Page 12 of The Devil Knows Her Name

She held out a crate of whitetail milk replacer. “I don’t have any other use for it.”

“Oh, thanks. I appreciate it.”

She shrugged, and made a vague gesture in the direction Broder’s car had gone. “Well, thank you. I guess I didn’t realize I could get in trouble for this.”

“That’s understandable, a lot of people don’t. Do you want updates on her?”

“Um, no. That’s okay.”

“All right,” I said awkwardly. “I’ll take good care of her.”

“Okay,” was all she said, and I went home.

I didn’t process a single turn I made on the way back. My mind was wrapped around the bandages on Sarah’s fingers, the long rip in Broder’s sleeve, the impossibility of the fawn’s guilt, the fact that Sarah lied and I lied regardless. If the fawn had not bitten, and if she could not break skin if she tried, why had we lied?

The cold, rational part of me that I relied upon to do this job said that something wasn’t right here, and if I really wanted to uphold the spirit of my calling and not just the letter, I would test the fawn for rabies.

I was still thinking it as I parked the truck and went around back to the crate, but when I opened the door, the sight of her cracked the armor plating around my heart. Yes, I saw a lot of death in this line of work, and I was accustomed to the brutality of predator versus prey, but I was not a machine. There was nothing so innocent or so pitiable as a fawn, and looking at her curled, helpless form inside the metal crate, I remembered why I began the sanctuary in the first place.

I’m not going to kill her, I thought, and I throttled the voice that said otherwise.

I took her to the barn and set her up in the intake pen while I made a bottle. No sooner had I placed it in the holder than she latched on, pulling at it so vigorously that milk spilled over her chin. I took her temperature, checked her for parasites, felt all over for injuries, and tried to figure out what could be causing that stink. I half expected to find a vestigial limb on her, necrotic and rancid, but the closest thing I found was her umbilical scab, which meant she was less than a week old. She was in perfect health.

I pondered what to do. Naturally, Mac wasn’t nursing at the moment, but she was a good mother, reliable as a Swiss watch, and if there was any doe who would take a fawn out of season, it would be her. There wasn’t enough time for the fawn to put on the kind of weight she’d need going into winter no matter how many feedings I did each day, but I could supplement more heavily this year, maybe even open up the back of the barn so they could shelter—

The bottle gurgled as it ran dry, and I grabbed it from its holder before the fawn could suck down a bunch of air. She looked up at me, blinking her deep chocolate eyes and licking her lips with a small pink tongue, and a long-dormant part of me reared up and said mine.

“Come on,” I told her, scooping her up again. “I think we should introduce you to Mac, for my sake as much as yours.”

Mac was more or less right where I’d left her, and she lifted her head to watch my progress across the meadow. As we got close, her nostrils began to flare, taking in the scent. I hesitated briefly, wondering if I should’ve bathed the fawn first. Normally, it would’ve been the worst course of action, stripping her of the very thing that would identify her as a baby to other deer and replacing it with artificial chemicals, but I wasn’t sure what Mac would make of this smell.

I stopped a few yards short of the doe and set the fawn down, letting her decide what she wanted to do with her legs; some fawns, especially if they were hungry, would go right up to a doe, while others would simply curl into a ball and wait. Despite having just eaten, the fawn did the former, closing in on Mac until their outstretched noses were inches apart.

Mac went very still.

In the natural world, freezing was never a good sign. It was always the precursor to flight or attack, but I was trying to allow for some uncertainty. This was a strange-smelling baby at the wrong time of year, and I expected Mac to have her doubts.

“Easy now,” I said, edging closer, keeping my voice soft and almost singsong. “Everybody’s good here.”

The strike came between one heartbeat and another. Mac lashed out, hoof whistling so close to the fawn’s head that it bent her ear, then slammed into her tiny shoulder. The fawn collapsed like papier-mâché.

“Mac!” I screamed.

The sound was so harsh and so loud that it tore my throat on its way out, echoing until I imagined Paul could hear it on the other hill. I’d never raised my voice in the sanctuary before, and certainly never at Mac. Even so, she wound up for another strike until I lunged forward over the fawn’s crumpled body, my hands outstretched like the claws of a predator. Mac bolted then, strides short and uneven from her lame hip, her white tail flicked to the sky as a warning.

“Oh fuck, what a mess,” I whispered, half to myself and half to the fawn. She was breathing hard and fast as I bent over her, eyes wide. She’d fallen on the side that was struck, so I had to move her to examine it, and she bleated painfully as I slid my hands beneath her, the first sound she’d made. Guilt splintered my heart.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” I murmured, even though she certainly wasn’t. I palpated the area as gently as I could, her little sides heaving against the support of my arms. There was no obvious break, no shards of bone poking against her skin, but I had to assume it was at least fractured.

Picking her up and taking her inside, I bypassed the rehab room altogether and set up a makeshift observation area in the living room. Assuming the shock of the attack didn’t send her into a lethal downward spiral, she’d need to be fed six times a day anyway, and I’d rather have her where I could see her.

After I settled her limp form on an old dog bed, I checked her more thoroughly for other injuries, remembering how close Mac’s hoof came to her head. I didn’t see any, but as I passed my hand over her muzzle, I felt something that wasn’t quite right—a slight difference in the jaw that didn’t match with my muscle memory of handling dozens of other fawns.

Sliding my thumb over the seam of her mouth, I lifted her lip and found a full row of grooved, bone-white teeth.

Chapter

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