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“Oh man, that’s just an opossum,” Wade says dismissively.
I can’t help the snarky comments that come out when I’m panicked, and nobody takes the situation seriously. “Just an opossum? Is that anything like just getting a rabies shot?”
Wade throws his head back and laughs. “It’s not like it’s gonna bite you, baby. It’s a freaking opossum.”
“How do we know it’s not rabid?”
“Because it doesn’t look rabid to me.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
On that point, he’s right. Wade grew up in Gold Hill when it used to be a tiny, rural town. His grandparents raised horses, and Wade used to set up homes in their barn for every stray animal that showed up. At one time, he used to want to be a veterinarian. He knows a heck of a lot more about wildlife than I do.
From my perch on the back of the sofa, I spy the lumps on its back that I’d thought were ridges. It’s then that I recognize what they actually are.
And I burst into tears.
ChapterEleven
Wade
Presley is bawling and pointing at the beady-eyed bane of my existence.
I come closer to it and finally see what she sees.
Perched sideways along the opossum’s back are five tiny baby opossums, and I register five little sets of eyes staring back at me, along with its mother.
“Oh, sorry, girl. I didn’t know,” I say, setting down the fireplace poker and pointlessly showing my empty palms to the clacking, hissing mother opossum.
“Y-you were going to kill it!” Presley sobs, cowering at the end of the sofa, hugging a cushion to her chest.
“I wasn’t going to hurt it, baby; I was gonna use the poker to guide it out the door,” I insist truthfully.
She sucks in a shuddering breath. “B-but it thinks you’re gonna come after it with a weapon.”
I turn to her, keeping myself between Presley and the little furry family. “Its brain is the size of a peanut. It’s not capable of that level of complexity.”
“Then why is she yelling at you?”
“It—she’s not yelling at me,” I say, a little too defensively.
My wife smiles. “It sounds like your aunt on Thanksgiving when you experimented with the sweet potato pie recipe.”
We both laugh, and I have to shake my head because it’s the truth. Mental note: don’t try new things in the kitchen on holidays.
There’s something strangely sweet about this agitated mother opossum hunkered down in the corner of our cabin.
And it’s also pretty entertaining, the way its mouth opens up so wide as it shrieks at me.
“It’s protecting its young at all costs. It doesn’t understand anything else,” I explain. “Just like I’d do anything to protect you, baby.”
Presley slowly blinks at me. “I know you would.”
“And I swear I would never hurt a wild animal,” I say.
Presley nods, and her frown turns into a pout.
