Chapter 50
Dr. Laurie Banks practiced in a barn on the edge of Mile Creek. Kate had been here before, accompanying Beth to take Popcorn for shots. Dr. Banks took one look at the rabbit and shook her head.
“I’m not licensed to treat wild animals,” she said. “You have to take this one to a wildlife rehab.” She leaned closer, though, examined the hawk’s gouges. “It really doesn’t look good, though. The rehabber will probably euthanize it.”
Kate stared at the rabbit’s wide dark eyes and saw life force and knew she wouldn’t let that happen.
“Can you at least tell me if it’s male or female?”
Dr. Banks turned the rabbit over carefully and looked beneath the short white tail. “Female,” she said.
Kate nodded.
“Here’s the name of the closest rehab,” Dr. Banks said, handing Kate a slip of paper.
“Thanks,” Kate said.
“It could be a long shot,” Dr. Banks said. “It’s unlikely she’ll survive. It’s probably kinder to put her out of her misery. The wildlife vet will make that decision.”
“Okay,” Kate said.
The vet brought out a cardboard crate for transport and placed the rabbit inside.
Kate carried her to the car, set her on the front seat beside her.
She started to drive toward Montville, the address Dr. Banks had given her, but instead she stopped at CVS, bought hydrogen peroxide and bacitracin, and headed for home.
On her couch, she set the cottontail on a towel. The bleeding had stopped. She gently washed the cuts with warm water, then hydrogen peroxide. The gashes were clean. She applied the antibiotic ointment to prevent infection as carefully as she could. The rabbit’s fur felt impossibly soft.
Popcorn investigated. Kate didn’t want him to scare the rabbit, but Popcorn was so cautious it seemed okay.
Kate slung her arm around his neck, burrowed her face in his fur.
The dog had been Beth’s. Beth had instinctively known how to care for him, and she’d wanted to.
Beth had had a husband and a daughter and a lover and all the people she’d helped at the shelter and the soup kitchen.
Kate had kept herself as separate as possible from all creatures.
“What should we name her?” Kate asked Popcorn.
He circled, lay at her feet. Kate heard him sigh as he settled.
The rabbit was perfectly still, except for her breath.
Kate’s hand rested on the sofa beside her, and she felt the warmth of each exhalation.
On the coffee table was a blue bowl filled with small oranges.
The scent filled the room. It smelled like a citrus grove, both sweet and tangy.
Beth had loved oranges. They had been her favorite fruit.
And she had been wearing the color in those pictures Lulu had taken.
Kate held her hand above the rabbit’s head and felt energy passing between them.
All her senses were engaged. Beth was still with her.
She felt warm breath on the back of her neck and actually turned around to see if her sister was standing there.
She had the sudden feeling that she was coming alive in a different way.
Kate’s gaze fell upon the bowl of oranges, and the rabbit’s name came to her. “You’re Clementine,” she said. “You’re going to get better.”
She carried Clementine to the other side of the loft, away from the windows, where it was dark and toasty.
She put her back into the crate. It was 2:30, nearly time to leave to meet the others.
She’d have to gather tall grass from Mathilda’s yard, arrange it in a nest for Clementine.
And food—she’d need to learn what wild rabbits liked to eat.
She’d seen families of them in the meadow, hopping through clover.
She wondered where she could find clover in late November.
“It will be all right,” Kate whispered. She thought of Lulu and Beth, the ritual of drawing a heart on the back of the painting. She cringed to think of the secrets they had kept from her.
Since July, her heart had ached more than she thought was safe.
She’d thought maybe she would collapse. Her sister was gone, and she’d never see her again.
The feelings were similar to what she’d felt when her mother had died, when it had seemed that if someone she loved could be taken so violently, there might be no reason to go on.
Sitting with Clementine, feeling sudden and deep commitment to saving her, she saw clearly what she’d known all along—that she’d already been doing that with Sam.
She had decided, without putting it into words, that she would be her niece’s person.
Less than a mother but more than the somewhat distant aunt she had always been.
She might have thought she was shut down, but she had loved as deeply and totally as anyone else all along. She just hadn’t let herself feel it.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she stared through the crate’s open door and watched Clementine watching her.
She remembered being eleven, rescuing a feral cat that had lived behind the gallery, the last pet she’d ever had—loving every second with Maggie, feeling her warmth as she snuggled against her side.
After those hours in the basement, Kate couldn’t even look at her sister. She had been too numb to grip her hand, to hold her little sister tight, to bond together and try to dispel the horrors of that day and night.
Kate’s love of her sister had never left her, but after their mother had died, after the brutality of the ropes, she’d stopped being able to open her heart to physical, hands-on caring for any living being. You never knew when they would be taken from you.
She thought about what Lulu had told her.
If not for the photos and video, she would have had a hard time picturing Beth with the knife, cutting Moonlight from the frame, and she couldn’t help feeling angry at her sister.
Beth had staged a fake crime, reminiscent of what their father had done with the same painting.
“Beth,” she said out loud. Then she closed her eyes and listened. She ached to hear her sister’s voice. After a few minutes, she leaned down to stare into the rabbit’s big beautiful eyes.
“You’re going to be fine, Clementine. It will all be okay,” Kate said, unable to stop herself from reaching into the crate, gently touching the head of her injured cottontail.
“I love you more than you could ever know,” Kate said, and she wasn’t completely sure whether she was talking to Clementine or to Beth.
She stood up. It was time to meet the others and celebrate Beth’s birthday.