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The water trough is still full, and he’s already eaten, so I take my leave, knowing he’ll be fine.
He’s actually very content having his trailer and most of the barn area to roam.
Sadly, it’s more space than he ever had at Exotic Plains.
He was supposed to have a fenced-in exercise area outside most days, but the lions were using it every day since I’d started working there. Sam and Tilda were out there the most, a proud tawny lion couple.
Tilda had just given birth to a litter of two cubs a couple weeks before I left. Both female.
I worry how the babies are doing now.
Both Sam and Tilda were older lions, having lived in captivity their entire lives. I was afraid the pregnancy would be too much for Tilda, but she’d come through it like a tough mama.
Even so, they hadn’t been at the fake rescue for long.
Their papers said they’d arrived only a few months before I had, originating from a zoo somewhere down in the gulf. The place had a storm that flooded the lion’s habitat and they couldn’t raise enough money to fix it, so the pair were sent to North Dakota, where the Fosses conveniently had space.
According to the records, they were supposed to return to the zoo this winter.
I hope that still happens.
I hope we can shut that place down and send all the big cats to better homes, away from the filth and the torture that makes Niles and Priscilla disgustingly rich. Her vast designer wardrobe and his retirement home under endless construction in the Virgin Islands didn’t just materialize out of thin air.
A wave of guilt roils my stomach.
There are so many creatures at the rescue needing help. If only I’d had a small ark to take them all.
Not just Bruce, or Sam and Tilda and the other lions, or Churchill the poor MIA chimp.
The list is growing all the time. The Fosses keep importing animals and flipping them for reasons God only knows.
I have to figure out what’s going on, what to do before it’s too late to help any of them.
And I’d bet my life that those little blue stickers are still being attached to cages.
It feels like this constant nagging timer that’s always running—always running out for some unlucky creature.
With a sigh, I walk to the door and exit behind Grady and the girls. At his urging, they hurry toward the house while I wait for him to lock up.
“So did Faulk text you earlier?” I ask.
He nods, squaring his huge shoulders.
“We’ll talk after the girls are asleep.”
A shiver like an army of spiders flits up my neck, wondering if it’s good news or bad.
I can’t blame him for keeping it under wraps.
Even if the girls know about Bruce, they don’t need to know all the sordid, horrifying details of what we’re up against.
Instead of a movie, the girls decide they want to play a game before bed. They pick Yahtzee, and soon all four of us are sitting on pillows around the coffee table, trying to rack up points as we toss dice around the table.
The laughter, the teasing, the fun, is something I’ve been missing since long nights around campfires with Dad. And even that wasn’t quite like this.
Like a family or something.
Sawyer’s words from supper hit true. I’ve never had a family like this either.
When I was young, I always worried Dad would get married again. He’d find a new woman, maybe a woman with kids, and I’d have to learn to fit my lonely self into the patchwork of their lives.
Back then, it scared me. I liked having just the two of us around, but now, as an adult?
I wonder where those thoughts started.
I wonder why they freaked me out.
I wonder what I missed.
Even though Dad never dated seriously, it was never truly the two of us forever.
Nannies became a lovely, supportive third wheel in my life. When I got older, Dad took to calling them live-in housekeepers. He seemed to fear me getting too close, too confused by anyone, even the kind, energetic women and keepers who looked after me during the school year when I couldn’t join him on long trips.
And that’s not counting our travels. We always had good company in fellow researchers, professors so close they felt like kin, and eager-to-impress students on his team.
If his latest research excursion wasn’t finished by the end of summer, I came home on a plane with one of his team members, where our housekeeper was always waiting with a smile, a few soft words, and more cookies than any teenager should’ve had access to.
The lady we’d had the longest was Margo Carlson. Dad hired her on when I was in tenth grade, and she still works for him to this day, even though she just turned seventy-one her last birthday.
