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“You told me that it’s unsafe to free an animal from a trap, and the fox might suffer.”

“It is unsafe, but look at how it’s caught. No blood. It’s like its leg is just stuck in between the teeth.”

“Papa?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll help.”

“You will watch, so you can do it when you’re a grown-up like me. You might need to know this someday.”

My eyes wide, I nodded. When it came to animals, I never questioned my father. I never questioned him about much of anything.

Wilmot had taken off his jacket and put on some gloves. In quick, sure moves, he threw the jacket over the fox’s head and then grabbed onto the frantic animal. He managed to pull its foot from the trap with one quick tug.

“It’s not broken, Hazel,” he said as he took a look and felt the leg. He let go and retrieved the jacket just before the fox jetted away, not limping a bit.

“You did it!” I said gleefully.

“Yep. Trapping is illegal out here. Remind me to call Calloway when we get home.”

“Okay.”

And then he’d muttered quietly even though I’d heard, “Evil fuckers.”

I smiled to myself now. I had never once come upon a creature, fox or otherwise, that I needed to free from a trap. Still, I was ready. Sort of.

A blank spot that wouldn’t fill in was made of my mother, a blurry image from the one photograph I had sometimes crossed my mind, both how she looked and who she was. She’d died giving birth to me, and Wilmot never talked about her. Even when I’d asked him to tell me something, he’d say that none of that mattered. It was me and him against the world and looking backward never did anyone any good. He’d only let me keep one picture, which was probably cruel, but I didn’t give it much thought.

Just keep going forward, one foot in front of the other, little bit.

He’d made it seem like yesterday wasn’t important and, for the most part, I’d bought into that.

In fact, though ethereal thoughts made of her image ran through my mind every now and then, I couldn’t understand why my mother, Catalina, was appearing there now. I kept shaking thoughts of her away.

I couldn’t have told you if I had any birthday parties, if Wilmot even wished me a happy one on those days. I remembered his kindness, but no parties, no cakes.

Until I’d been about eight, around the time Wilmot had thought it was okay to leave me alone, I’d been a welcome interloper into his studio. I’d observed and even assisted in the tasks that came along with being a taxidermist. Those were the days that laid the groundwork for what I’d become, why my world was made of bones. I wouldn’t have traded them for anything.

But not too long before he left, Wilmot changed, and he became more secretive, more private about what he was doing. He’d lock the studio door.

“Dad?” I’d said as I knocked. “Let me in.”

“A minute, little one.”

After a series of shuffling sounds and indistinguishable thumps, he opened the door.

“Why was it locked?” I’d asked.

Wilmot shrugged. “Safety.”

Though he’d never turned me away when I came calling, he did keep locking the door. What had he been up to? I looked around now. I’d cleaned out the space completely when I turned it into my lab, brought in bones to search for the answers they could give. I hadn’t found anything that had made me question my father, wonder what he’d been up to. Though I’d been an adult by then, it was still about a decade ago. Nothing was the same as it had been when my father had been there.

I had cleaned up the room with the hopes of finding something, uncovering something that would help me understand what Wilmot might have been up to that would lead me to where he’d gone.

I’d grieved his disappearance—in private. Even as a kid, and now, I put on a stoic face for the public, but I’d missed my strange father. I didn’t understand it back then, but our lives weren’t necessarily conventional. Not many people in Black Vulture lived any sort of polished television or movie family existence.

Wilmot was no odder than anyone else in Black Vulture, frankly.