Part 2
The hare had settled it, though she had not told anyone that either.
On the first Sunday of December, Nook had climbed through the low mudroom window carrying one. Snow clung to his whiskers. He walked past the dish she had filled and deposited his catch on Walter’s boot tray.
Ada had been allowing him brief trips outside for several nights by then. Nearly three weeks had passed since the storm, and she had told herself that keeping a cat shut up all day was unkind.
She remembered standing over that tray with a rag in her hand. She had closed the window, cleaned up, and opened it again the next evening.
Now she told Ben about the hare.
While she spoke, Nook withdrew beneath the table. Ben did not follow him with his eyes. He pulled out a chair slowly and sat with his hands resting on his knees.
“He does that with everyone but you?” he asked.
“He hasn’t met everyone.”
“Denise. Gordon. Anybody who comes to the door.”
“He keeps away.”
Ben nodded. “That may help him.”
“With what?”
“Getting back where he belongs. A licensed rehabilitator can work with an animal that still avoids people. A tame lynx is a much harder problem.”
Ada remained standing. The kettle needed filling, though there was already water in it.
Ben explained while she carried it to the sink. Nook was likely a young male born that spring. Something had separated him from his mother before the November storm. The black coat was melanism, an exceptionally rare variation in this species. Ben had seen a photograph once, never a living animal.
The feet, the hind legs, the facial fur, the tail: none of those were unusual for a lynx.
“The color doesn’t change the rules,” he said. “He’s protected under state and federal law. Keeping him here isn’t an option.”
Ada set the kettle down hard enough to ring the stove lid.
“I found him dying. There wasn’t an agency standing under the porch.”
“You did right bringing him in that night.”
“And then I was supposed to put him back?”
“You were supposed to call.”
Ben’s voice was gentle enough to make her angrier. She opened the tea tin and closed it again.
He telephoned Dr. Lena Park, a wildlife veterinarian who held the permits needed to rehabilitate lynx. Her center was almost three hours away. Ben described Nook’s movements, appetite, size, and response to strangers. He did not embellish the coat or laugh about Ada’s kitchen.
Lena could get there before dark if the snow held off. They would try to move Nook into the mudroom and then into a transport crate without unnecessary handling. Ben would remain until she arrived.
Ada waited until he put down the phone.
“You mean to shoot a drug into him?”
“Only if Lena decides she has to.”
“He’s doing fine.”
“I hope his examination says the same thing.”
Denise returned before noon. She brought the overnight bag from her car, set it beside the door, and looked from Ben to her mother.
Ada did not offer coffee.
“You asked him to look. Did you ask what would happen afterward?”
“I asked him to help.”
“And you’d have helped load a cage, too.”
Denise unzipped her coat. “Yes.”
Beneath the table, Nook stood.
Ben lowered one hand between the women, palm toward the floor. Denise took a breath and stepped back from the chair. Ada stayed where she was.
“You’ve been working toward this since I gave up the car,” Ada said.
“Working toward what?”
“Getting me out.”
Denise glanced at Ben. He rose and went to the front window, close enough to watch the room without appearing to listen.
“You crossed the center line by the school in Darsen,” Denise said quietly. “You didn’t see the flashing light.”
“I didn’t hit anybody.”
“You came close to the ditch.”
“But I didn’t hit that either.”
Denise pressed her lips together. Then she said, “I’m not after your house. I’m tired of wondering what I’ll learn from a neighbor because you decided I didn’t need to know.”
Denise looked away when she caught Ada studying the unopened pendant box. Neither spoke again until Ben’s radio crackled.
He took the call in the mudroom. Denise wanted to know how far Lena had come, and Ada watched her follow him out of the kitchen.
Then Nook’s cheek brushed her skirt. He had left the cover of the table and was making for the back door, where he stopped to wait.
She could hear Ben’s low voice on the other side of the house. She could also see, with a clarity that made her fingers ache, their old tabby crouched inside a carrier on the morning Walter’s chair had finally become empty again. That cat had never come home.
Nook put a paw against the door.
Ada raised the latch.
He was across the yard before the cold reached her ankles. Denise called out from the mudroom. Black fur passed between two fir trunks and disappeared.
Ben came to the open door. For a moment, the muscles along his jaw stood out.
Ada held the knob. “He knows his way back.”
“That’s what makes this dangerous.”
He stepped outside but did not pursue the animal.
Lena arrived with a transport crate that evening. She was a small woman in her fifties, with wet trouser cuffs and an economical way of moving. She asked Ada only a few questions before examining the tracks behind the woodshed.
Nook had gone into thick young fir where hare trails passed beneath the lower branches.
“He’s finding suitable hunting cover,” Lena said. “That’s encouraging.”
“Then let him stay there.”
“We need him to stay away from this door, too.”
They placed a humane cage trap near the shed and installed two cameras. Ben left written directions on the table, then went through them aloud: no food outdoors, no window left open for Nook, no bringing him inside. If Ada saw him, she was to call and remain apart from him.
Denise slept upstairs in her old room. Ada heard her leave before daylight but did not get up.
For two nights, the cameras saw no black lynx.
On the third, a faint drag against the mudroom frame woke Ada. She put on her slippers and went down the hall…
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