I wrapped a gauzy blue scarf around my neck and went to sit with Maura near the calf’s grave. I had been there for maybe an hour when Thomas approached, on foot. He stood on the other side of the fence, hands in his pockets. “I just wanted to tell you I’m going away for a while,” he said. “It’s somewhere I’ve been before. They can help me.”
I didn’t look at him. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“I left the contact information on the kitchen counter. But they won’t let you talk to me. It’s … part of the way they do things.”
I did not think I’d need Thomas while he was gone. We had been running this sanctuary in his absence even when he had been on the premises.
“Tell Jenna …” He shook his head. “Well. Don’t tell Jenna anything, except that I love her.” Thomas took a step forward. “I know it’s not worth much, but I’m sorry. I’m not … I’m not me right now. That’s not an excuse. But it’s all I have.”
I didn’t watch him leave. I sat with my arms wrapped tight around my legs. Twenty feet away, Maura picked up a fallen branch with a paintbrush of pine needles at the end and began to sweep the ground in front of her.
She did this for several minutes and then started to walk away from the grave. After moving a few yards, she turned and looked at me. Then she walked a bit, and paused, waiting.
I got to my feet and followed.
It was humid; my clothes stuck to my skin. I couldn’t speak; my throat hurt that bad. The ends of the scarf I wore moved like butterflies on my shoulders in the hot breath of the breeze. Maura moved slowly and deliberately, until she reached the hot-wire fence. In the distance on the far side, she stared longingly at the pond.
I didn’t have tools or gloves. I didn’t have anything I needed to disable the electric fence. But I pried the box open with my fingernails and disengaged the batteries. I used all my strength to untie the makeshift gate I’d wired weeks before, even though the wire bit into my fingers and my hands grew slick with blood. Then I dragged the fence open, so that Maura could walk through.
She did, but paused at the edge of the pond.
We didn’t come all this way for nothing. “Let’s go,” I rasped, and I kicked off my shoes and waded into the water.
It was cold and clear, deliciously fresh. My shirt and scarf stuck to my skin, and my shorts ballooned around my thighs. I ducked underwater, letting my hair fall out of its ponytail, and resurfaced, kicking to stay afloat. Then I flicked a handful of water at Maura.
She took two steps back and then reached her trunk into the pond and sprayed a stream over my head like a rain shower.
Her movement was so calculated, so unexpected—and so playful, after weeks of despair, that I laughed out loud. It didn’t sound like my voice. It was stripped and ragged, but it was joy.
Maura gingerly waded into the pool, rolling to her left side and then to her right, tossing a spray of water over her back and then over me again. It reminded me of the herd I had taken Thomas to watch in the water hole in Botswana, back when I thought my life would be different than it had turned out to be. I watched Maura splash and roll, buoyed by the water, lighter than she’d been in a long time, and very slowly I let myself float, too.
“She’s playing,” Gideon said, from the far bank. “That means she’s letting go.”
I had not realized he was here; I had not known we were being watched. I owed Gideon an apology. I had not asked to be rescued, true, but that did not mean I didn’t need saving.
I felt silly, unprofessional. Swimming across the pool, I left Maura to her own devices and emerged dripping, unsure of what to say. “I’m sorry,” I offered. “I shouldn’t have said what I said to you.”
“How are you?” Gideon asked, concerned.
“I’m …” I paused, because I didn’t know the answer. Relieved? Nervous? Scared? Then I smiled a little. “Wet.”
Gideon grinned, taking my cue. He held out his empty hands. “I don’t have a towel.”
“I didn’t know I would be swimming. Maura seemed to need a little encouragement.”
He held my gaze. “Maybe she just needed to know someone was there for her.”
I stared at him, until Maura sprayed us both with a fine mist. Gideon jumped away from the stream of cold water. But to me, it felt like a baptism. Like starting over.
That night I called a staff meeting. I told Nevvie and Grace and Gideon that Thomas would be visiting investors abroad for a while and that we would have to run the sanctuary without him. I could tell none of them believed me, but they pitied me enough to pretend. I gave Jenna ice cream for dinner, just because, and put her to sleep in my bed.
Then I went to the bathroom and unwound the scarf from my neck, where it had dried in wrinkles after my swim with Maura. There was a string of fingerprints, dark as South Sea pearls, ringing my throat.
A bruise is how the body remembers it’s been wronged.
Padding down the hall in the dark, I found the Post-it note that Thomas had left in the kitchen. MORGAN HOUSE, he had printed, in his linear, architectural handwriting. STOWE, VT. 802-555-6868.
I picked up the phone and dialed. I didn’t need to talk to him, but I did want to know that he’d gotten there safely. That he was going to be all right.
The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.
So I did. And then I went to the computer in Thomas’s office and looked up Morgan House on the Internet, only to find it listed as the name of a professional poker player in Vegas, and a halfway home for pregnant teens in Utah. There was no inpatient facility anywhere by that name.