Part 3
The first thing Owen noticed in the observation room was how little there was to see. The den box had a roof and deep sides. Its occupant lay well back from the glass, with only her head and bandaged leg visible.
A card beside the monitor read V-39.
“Thirty-ninth intake,” Tessa said. “Veylin drainage.”
“She gets a number.”
“She gets staff who remember not to make friends with her.”
Owen glanced toward the remote door controls.
Tessa lowered her voice. “We use the blinds. We feed without being seen. Nobody stands around talking to her. A cat that loses her fear of us can’t go where she needs to go.”
Thirty-six hours had passed since the rescue. Tessa had cleaned the wounds, removed damaged tissue, and closed the deepest injuries. The images showed intact bones. A tendon had taken a severe bruising but hadn’t been cut, and circulation had returned to the toes after the trap came away.
“So we caught a break,” Owen said.
“We have living toes. Now we wait on the rest.”
He gave her a sideways look. “You could ruin a celebration with a thermometer.”
“I’d rather ruin one than hold it too soon.”
Nora used to complain that their daughter could get through a medical appointment without learning whether the doctor had children. Nora came home knowing everybody’s troubles. Tessa came home knowing which result needed a second look.
Behind the glass, a kitten’s foot appeared beneath the mother’s foreleg. It pushed into the air and vanished. Owen moved half a step closer before checking himself.
The female raised her head, shifted one kitten with her mouth, and briefly set the bandaged foot against the floor. She lifted it again almost immediately.
“She’s feeding both of them,” Tessa said. “Their weights went up overnight.”
He had brought Nora’s wool blanket in the truck. During the drive, he’d pictured it wrapped around the nest box, though the center plainly had everything the kittens needed. Before coming inside, he had pushed the blanket beneath the passenger seat.
Tessa reached for a cream-colored insulated flask on the counter. Its dented cap caught the dim monitor light.
Owen stared at it.
“Your mother kept that in the pantry.”
“I took it out of a donation box.”
“I never said to donate it.”
“No. You didn’t say what to do with any of it.”
The room’s ventilation fan clicked into a higher speed.
For years, they’d managed a closeness that didn’t require much explanation. Tessa had called from veterinary school and stayed on the phone while Owen repaired gear. He’d mailed her feathers, owl pellets, and a porcupine quill packed so carefully it arrived in a padded parcel bigger than a lunch box. She met him after patrols with burnt coffee and marked corrections beside the scientific names in his notebooks.
When Nora became ill, they divided the necessary work without dividing the fear. Tessa managed prescriptions and wrote down questions for appointments. Owen fitted grab bars, kept a pot of Nora’s preferred soup in the refrigerator, and slept beside her when getting up in the night became difficult.
After the funeral, he returned to the mountains. Tessa kept opening cupboards.
“You booked people to clear the house,” he said.
“I booked an estimate. When you finally answered, I canceled it.”
“The gardening coat didn’t come back.”
Her hand tightened around the flask.
“There was mold inside it. I should’ve asked before I threw it out.” She set the flask down. “I was mad. But I was the one standing in that room, Dad.”
He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets.
“The cabin had to open.”
“Someone else could’ve opened it. You handed back your leave nine days after we buried her.”
“I couldn’t sit in that house.”
Tessa looked through the glass.
“I didn’t want to, either.”
He had no answer ready for that.
“Do you remember when I asked about her shoes?” she said. “You sent me a thumbs-up.”
He remembered a wet glove, his phone balanced against a stump, a saw that wouldn’t stay running. He’d meant to let Tessa know he had seen the message. He would call when the bridge was clear. Then there had been another fallen tree, then darkness.
“I meant I’d read it.”
“I needed words.”
A kitten cried inside the den box. The bobcat turned at once and began licking it. Tessa waited until the sound stopped, then picked up her flask.
“That’s enough people in here.”
Owen followed her into the hall. A cart of clean gowns stood beside the treatment-room doors.
“I should’ve been home with you.”
She stopped walking.
“You should’ve.”
Then she went into treatment, leaving him beside the cart.
In the parking lot, Deke slept across the rear seat. Owen unfolded Nora’s blanket over his lap and caught a loose loop of wool beneath his thumbnail. He sat that way until the dog stirred.
Then he called Erin.
She was back at Veylin. Searchers had found disturbed ground along a game trail below the porch, and the sweep had turned up two more traps.
“Same size. Same untagged chain,” she said. “One was still set beside a scent post. The other had fired.”
“Animal?”
“Hair caught in it. No animal, no blood we could see. The lab will get it, but I’m not counting on miracles from steel that’s been sitting in snow.”
Owen folded the blanket along its old crease.
The previous year, Hal Pritchard had helped repair a chain at the trailhead. He’d first tried a coin beneath the swivel, then complained it was too soft. Back at his barn, he flattened copper washers in a vise. He marked his equipment with orange tape because one bad eye and the other aging eye made it hard to find things against the dirt floor.
Owen had seen a foothold on that workbench the previous October.
He thanked Erin and ended the call. Deke lifted his head as Owen opened the truck door.
“Just a minute, boy.”
Inside the center, a monitor hung above reception. The female had risen from the den box. Tessa stood in a doorway, watching the screen.
The bobcat put her bandaged foot down and held herself steady long enough to carry a kitten into the deeper corner. She returned for the other. Tessa’s mouth softened before she saw Owen beside her.
He looked away from the screen and met her eyes.
“That swivel repair is Hal Pritchard’s…”
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