Part 5
The technician fixed the charging cradle beside the mudroom door and made Evelyn practice removing the messenger, sending a check-in, and returning it to charge. Dana programmed morning and evening reminders.
They agreed on what would happen after a missed check-in: two calls, and if Evelyn answered neither, Dana would use her spare key.
Evelyn disliked the green confirmation light from the beginning. She pressed the button anyway.
Beth’s first update came while she was watching it blink. The wolf was eating, and the swelling had begun to go down. A week later, she was bearing weight when the cameras showed no people nearby.
By the third week, she had learned the remote feeder’s routine and vanished into cover whenever she heard the service-gate latch.
“That’s what we want,” Evelyn said.
She meant it. She also woke before dawn expecting a warm animal against her leg. Sometimes she caught her hand resting over her own chest, where she had felt the heartbeat beneath Dana’s scarf.
The rehabilitation center was nearly forty miles away. She never drove there.
Dana began coming on Saturdays. She brought groceries when asked, didn’t move things without permission, and sometimes sat for an hour without proposing a repair. Evelyn learned to accept a carried basket without asking whether Dana thought she was helpless.
On the sixth Saturday, Dana spread three shades of red yarn across the kitchen table. None matched the scarf.
Evelyn opened Hugh’s mending basket and selected gray.
“That won’t blend in,” Dana said.
“Neither does a hole.”
They worked at opposite ends of the damaged section. Dana’s stitches were more regular than they’d been years earlier. When she became distracted, though, she still pulled the yarn too tight.
Evelyn noticed her doing it and said nothing.
“You argued with every doctor,” Dana said.
The needle stopped in Evelyn’s hand.
“Toward the end,” Dana added. “With Owen.”
“I kept thinking we hadn’t asked the right question.”
“They answered the questions, Mom.”
Evelyn looked at the gray loop waiting on her needle.
“He’d ask where you were, and you’d be in the hall calling somebody else. He wanted you in the room.”
She could have named the things those calls had done. A second opinion. Better nausea medicine. A stretch without the headaches that had scared him. The explanations lined themselves up, ready for use.
Dana watched her across the table.
“If I stopped calling,” Evelyn said, “I thought it meant I was letting him die.”
“You couldn’t stop it by staying on the phone.”
The refrigerator started. A little snow left in the roof valley loosened and fell past the window.
Evelyn set down her needle.
“I left you in there without me. I’m sorry.”
Dana bent over the scarf again. She didn’t say it was all right. After a while she nodded and drew the gray yarn through another loop.
Later, Evelyn opened the room Owen had used when he stayed at the ranch. His telescope stood near the window. Comics remained stacked beside the bed, and his small red boots were underneath a chair.
On a shelf sat the treatment binder she had maintained seven years earlier. Its corners had worn soft from being taken down and replaced.
She carried it to the kitchen.
Dana looked up as Evelyn put it in front of her.
“This should be your decision,” Evelyn said. “Whether to keep it. Where.”
Dana laid both palms on the cover.
“I can’t do that today.”
“Then leave it.”
They finished mending the scarf with the binder between their elbows.
Beth called two days later. The wolf’s paw had healed with a slight outward angle, but she could run, turn sharply, and climb. In the long exercise enclosure she had no trouble maintaining speed.
“And she wants absolutely nothing to do with staff,” Beth added. “A very satisfactory patient.”
Evelyn smiled down at the repaired wool.
Field cameras and early snow tracking had located the Veylan pack within several miles of the capture site. The pale-muzzled adult appeared in two photographs. Beth couldn’t establish that he was the youngster’s father, but the pack had visited the draw on at least three nights after the storm.
There was a possibility of release.
Evelyn sat straighter.
“Not while the sheep are up there,” Beth said. “And we need assurance that there aren’t more traps.”
Wade leased the upper meadow every fall. His payment covered most of Evelyn’s property taxes. He and Hugh had settled the arrangement by handshake for more than two decades.
“What would you need from me?” she asked.
“Keep livestock out through winter. Give her time to reconnect with the pack. Afterward, a range specialist can help you both work through the choices.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t take sheep.”
“No. I can’t promise that. But we can avoid releasing her directly into a conflict.”
Evelyn found Wade’s number before opening the tax folder.
He answered in the barn. She could hear sheep and a gate banging.
“I’m clearing the upper meadow for the winter,” she said. “Beth thinks they can release her.”
The gate stopped banging.
“You’re taking that pasture away now?”
“I need it empty until spring.”
“It’s October, Evie. Where do you expect me to put them?”
“I know it costs you. I’m losing the rent, too.”
“Is this coming from the state?”
“The conditions are theirs. The answer’s mine.”
Wade said nothing for several breaths.
“Hugh wouldn’t have done this to me.”
Evelyn gripped the edge of the table.
“He’s not here to decide for us.”
The sheep were audible again. Somewhere near the phone, Wade shut a latch.
“I’ll have them off by Friday,” he said. “Beyond that, I can’t tell you.”
“I can’t either.”
“You find animals easier. They never have to live up to what you expect.”
She reached for the repaired cane beside her chair.
“That animal didn’t cross your fence with a trap.”
He hung up.
Evelyn stayed at the table until the window no longer lit the papers. Then she opened the tax folder and called Dana.
She didn’t ask for a check. She spread out the figures and let her daughter see them before making the decision alone.
They found several expenses she could reduce. The remaining gap meant renting Hugh’s equipment shed to a cabinetmaker from town. He would work there twice a week. Evelyn disliked the prospect of another vehicle in the lane and somebody else’s tools on Hugh’s bench, but she signed the agreement.
The following Wednesday, the messenger’s reminder sounded as Beth called. Evelyn sent her check-in before answering.
“The flock’s off the meadow,” Beth said. “We’ve got fresh tracks above the creek, calls on the recorder, and a good forecast.”
Evelyn held the phone in both hands.
“We’re bringing her out tomorrow…”
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