Chapter 14 REID
REID
The jacket is waterproof and rated to twenty below. I hold it out to her at the door.
"Rain's coming," I say. "Take this."
Maya takes it. Turns it over. Finds the label.
"True North." She looks at the row of gear on the mudroom hooks. The base layers on the shelf. The boots lined up on the mat. All of it the same brand. She looks back at me with curiosity. "You're big fans. At this point you should own shares."
I clear my throat. I lift my own jacket off the hook. "Does it fit?"
She shrugs it on. The shoulders drop. The cuffs fall past her wrists. She zips it to her chin and looks up at me with a teasing look.
"Like everything else from this brand," she says, "it's extremely comfortable."
I hold the door open. "Let's go."
The trail takes twenty minutes on foot. Pine needles underfoot, soft from last night's frost beginning to give.
The air has the particular weight it carries before rain, cold and dense and smelling of wet earth and resin.
Maya falls into step beside me. She doesn't fill the silence and I don't fill it either, and we walk through the trees while the grey sky shows itself in pieces through the canopy.
After a while she says, "This is your commute every day?"
"Every day."
She's quiet for a moment, looking up through the branches. "In LA I sat on the 101 for forty-five minutes every morning. Same stretch of concrete. Same smog sitting on top of everything like a lid."
I watch her from the side. She moves differently through the trees than she did when she first arrived. Easier. Her boots find the ground without her watching her feet. She's stopped doubting the terrain and started trusting it.
"Better commute?" I ask.
She turns and looks at me and says deadpan. "Considerably."
I face forward and keep walking.
"What exactly do you do at the center?" she asks.
"Manage operations. Keep things running.
" I think about how much to give her. Not the ownership.
Not yet. Nobody out here knows that and I've kept it that way deliberately.
It's better to be known as one of the crew rather than the man whose name is on the deed.
I like working alongside people. I like the accountability of it, showing up and doing the same work as everyone else.
The money that funds it is mine. The labour is shared.
I step over a root. "March is busy. The females are pregnant. Late winter is hard on the animals. They've been burning reserves for months and prey is still lean. We get injured animals coming in. Territory fights. Snare injuries."
She walks beside me and doesn't say anything for a moment. When she speaks again her voice is quieter. "That sounds like the kind of work that matters."
The trees thin slightly ahead and I can smell the rain getting closer.
The first drops come through the canopy in scattered intervals, cold and precise. One hits the back of my neck. Another lands on my cheek.
"We're close," I say, looking at her. "If we run we can beat it. Are you up for that?"
She grins. "Yeah!"
I reach for her hand without thinking about it. She gives it without hesitating, and we run.
The cold comes at us as we move, the rain thickening as we leave the tree cover and hit the last open stretch of path.
Her hand is small inside mine, and I can feel the grip of it, the specific pressure of her fingers locking between mine, and I am aware of the contact in a way that has nothing to do with keeping her from stumbling on the path.
The path curves and the center comes up fast through the trees.
We hit the covered porch as the rain opens up properly, drumming hard on the roof above us, and we're both breathing fast and Maya bends forward with her hands on her knees and laughs. The sound fills the porch and my senses, warm and disorienting.
I unlock the door and we go inside.
The reception area is dim and smells of wood and the faint mineral edge of the cold that works its way in under the door. Maps on the wall. Radio on the desk. The wood stove in the corner that I'll have going in five minutes. I turn to tell her where things are.
She's closer than I expected. Right there. The run still in her face, colour in her cheeks, wet strands of hair at her temples and across her jaw. She's looking up at me and whatever she was managing on the walk here has come undone in the rain. Her face is open.
I reach over and move the hair back from her face. My thumb grazes her cheekbone. Her skin is cold from the rain and underneath the cold is the warmth of her. I leave my hand where it is, wanting more of her warmth.
"We made it." Her voice quiet.
"I'll always make sure you're okay," I say.
She holds my eyes and the rain hammers the roof and the distance between us is nothing, barely the length of a breath, and I am aware of every inch of it.
The door blows open.
Doris comes in fast, already talking, rain dripping from the brim of her cap, unwinding her scarf with one hand and reaching for the coffee machine with the other.
"Boss. Please tell me that's already brewing." She clocks Maya without breaking stride. "Oh, hi. I'm Doris. I run the front desk, which means I run everything. Coffee?"
I take a step back from Maya. "Doris, this is Maya. She's visiting for the day."
"Great." Doris is already pulling mugs. "Milk? Sugar? Please, don't ask for anything fancier than that."
Maya smiles. "Milk, no sugar."
"See, that's easy. I like her." Doris sets three mugs on the counter and looks at me. "Vet's on his way. Forty minutes, maybe. He called ahead."
We stand at the counter with our coffees while Doris runs through the morning.
I listen and make notes and watch Maya from the corner of my eye.
She's moved to the information boards on the far wall.
Wolf population data. Territory maps. She tilts her head at one of the photographs. Moves to the next one.
I watch her stand in my world and find interest in it, and the tightness that moves through my chest is slow and thorough.
"Want to see the wolves before the vet gets here?" I ask.
She turns from the board. Her expression filled with excitement. "Yes."
I tell Doris to send the vet to the main enclosure. We go back out.
The rain has softened to something fine and persistent, more mist than drops.
I reach up and pull the hood of her jacket forward to cover her head.
