Chapter Twelve

We ate the last of the quiche for lunch. He was a very ill-prepared B and B host, apparently. If you're going to invite someone to stay with you for the duration of a storm, you should at least provide the appropriate amount of quiche.

We hadn't spoken since ... whatever it was, in the front yard. Not even a fight. We weren't friendly enough to fight. He reheated the last two pieces of quiche and just sort of left one out for me, which I just sort of acquired and ate lukewarm after he'd vacated the kitchen.

The cabin was beginning to feel a bit like jail. Alcatraz. Only instead of there being choppy frigid water waiting to drown me all around, there was snow. Snow and snow and more freaking snow.

I was restless. You'd think after all the shoveling and all the wood-carrying, my body would be too damn sore to be restless, but it wasn't. My overall physical experience was some mix of caffeine-withdrawal achy and anxiety jitters. I even attempted to do actual yoga for about three minutes, or what I vaguely remembered from the couple of hot yoga classes I'd taken because I thought the instructor was a very different kind of hot. (He turned out to be straight, which didn't seem fair. If you're sexy, lithe, masculine, and a yoga instructor, aren't you obligated to be queer? I guess it was nice the het dudes had the option, but did het dudes really need more freaking options? Couldn't they leave the yoga jobs to us?)

Three minutes of poorly remembered yoga did not help my restlessness, so I found myself again donning the still-damp coat and old boots and going out onto the porch. Maybe I could just watch it snow for a while. That might be calming.

It might have been, from inside, with a cup of hot cocoa. But actually standing near snow was cold. So I started ... can you pace in snow? I started aimlessly wandering around Orion's yard. First in our footsteps, which were crunchy anew with fresh snow. Then I got more brave and crunched over to my car, now well and truly snowed in up to its windows, which I could only tell were there from swiping across them with my gloves.

Which was when I heard ... something.

My heart stopped and I froze in place. I would not be a fighter or a flighter. If I suddenly saw a bear, I'd just stand there like a dumbass until it ate me. Whatever it is that makes some people run and other people attack? I don't have that thing.

So I stood there very still and didn't hear it again. I'd made it up. Probably. Right?

Except then it came again, and this time, primed for it, I realized it did not sound like a predator at all. This sounded like a whimper. My first bizarre thought was that it sounded like a baby, which was weird because aside from the occasional screaming kid on a plane or in a grocery store, I didn't really know what babies sounded like. But this tiny, somehow ragged sound made my brain think Someone pick up that baby, it's sad .

But babies aren't exactly famous for their rollicking adventures in blizzards, which meant this was probably not a baby. Uhh.

Maybe I was imagining it. I took a step into the deepest part of the snow next to my car, toward the place where it had intersected in an unfortunate way with Orion's detached garage, and I heard it again.

Definitely a whimper.

What the hell? Another step, the snow was up to my crotch, but I heard it again. Even as my jeans started to really soak through, I moved forward, edging in to where one of the doors had bent in at the point of impact and sort of flipped out at the bottom, where the elderly-looking hinge had just pulled apart from the frame.

Something was crying . And I was now pretty sure it was in the garage.

"Hello?" I said, keeping my voice low.

The whimper stopped. I didn't say anything. The whimper came again. Was it more urgent now, or was I just imagining that?

"I won't hurt you," I assured the crying creature. Not a child. But what? A kitten?

I got in really close to the building, where the eave had protected the ground from the snow, and sort of crouched down, trying to see inside where the door had kind of created a triangular opening. "Anyone in there?"

Movement, but I couldn't see anything, only blackness.

"If you're in there, you gotta come closer," I said, feeling kind of ridiculous, since whatever was in there wasn't likely to understand human language.

Unless—

Shit.

Could it be a person?

I nearly skittered away back into the snow, but I got myself under control pretty quickly. For one, the hole—the numerous gaps—created by me reversing into the garage were really not that big. A precocious five-year-old could have probably found a way inside, but not a grown-up. And someone that old would be talking. And someone younger than that ... like, not to be all true crime podcast on you, but someone younger would have frozen to death, right?

The whimpering didn't really sound human. I didn't think. Even without knowing much about babies, now that I'd heard it a few times, I didn't think it was a baby.

I made some kissy noises and was rewarded with another movement in the dark. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said to the crying critter. What the hell was in the garage? Shit, had I hit it somehow? Like, was it living in there when I backed into the door? Surely not. Orion didn't have animals living in his garage with his precious Princess.

The image of some bleeding, suffering animal just lying there for two days was almost too fucked to consider, but no, we'd been out doing firewood stuff. If it had been whimpering, we'd have heard it.

