Page 30 of The Devil Knows Her Name

He unrolled the little bundle of his shirt, revealing an infant squirrel.

“Aw, shit,” I said. “All right, come on, hurry.”

I pushed him back up the steps. Worried he would trip in his haste, I kept a hand on his elbow, as if I’d be able to lift his bulk with a single hand. In my heart, I knew the squirrel was probably dead already, but I saw this effort for what it was—an act of defiant compassion, and I had to answer it.

“Where did you find it? Keep it close to your body, it needs the heat.”

“In the attic. I think it fell out of the nest.”

I struggled not to grimace. “Okay, well, hold on to it. I’ll do my best.”

I ushered him inside, heedless of the mess on my countertops or the smell of animals. The incubator was buried beneath a stack of blankets and towels; I tore them down, sparing one to pad the inside, and turned it on.

“Here, let’s see it.”

The boy’s large hands were shaking, and I was afraid he would accidentally drop his fragile burden. “I got it,” I said gently, disentangling the squirrel from the little pouch he’d created with his shirt. He jolted as my nail inadvertently made contact with the plane of his stomach, and I felt a surprising flush of embarrassment.

The squirrel’s core temperature was low and it was dehydrated—typical for foundlings and nothing I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t see any injuries from its apparent fall from the nest, but it was hard to tell when their bones were still soft. I got fluids started and made sure the pad in the incubator was heating evenly.

“Will it be okay?” David asked.

“Hard to tell. I’ve seen worse come through, so it’s possible. I’ll do the best I can, but I can’t promise anything.”

“Okay.” He was still holding the front of his shirt awkwardly in his hands, and he finally dropped it and smoothed it self-consciously. He glanced around the room. “This isn’t exactly what I thought a wildlife sanctuary would look like.”

“Oh, this is just the nursery. There are more squirrel babies in here”—I tapped the other bin—“but the rest of the animals are out in the barn. Do you want to see them?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

I led him back out and suddenly became conscious of the state of the kitchen—the pile of apple peels I’d forgotten to dump in the compost, the collection of dirty coffee mugs in the sink, the bundle of rattling nigella pods whose seeds I needed to harvest. From the living room, the fawn watched us with bright eyes.

“Don’t mind the mess,” I said.

“Is that the fawn Chief Broder was talking about?”

“Almost certainly.”

“She doesn’t look rabid to me.”

I laughed. “Is that the line now? That’s pretty bad, even for him.”

He seemed to want to go over to the fawn, but something in me warned against it. “It’s not quite time for her to eat yet,” I said. “We can go see the animals in the barn.”

With one last glance over his shoulder for the fawn, he followed me outside. He trailed behind me to the barn door, and even though I’d seen nothing but gentleness from this boy, the back of my neck prickled. I hurried to the door and swung it open for him.

“Go ahead.”

Despite the warmth of the morning, the barn was still cool and dim, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “It feels nice in here.”

“It’s a good barn,” I said. “Cool in the summer, warm in the winter. But don’t try to pet anyone in here, okay? I don’t want you to get bit.”

“Okay.”

I took him slowly down the row, pointing out the tips of ears or the ends of tails within the enclosures; only one of the raccoons was out of bed and active, washing grapes in his water bowl. David bent down, keeping a safe distance from the mesh, and laughed in delight.

“I didn’t know they really did that. I thought that was just something they put in kids’ books.”

“Nope, they really do it. He’s being very thorough; some of them will only dunk it once.”