Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
brIGGS
Princess Buttercup goes missing at nine forty seven on a Thursday night.
I know the exact time because my phone buzzes with a text from Margot, and Margot has never texted me before.
We don't text. We exist in a state of reluctant proximity where she tolerates my presence when things break, thanks me through clenched teeth, and goes back to pretending I don't live forty feet away.
Margot:
My cat got out. Side door didn't latch. She's fourteen and has no survival skills. I can't find her.
Three sentences. No greeting. No question. But she texted me, which means she's scared enough to reach past the grudge.
I'm on my porch before I finish reading. Flashlight from the hook by the door, boots already on because I never fully take them off before bed. Tinsel raises his head from his spot by the woodstove, ears forward.
"Stay. She'll eat you."
He puts his head back down. Offended but obedient.
Through the tree line, Margot's cabin is lit up. Every light on. She's in the yard with her phone flashlight, still in the clothes she wore today, calling for the cat in a voice that's trying hard to stay steady.
"Princess Buttercup! Buttercup, come here. Please."
I come through the trees, and she spins toward my flashlight. Her face is pale. Eyes wide. She's been crying, recently, the skin around her eyes still damp, but she's wiped it away because Margot Hemmings doesn't cry in front of people. Especially me.
"I've checked the yard. Under the cabin. Behind the woodpile. She's not here."
"How long."
"Maybe twenty minutes. I was editing. The side door swings open if you don't pull it hard. She must've pushed through."
Twenty minutes. Not great for a fourteen year old indoor cat in mountains full of coyotes and owls and cold that drops into the thirties at night. But cats are resourceful, and old ones tend to stay close.
"She won't go far. Older cats stick to cover. We'll check the tree line first, then work outward."
"We?"
"You got a better search team?"
She stares at me for a beat. Then she nods. Quick. Grateful.
We walk the tree line together. My flashlight sweeps the underbrush while hers tracks the ground. I call for the cat because Margot's voice is starting to shake, and the name comes out of my mouth with a sincerity I wasn't expecting.
"Princess Buttercup. Here, girl."
"She doesn't come when you call," Margot says. "She's a cat."
"Then we'll find her the hard way."
The hard way takes us through the scrub pines behind her cabin, along the fence line that marks the edge of my tree farm, and into the strip of old growth that runs between our properties and the ridge.
The forest is dark. Real dark. No streetlights, no glow from town, just my flashlight beam cutting through branches and the occasional rustle of something small moving in the undergrowth.
"She's had this cat since she was twenty one," Margot says. Quietly. Talking to fill the silence, or maybe to fill the fear. "Found her at a shelter in Reno. She was the meanest kitten in the litter. Hissed at everyone who tried to hold her. The shelter volunteer said she was unadoptable."
"And you took her."
"Obviously." A branch catches her jacket. She pulls free. "She's been with me through college, Portland, San Francisco, the marriage, the divorce. She's outlasted every man I've ever dated."
"Smart cat."
A small sound from Margot. Half laugh, half sob. She catches it fast. Keeps walking.
We search for over an hour. Along the creek bed, through the fern stand, around the back side of my barn where mice nest in the hay. I check the culvert under the access road. Nothing. Margot checks the woodpile again. Nothing.
At eleven fifteen, we're standing in the clearing between our properties, flashlights dimming, and she's gone quiet in a way that scares me more than the crying.
"I can't lose her, Briggs." Voice flat. Controlled. Barely holding. "She's all I brought. Everything else is furniture and boxes. She's the only thing from my old life that matters."
My chest hurts. This woman standing in the cold with her arms wrapped around herself, terrified of losing the one creature that chose her unconditionally. Fifteen years of hating me, and right now none of it matters because her cat is in the woods and she's falling apart.
"We're not done." I angle the flashlight toward the ridge trail. "Cats like high ground. There's a rock outcrop about a quarter mile up. If she went that direction, she'd stop there."
"How do you know that."
"Because Tinsel treed a raccoon on that outcrop last spring. Anything small and scared ends up on those rocks."
Margot looks at the dark tree line. At the trail I'm pointing toward. At me.
"Lead."
The trail climbs. Steep enough that our breathing picks up, loose enough footing that I turn back twice to check she's steady behind me.
She is. Jaw set. Determined. The woman spent a decade in San Francisco editing other people's books, but she's got a resilience under the surface that's got nothing to do with city life.