I knelt down, and I'd thought my legs were numb, but apparently they weren't, because now I could feel the wet, cold, hard snow beneath my knees. "Hey there. I don't know who you are. Squirrel? Cat? Uhh, skunk? Do skunks live around here? I've never seen a skunk. If you are a skunk, please don't spray me. I'm trying to be a really good guest, and smelling like skunk spray would not really be in keeping with my goals. Maybe you're pregnant? Are you trying to find a place to have your litter of ... uhh, I don't know, raccoons? Puppies? Kittens?"

Another movement from within. This time I thought it was coming closer.

"That's right. Whatever you are. Do you need a blanket or something?"

I reached out one snow-gloved hand, and the whimpering beast lurched away again.

"Sorry, sorry." Oops. I pulled back. "Didn't realize how aggro that would look from your perspective. I'll just sit here a bit, shall I? Just hang out in the ice puddle I'm kind of manufacturing." What if it was feral? I guessed that even if it was feral, it was still more than capable of freezing to death.

I shifted a bit to take the pressure off my knees. Which was when I became aware that Orion was standing on his front porch. Watching me.

Sure. Just me, your uninvited, most detested guest, chilling out in the snow talking to your garage. "I think there's something in there," I called, trying to keep my voice relatively unthreatening.

A whimper from within. Orion was frowning at me, but as I looked, he reached back inside and grabbed his coat.

Great. He was probably some kind of mammal whisperer as well. It'd probably be an injured beast and it would eat out of his hand and he'd set its broken leg and return it to health, and somewhere along the lines I'd get too close and it would bite me and give me rabies or something.

He clomped over, not speaking.

I waited for the thing to whimper again, or at least move. Nothing.

Orion stood towering over me, unimpressed.

Damn. "Hey, I know you're in there. Can you do me a favor and make a noise or something?"

More nothing.

He stamped his boots, shaking snow off, and the thing in the garage scrambled.

"Did you hear it?" I demanded.

This time he frowned and bent over, looking through the hole into the darkness. "I heard something. Maybe."

"It was whimpering before. That's why I walked over here in the first place. I think it's hurt or something."

"It's probably a wild animal just trying to find shelter."

"Don't they usually have shelter of their own? Like, is your garage a regular hostel for wild animals?"

He didn't answer, but I thought he'd taken my point. He crouched. "If you're in there and you're domesticated, why don't you come out so we can see you? We could probably even scare up some food."

"We have like seventy-five cans of tuna," I added helpfully.

"I don't think it knows what canned tuna is," Orion said.

"Oh, but it's all up on the human domestication of animals?"

He didn't say anything.

We stayed like that for a bit.

The creature, whatever it was, whimpered, and I know it's projection, but it sounded almost experimental. If I make this sound, what will you do?

"Hey there," I said, trying to cram as much unthreatening into my tone as possible. "You can come closer. We won't hurt you."

"What if it tries to hurt us?"

"Does it sound like it's trying to hurt us?"

"Animals in pain aren't always predictable."

I looked over at him, wondering if he had ever thought of himself as an animal in pain. I definitely owned that description sometimes. A few choice moments feeling hopeless in various bedrooms (and bathrooms when I had roommates) came to mind. Even thinking about that didn't give me any insight into how to reach our new uninvited guest. And I wasn't brave enough to ask Orion.

As if he could feel my scrutiny and didn't like it, he rose. "I'll get a can of tuna. It should smell strongly enough to entice whatever that is out into the open."

I was pretty sure that had sorta been my idea, but I let him have the creativity points and went back to talking softly to Whimperer. It didn't come close enough for me to see it, but I did sense it moving nearer when it moved at all.

It skittered away again when Orion came back out with a topless can of tuna, but by then I was beginning to think we'd have to just leave the tuna and check back later. This thing was freaked out.

He settled the can inside the garage, but where we could still see it.

Movement, but nothing came out.

Orion sighed, pulled off a glove, and pinched out some bits, which he tossed into the darkness. "Princess is not going to like it if she smells like moldy tuna after this," he said to no one in particular.

But it worked. At least, it seemed to work. "That's it," I said, barely breathing as something moved closer, then darted away again. "Can you get it at the edge of that darker part so we can see?"

"I'm not a frigging pitcher," he grumbled, but he tried again. This time he tossed enough bits of tuna to make a rough trail to the can.

It was a dog . A tiny little dog. A very hungry little dog.

"Holy shit," I whispered.

"It's only got one eye."

"What's wrong with its back leg?"

Orion reached out to toss more tuna, and the dog scrabbled back into the blackness. But it came out again almost immediately when Orion stopped moving.

"My thighs are cramping," he mumbled aside from his low squat. "I'm out of shape."

"Could have fooled me," I mumbled back, not looking over. "I have no feeling in my legs."

