faded wool blanket and folded it onto a wicker chair.
She pressed the middle into a shallow nest with her palm.
“Try that, sweetheart.”
One night, a breeze off the lake slipped beneath the kitchen door while Ruth was drying the supper dishes. She stopped with a plate in her hand.
“The mudroom has a door,” she said. “She could sleep in there. You wouldn’t even see her.”
Grant kept scrolling on his phone.
“We’re not starting that.”
“It’s cooled off quite a bit.”
“It’s still August. Leave her where she is. I don’t want muddy paws and hair all through this place, too.”
Ruth set the plate in the cupboard. Later, she went out and tucked the blanket around the chair’s back legs so it would not slide off.
Willa found much to occupy her beyond that chair. The woods clicked and rustled after dark. She followed small movements beneath the ferns and learned where mice traveled along the foundation. At dawn, she sometimes left a moth or a mouse at the back door.
Grant nearly stepped on one while carrying his morning coffee.
“Ruth!”
Willa watched from beneath the steps as he held his bare foot above the mat. Ruth came out with paper towels, crouched, and carried the offering away.
The yard had become familiar to Willa: the gap beside the rain barrel, the cool earth beneath the shrubs, the sloping board where she could sharpen her claws. When an unfamiliar tomcat eased through the fence one afternoon, she met him before he reached the porch.
He was bigger, with an uneven ear and burrs caught beneath his chin. Willa planted her feet, raised her back, and gave a long warning.
The tom took another step.
She rushed him.
Ruth came through the screen door at the noise and bent to gather her up. Willa twisted away, still facing the fence. The stranger had retreated through the gap, but she could hear him moving on the other side.
Ruth straightened slowly and drew her hands back.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
The tom returned early the next morning.
Willa intercepted him along the bedroom wall. Their cries bounced between the cabin and the trees, louder each time he refused to move. Above them, a window scraped open.
A rubber sandal struck the fence beside Willa’s head.
“Enough! Get away from here!” Grant shouted.
He slammed the window shut…
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