My fingers graze her cheeks in the process, just briefly, and I feel her go still under the contact.
I don't move my hand right away. I'm standing close enough to see the particular grey-green of her eyes, the way the damp air has curled the hair at her temples.
Something tightens low in my gut, slow and certain.
I take her hand again. "This way."
We take the path toward the habitat zone. The enclosures run along the left, heavy fencing disappearing into the pines. The ground on both sides is soft from the melt, paw prints tracking along the inside edge of the fence where the animals pace.
"The fencing goes twelve feet up," I tell her. "And four feet underground. They dig."
"They try to escape?"
"They… explore." I glance at her. "Each enclosure is a few acres. Natural terrain inside. Trees, outcrops, elevation changes. The goal is to make the space as close to wild as a fence allows."
"But it's still a fence."
"Yes. It's still a fence." I pause. "The animals that are here can't survive outside. Some were hit by vehicles. Some caught in traps. Some orphaned too young. The fence isn't keeping them from the wild. It's keeping them alive when the wild isn't an option."
She's quiet for a moment. "Do any of them go back?"
"Some. When they're ready. When it's possible." I look ahead along the path.
The path rises over a low hill and levels on the other side, and that's where they are.
They come out of the treeline without warning. No sound. No buildup. One moment the enclosure is empty pine and shadow and the next they are simply there, as if the forest assembled them from its own materials and set them down in front of us.
Flint is in front. Large, pale-chested, grey across the shoulders and darker down the back, moving with apex energy. Not hurried. Not cautious. Just present, in the way that only animals who have never doubted their own authority are present.
Ash stays at the treeline. Darker. Watching.
Flint reaches the fence and stops.
He looks at Maya.
Maya goes still, but not from fear. It's complete attention.
Flint holds her gaze.
Wolves maintain eye contact longer than almost any other animal.
It's not aggression. It's assessment. Maya doesn't look away and he doesn't look away and something settles in the space between them.
The wolf is deciding about her. She's letting him decide.
That requires a quality of steadiness that most people don't have.
Flint takes two steps closer to the fence, trying to sniff my hand.
"He recognizes you," Maya says.
"He—"
"He sure does." Colt Mercer comes up the path behind us, collar up, bag over his shoulder, rain on his glasses. "Reid bottle-fed that animal since he was just a pup."
"They recognize a food source," I say. "That's all."
Colt extends his hand to me and I shake it. He turns to Maya with the full force of his attention, which with Colt is considerable. "Colt Mercer. Local vet. And who are you?."
Maya smiles. She takes his hand. "Maya. I'm staying nearby."
Colt looks at me with the expression he uses when he thinks he's being subtle. He is not subtle. "Good to meet you, Maya."
Maya looks back at Flint, then at me. "You bottle-fed them."
I look at both the wolves. Ten years ago their entire bodies fit inside my jacket.
Their mother had been dead two days when I found them, caught in a coyote snare half a mile inside the tree line.
I called Wildlife. Wildlife called every education center within three states. All of them full, all of them sorry.
"Found them as pups," I say. "Orphaned. I took them in while the center was getting established." I shrug. "It worked out."
"Every four hours," Colt says, "around the clock, for six weeks, he fed those animals by hand. I know because he called me at three in the morning twice asking if they were eating enough."
"The center needed founding animals," I say.
"The man refused to let them die," Colt says to Maya.
"Let's look at the females," I deflect.
We spend the better part of two hours in the rehabilitation area.
Colt works methodically through his checks, two pregnant females, both tracking well, one showing the early behavioural signs of den selection.
Maya stays close, watching without crowding, asking the kind of questions that tell me she's been paying attention since the moment we arrived.
We end up back in reception. Colt writes his notes. I make mine. Doris refills everyone's coffee without being asked.
Colt caps his pen. Looks at me with the expression I've seen before and don't like. "You need to come down to Briarhaven. You've been up on this mountain long enough."
"I come into town."
"For supplies. That's not the same thing." He glances at Maya. "Now you've got company worth showing off, come out properly. There's a karaoke night at the Rusty Nail next Friday. You're both coming."
Maya's colour rises. I say nothing.
He picks up his bag, points at me, and walks out. We hear his truck turn over in the lot and pull away.
I look at Maya. "That wasn't awkward at all."
She laughs, loose and unguarded, and I'm watching it happen on her face when a sound comes from the parking area. Heavy engine. Air brakes.
I go to the window.
The school minibus is pulling into the lot, white with the district logo on the side. I had forgotten. The annual visit. A day that takes more energy than any other day on the calendar and leaves the staff good-tired.
"We're about to have company," I say, turning to Maya, and I stop.
Maya is looking out the window. The minibus door is sliding open. A line of small children comes out into the parking lot, six years old at most, bright jackets and backpacks, a teacher counting them off at the door with a hand on each small shoulder.
Maya has gone white.
The color has left her face completely, from her cheeks to her mouth, and her eyes are fixed on the children with an odd expression.
I've watched people try to hold themselves together my entire adult life. I know the precise moment when the effort stops being enough.
My hand moves toward her and stops. I don't touch her. I don't speak. I stand close enough that she knows I'm here, close enough that if she needs the anchor she can take it, and I wait.
The children's voices come through the glass, high and bright and completely unaware of what they've just walked into.
Maya doesn't move.
Neither do I.