"Because you're kneeling in snow ."

"Thanks for the update."

This time the dog came out, tentatively, eyeing us as well as he could while also scarfing up the trail of tuna and starting in on the can.

"You think we should grab him?" I asked.

"Not sure how. He's just going to run back in there, and neither one of us is small enough to follow him."

I, however, had watched a lot of YouTube dog-rescue videos. I reached out, scaring the dog away again, and pulled the tuna can toward me. Then I yanked off my glove, tossed a couple of pieces where they'd landed before, and put a bigger chunk on my hand and held it out roughly where the can had been.

"Really don't think that's going to work," Orion observed.

"It works on YouTube."

He snorted.

And okay, it didn't work right away. I had to toss a lot more of the tuna to get the dog to come closer again, and at first when it grabbed food from my hand, it ran back into the dark to eat it. Orion went in and brought out a second can of tuna. Then we waited. I pulled the sleeve of the coat down as low as it would go and left the tuna on my outstretched fingers.

All I could hear were Orion's breaths and the occasional movements of the tiny one-eyed dog. The next time Orion went inside, he came back out with a thick rug and a fluffy towel, which I thought was for me, but he didn't offer it over. He did make me move so he could put the rug down where I'd been kneeling. (It was one of those really nice bathroom runners with a rubber bottom for grip, which at least would keep out the melting snow. Probably.)

Then we were kneeling there together, trying to coax a tiny dog out from inside a freezing garage while the snow began to pick up again. And this time it brought with it the wind.

Still the dog would not come out far enough for us to grab him.

"It's getting dark," Orion said finally. "And we've been out here for almost three hours."

Which explained why my body felt like tenderized meat in a walk-in freezer. "Shit. Really?"

"Yeah." He looked up at the sky. "If we're bringing him in, we gotta do it soon."

"And if we can't?"

He turned toward the garage. "I don't know. It's only going to get colder, and I just cleaned this whole thing out—there aren't even boxes full of crap in there anymore for him to tunnel into."

I swallowed and also contemplated the darkness. "You think he'll freeze?"

Orion didn't reply.

"Maybe I can crawl in," I said, unzipping the coat.

"You'll get stuck, and I'll have to pull you out."

"I won't." Though I wasn't at all sure about that.

"Wait. I have another idea." He leaned around me to look at the damage the car had done. "Do you think there's another way out?"

"Uhh, maybe on the other side? But if there is, it seems snowed in, since there isn't any light coming in."

"Okay." He stood up. "Get ready to catch him. I'm gonna go around and make some noise."

"You'll terrify him to death!"

He shrugged. "At least it'll be faster than freezing. And I don't think I will. He knows there's food this way. I think he'll run for it, and then you can catch him." He tossed me the towel.

"Great." I flexed my legs as well as I could and readied myself to be a human wall.

It took roughly seven years for Orion to make it around the garage. The eaves on the sides barely existed, so the snow had piled up against the wall, and he actually had to kind of swing out wide in order to walk back in our steps and go around it.

And all the while I was kneeling upright with a can of tuna between my legs and an outstretched towel.

Then he started pounding on walls, and even as prepared as I thought I was, I almost missed the dog, who shot out like he was about to be eaten, which for all he knew, he was.

I dove after him, pinned him against the snow, then scooped him up with the towel and shouted, "I got him! I got him!" To the dog, shaking, remaining eye white and terrified, I said, "Hey, it's okay, you're okay, everything's okay. Come on, buddy, you're okay now."

Orion came around the garage at a pace that belied his shruggy who-gives-a-fuck-if-the-dog-freezes energy of a few minutes before. "Are you gonna bring him inside?"

In fact, I was struggling with that very question. The answer should have been Yes . Except I realized that I couldn't get to my feet.

"I, um, need a hand up," I said, feeling really dumb and also just so tired. Tired of everything being difficult. Tired of the weather trying so hard to kill me (and tiny little one-eyed dogs).

"You ... need me to take that five-pound dog? Is he too heavy for you?"

"No, asshole, I need you to help me stand up because I've been kneeling in the snow for three hours and I can't get my legs to work."

He laughed. Literally laughed. "Oh, sorry." He was not, in fact, sorry.

Still, I clutched the dog to my chest inside the coat since I'd already half unzipped when I was about to army-crawl into the garage, and Orion gripped both of my coat shoulders and lifted me to my feet.

On which I tottered like freaking Bambi for an embarrassingly long time while the pins and needles warred with the thawing skin to cause me the most pain. "Oh fuck," I managed. "Ow, ow, ow."

The dog, whose day was, hard as it seemed, even worse than mine, trembled against me.

And Orion Broderick held me up. Again.