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My house was silent and dark, not that I’d expected anything else, but sometimes I still managed to be surprised that Jess was gone, even after all this time. I moved through the darkened kitchen, pulling down bowls and filling them without allowing myself to think too much about what I was doing. I moved through the darkness back up the hillside, the light of the moon casting eerie shadows on the familiar trunks and debris of fallen logs. I crept toward the cave mouth, murmuring in a low voice as I neared, and gently pushed the bowl of water and the grilled chicken just past the bush and into the darkness. A deep growl greeted me, but I heard no movement in the hollow, and wondered if whatever was in there might already be too far gone, or if maybe it had narrowly survived a meeting with the mountain cat.
I didn’t like the thought of anything suffering alone, believing no one and nothing in the world cared about the pain and fear it felt. So I made my offering, said a few more soothing words in a kind voice, and then retraced my steps back toward home.
* * *
“Aren’tthere rules about feeding wildlife up here?” Harper’s voice echoed through the darkness as I walked behind her house, and I looked up to see her looking down at me from her kitchen window, her hair slicked back in a ponytail and a teasing smile on her lips.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Probably rules about spying on your neighbors, too.”
She grinned. “I saw something creeping across the back of the lot, and it freaked me out. I was trying to figure out what it was.”
“Just me.” I felt heat creep up my cheeks, and took comfort in the knowledge that she couldn’t see it in the silvery moonlight sheeting between the trees.
“What’s out there, do you think? Crying like that?”
I shook my head, mostly because I’d asked myself the same question multiple times, which is what had led me to take a chance on feeding it. “Not sure,” I said. “Not a lot of things it could be, really, sounding like that.”
“What do you think it is?” She tilted her head, leaning toward the window.
“Coyote, maybe, but the elevation’s really way above where they usually range. It’s not the mountain lion or a bobcat, not sounding like that...If I didn’t know better, I would be thinking wolf, but that’s just not possible up here.”
Harper shrugged. “Wanna come up for a minute? I went to the store. I have snacks and drinks.” She sang this last part, and her lack of self-consciousness was charming. I felt the heavy mantle of sadness slip slightly from my shoulders.
I couldn’t have told you what made me say it, except maybe the awareness that the little house in front of me didn’t hold any snacks or drinks, but it did hold silence and too many reminders of too many things. “Yeah,” I said. “Let me shower.”
“Not necessary.” Her voice was bright and clear, like a bell—a wind chime, maybe.
“I’m covered in construction dust. Give me ten minutes.” I turned and went home, shedding my clothes in the bedroom and scrubbing the fine mountain silt from my skin under lukewarm water. I didn’t glance in the mirror—I’d been avoiding it for a while, though I couldn’t have told you why I did that either.
I was on Harper’s front porch in under ten minutes, and she pulled the door open with a broad smile on her smooth clear face. Looking at her gave me an odd feeling, a little like stepping into the sun from the shadows, or shrugging off a heavy sweater in the first warmth of spring. “It’s a dog,” she said, stepping aside to wave me inside.
“It’s not a dog,” I said, though really, it could be. You just didn’t see a lot of wild dogs up here.
She shrugged. “I heard the mountain lion, too, I think. I told the ranger about it. I hope they don’t kill it though.”
“I don’t know what they’ll do. Doubt they’ll kill it.”
She nodded. “Hey, I’m glad you came up. I owe you a thank you.”
I sat in the chair she indicated, at the end of the long wooden table near the kitchen. “Why’s that?”
She carried over a tray of vegetables and crackers, and then put a beer in front of me. “This okay?” she asked, indicating the bottle.
“Yeah, fine, thanks.”
She sat, lifting a glass of water to her lips and lowering it with a smile.
“No beer for you?” I asked.
“I don’t drink,” she said simply. “Plus, the water up here is amazing.”
That was true. “Best I’ve ever tasted,” I agreed.
She grinned at me and said, “Hey, I wanted to thank you for renting me this place.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Sure.” I didn’t add that I’d rented it before and would surely rent it again. Even if she was just another renter, something in me was pushed to make Harper feel more special than that. We sat in silence for a moment, and I felt the burden of polite conversation probably fell to me. “Did you go to work today?”
“I don’t officially start until Monday,” she said. “But I dropped a few things off to get my desk set up.”