At the outcrop, I sweep the flashlight across the rocks. Nothing at first. Granite, moss, dead leaves blown into the crevices.
Then a flash of green. Two eyes. Reflecting from a gap between two boulders.
"There." I point the beam. Princess Buttercup is wedged in a crack between the rocks, fur puffed, eyes furious, looking at me with an expression that suggests she'd rather die out here than accept rescue from a man.
The apple doesn't fall far.
"Oh thank God." Margot pushes past me, drops to her knees on the rock. "Buttercup. Baby. Come here."
The cat hisses. Predictably.
Margot reaches into the gap. Princess Buttercup swats at her hand, claws out. Margot flinches but keeps reaching.
"She's stuck. Her collar's caught on something."
I crouch next to Margot. Our shoulders press together. The gap between the rocks is tight, too narrow for my hands, but I can see the problem. The collar's hooked on a root protruding from the crack.
"Hold the flashlight on the collar." I pull my pocket knife. Margot holds the beam steady while I reach in, blade flat, and cut the collar free. Princess Buttercup launches out of the gap, claws raking my wrist, and lands in Margot's arms.
Margot clutches her. Face buried in the cat's fur. Shoulders shaking. Princess Buttercup protests loudly, then settles. Starts purring. Loud, rumbling, engine purring against Margot's chest.
Blood runs down my wrist from three neat claw marks. Worth it.
"You're bleeding." Margot lifts her head. Eyes wet. Cat still clutched to her chest.
"It's fine."
"She scratched you."
"She's a cat. That's what they do."
Margot looks at my wrist. At the scratches.
At the pocket knife I used to free her cat.
At me. And something shifts in her face.
The walls she's been building since the day she drove into Whisper Vale, the ones reinforced by fifteen years of a story she told herself about the villain who destroyed her happiness, they don't come down. But they flex. Just enough.
"Thank you." Whispered. Real. No teeth in it.
"You're welcome, Margot."
We walk back down the trail. Slower now. Margot carrying Princess Buttercup, who has gone limp and content against her shoulder. My flashlight leads. The forest is quieter, the fear gone, replaced by something warm that hums between us with every step.
At her cabin, she carries the cat inside. I stay in the yard. This is usually where it ends. The tool gets put away, the lumber gets delivered, the hose gets connected. I help, I leave, she pretends it didn't happen.
But tonight she comes back to the side door.
"Your wrist."
"It's nothing."
"Come inside. I have a first aid kit."
My boots carry me through her door before my brain can object. The kitchen is warm. She's been running the space heater I dropped off two days ago, and the room smells like coffee and the lavender thing she plugged into the wall near the counter.
"Sit." She points at the kitchen chair.
I sit. She pulls a first aid kit from a box labeled BATHROOM in red marker, opens it on the counter, comes back with antiseptic wipes and bandages.
Her hands take my wrist. Turn it over. Gentle.
Clinical. But her fingers stay longer than necessary on the inside of my forearm, where the skin is thinner.
She cleans the scratches. Three of them, parallel, shallow. The antiseptic stings. I don't flinch. Her thumb traces along the edge of the deepest one, pressing the bandage down, and her touch lingers. Just lingers. Warm on my skin.
"You spent two hours in the woods calling for Princess Buttercup." Her voice is low. She's still holding my wrist. Still looking at the bandage instead of my face.
"Yep."
"With a flashlight. At midnight."
"Closer to eleven."
"Why."
"Because you love that cat. And you were scared."
Her eyes come up. Brown. Deep. Bright from the tears she's already wiped away. The space between us is small. She's standing, I'm sitting, and her hip is against my knee. My wrist is in her hands. Her thumb has stopped moving but hasn't let go.
"Briggs."
"Yeah."
"I've hated you for fifteen years."
"I know."
"I built my entire college narrative around you being the person who ruined the best thing that ever happened to me."
"I know that too."
"And you just spent two hours climbing a mountain to rescue my cat."
"She's a good cat. Terrible judgment about men, but good instincts about rocks."
Her mouth does the thing. The twitch. Except this time she doesn't kill it. It spreads. A real smile. Small, exhausted, reluctant. Devastating.
"I'm going to kiss you," she says. "And I need you to know that I still haven't forgiven you. And this is probably a terrible idea."
"Probably."
"Are you going to talk me out of it?"
"No."
She leans down. Her mouth touches mine.