Part 6
Barney woke Nora the first morning by putting his cold nose against the edge of her mattress. He didn’t bark. He waited, breathing patiently, until she opened her eyes.
“All right,” she said. “I’m up.”
He needed breakfast at a reasonable hour, medicine with his food, and two walks a day at a pace his joints could manage. Nora learned which patch of lawn he preferred and how long he wanted to stand at the corner before turning toward home.
His bowls had to be washed. His prescription had to be refilled. When she took too long putting on her coat, he sat beside the door and watched.
She bought running shoes as well, leaving him comfortably asleep while she went out for short jogs. At first she could barely reach the end of the block without stopping. She went again the next morning, and the one after that. Barney greeted her return with a slow sweep of his tail against the floor.
In late April, Nora resigned from the hardware store. She worked through what remained in her savings and enrolled in an accredited online wildlife-rehabilitation training program. She had carried out Denise’s instructions successfully. She wanted to understand the science behind them before she tried to help another animal.
The coursework was harder than she had expected.
Biology gave her pages of terms that refused to stay in her head. Behavioral ecology required her to distinguish what she observed from what she hoped it meant. The introductory veterinary material left her filling the margins with questions to ask someone qualified.
She studied at the kitchen table with Barney snoring on a bed beneath it. Flashcards crowded the space where the noodle bowl used to sit. Sometimes she put her head down on her folded arms and wondered whether she had mistaken one extraordinary year for an ability she didn’t possess.
Then she would remember Vesper trying to push with one paw while Nora dragged the blanket through the snow. She would sit up, turn the card over, and try the term again.
Denise called in June.
Nora was rinsing a mug when she saw the name on the screen. She dried her hands before answering.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” Denise said.
Nora looked down at Barney, who had taken up his usual inconvenient position between her feet and the cupboards.
“Better some days. Not every day.” She leaned against the counter. “I’m studying. Trying to make a plan.”
“I’m glad.” Denise paused. “Would you like the latest on the family?”
Nora set the mug down carefully.
“Yes.”
There had been no confirmed visual sighting, Denise told her. That meant they hadn’t been showing up at houses or approaching people, which was encouraging. Two experienced bow hunters had reported tracks from a large female and two substantial younger wolves roughly thirty miles northeast of the release site. They had also found fresh evidence of successful hunts.
“We can’t call it absolute identification,” Denise said. “But the signs fit. It’s a very good report.”
Nora pressed her palm flat against the counter.
“They’re out there.”
“Everything we have suggests they’re doing well.” Denise’s voice warmed. “You helped give them that chance.”
Nora looked toward the window for a moment before she could answer.
As autumn approached, she completed the first set of certification courses and began volunteering at a raptor and wildlife rescue center outside town. There were cages to clean, food to prepare, intake notes to enter, and far more to learn than any course had suggested.
She liked having someone correct her hand position or tell her she had measured something wrong. The work required attention. When she was there, she had to be there.
A fellow volunteer named Pauline began saving her a place at the break table. They talked about shifts at first, then about Barney, then about things Nora hadn’t discussed with anyone outside a therapist’s office in years. Sometimes they laughed hard enough that someone in the treatment room asked them to keep it down.
In early November, Nora agreed to meet someone for coffee.
The date was ordinary and a little awkward. She spent too long deciding what to wear, arrived early, and laughed at a joke while she was taking a sip. On the drive home, guilt caught her so suddenly that she turned off the radio.
At the house, she stood with the key in the lock and remembered Caleb making terrible jokes from the back seat, repeating them until she laughed.
Inside, Barney came down the hallway to meet her. She bent to rub his shoulders, and he leaned against her knees.
The next February ninth fell on a Tuesday. Five years since Caleb’s death.
Nora loaded sunflowers into the pickup and checked that Barney had water before she left. A new carving lay wrapped on the passenger seat. This time she had made four wolves: the mother, her two sons, and a small pup close beside them.
The highway was clear for most of the drive. Near mile 62, snow lay between the pines, and the shoulder gave its familiar crunch beneath her boots.
She fastened the flowers at the tree and set the carving near the cross. Then she told Caleb about Barney’s snoring, which could now be heard from the kitchen even when he slept in the bedroom. She told him about a biology test she had thought she would fail and hadn’t, and about Pauline bringing the wrong lunch to work and insisting it had improved her day.
Her voice grew quieter.
“I still have bad days,” she said. “But I’m trying, sweetheart.”
A light breeze stirred the paper around the sunflowers. Nora tucked it more securely behind the fastening and turned toward the truck.
Halfway there, she saw the shapes across the highway.
Three wolves stood just inside the trees.
The female in the middle had a heavy silver coat. Her sons stood close to either side, nearly her size now, one darker than the other. Nora stopped with one boot sunk deeper than the other in the shoulder snow.
For a moment she tried to remember how far thirty miles was to an animal that could travel freely, how large a territory might be, whether there was any sensible explanation for seeing them here, on this day.
Vesper stepped out far enough for the light to reach her face.
Nora knew her.
The two males stayed beside their mother. None of them moved toward the road. They watched from the cover of the trees, holding the distance Nora had worked so hard to teach them.
She didn’t call their names.
Slowly, she lifted one gloved hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Vesper remained a little longer. Then she turned, and Flint and Reed moved with her. Branches obscured the pale coat first, then the darker one, and finally the silver back Nora had once pulled through the snow.
Nora stood until a distant vehicle brought her attention back to the highway. She waited for it to pass before returning to the pickup.
Inside, she closed the door and rested her hands on the wheel. Tears ran down her face, but she was smiling too. She let herself sit that way without hurrying to become composed.
Then she started the engine. Barney would be waiting by the door in Alderwick, listening for her truck.
On the last stretch home, Nora stopped at a coffee shop. She carried her mug to a window table and watched people pass on the sidewalk: a woman checking a grocery list, a man adjusting a child’s hat, two friends arguing amiably about where they had parked.
Once, she had watched such people as if they belonged to a place she couldn’t enter. Today she moved her bag off the spare chair when the room began to fill.
She drank her coffee slowly. Beyond the window, snow slipped from an awning and broke apart on the pavement. Somewhere in the mountains, three wolves were moving through country she would never see.
When the mug was empty, Nora put on her coat and went home to walk her dog.