Page 39

A month had passed since the night the storm changed everything.

The days that followed had not arrived in the tidy, measured way the calendar suggested they would.

They had dragged, twisted, folded into each other, like time itself was grieving too.

Sometimes the light came in warm and sure, falling through the windows of the sanctuary like old memory.

Other times, the hours passed in muted gray, everything shrouded in that strange silence that follows death, when even nature dares not make a sound, as if it knows a soul has gone.

Autumn had crept in slowly, hesitant, reverent.

The birches along the southern trail had just begun to yellow, their golden leaves fluttering like quiet applause with each breeze.

Mornings were cool now, sharp with the bite of frost clinging to the grass, and nights descended earlier, with stars slipping into view like small, watchful eyes.

The sanctuary carried it all, the ache, the hush, the ache again. It had always been a place built from survival, but never had its walls felt so fragile. Never had the woods felt so empty.

Natalie stood on the porch of the main lodge, her body still learning its shape again after childbirth, her arms wrapped around the warm bundle of her daughter.

Livvy slept nestled against her chest in the sling Mason had sewn by hand before she was born, a simple thing, stitched with care and lined with soft wool.

Her tiny breaths puffed in and out, a rhythm as steady as the turning earth.

One fist had uncurled in sleep and now rested against Natalie’s skin like a promise.

Natalie had not stopped crying for more than a day at a time.

The tears came softly, like fog in the valley, unannounced, weightless.

Sometimes it was Livvy’s smell that did it, that perfect, earthy newness that Olivia never got to breathe in.

Sometimes it was the porch stairs, where Olivia used to sit with her tea at sunrise, or the sound of the screen door creaking, always that creak, like it was still waiting for her hand.

There was grief in everything. Even in beauty.

Especially in beauty. It had only taken a few hours after Livvy’s birth for the storm to shift.

Mason had stood in the hospital room, tears still drying on his face from the awe of watching his daughter come into the world, when the call came. And after that, time fractured.

Natalie remembered every second of Mason’s voice breaking as he told her Olivia had been on the mountain. She remembered Davey’s face when he stood at the window and whispered, “She was supposed to come back.”

But Olivia hadn’t. Her body had eventually been found, but her soul, her absence was a hole greater than anything anyone could contemplate.

Now, the sanctuary was trying to remember how to breathe without her.

The wolves knew. Of course they did. Ash had started howling again at sunset, a long, keening sound that shattered Natalie’s heart every time it rose across the trees.

The hawks had been restless too, their cries more frequent, more fractured.

Even the horses, those usually steady and stubborn creatures, had taken to pacing their enclosures in the morning.

Grief had a language. And every animal knew how to speak it.

The porch door opened behind her. Mason stepped out, two mugs of tea in his hands. His movements were slow, like someone walking through thick water. He hadn’t said much in the last few weeks, not because he didn’t want to speak, but because he hadn’t yet figured out how to say the things he felt.

He handed her the tea, his fingers brushing hers in that familiar way.

“She slept okay last night,” he said, his voice quiet as wind in the trees.

Natalie nodded. “She woke up around two, but I got her back down.”

“She’s a good baby.”

“She is.”

He stood beside her, and they looked out together.

Down below, the volunteers moved slowly across the field, laying fresh straw in the goat pens, checking the locks on the bird enclosures.

They didn’t talk much anymore either. Their grief had fallen into them like snow, light at first, but layering, quiet, cold.

Natalie turned to Mason. “I think we should plan the service.”

He nodded, eyes still fixed on the treeline. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted anything big.”

“No. Just honest.”

“I thought maybe the old clearing,” she said. “The one near the ridge where she released that hawk in the spring.”

Mason smiled, but his eyes glistened. “She loved that spot.”

Natalie paused, then whispered, “She called it the in-between. Not forest. Not field. Just a place to let go. ”

Mason took a breath so deep it shook him. “Then that’s where we’ll say goodbye.”

They fell into silence again, and Natalie leaned her head on his shoulder, her body aching in ways deeper than recovery. Livvy shifted softly against her chest.

Inside the house, Davey moved around the kitchen, packing feed, stacking bins.

His movements were methodical. Focused. He hadn’t spoken Olivia’s name aloud in days.

But every night, Natalie saw him sit outside by the wolf enclosure, back straight, hands in his pockets, staring into the dark as Ash howled to the sky.

She knew he was waiting. Waiting to feel her somewhere in the trees.

And she also knew the sound of Livvy’s soft cries were what pulled him back inside.

Later, when Mason went to bring in the horses, and the sky turned the color of ash and rose, Natalie rocked Livvy on the porch swing and whispered stories about the woman her daughter was named for.

“She was the kind of brave you don’t see in books,” she said. “She didn’t wear armor. She wore calluses and grit and a grin that could cut through a storm.”

Livvy sighed in her sleep.

“She taught us to listen,” Natalie went on, voice cracking. “Not just to the animals, but to the things we’re most afraid of. And she loved this place so much that it became her, bark and bone and breath.”

A tear slipped down her cheek.

“But she would’ve loved you most of all.”

And in that moment, with the trees rustling their answer, and the sun dipping behind the mountains, Natalie swore she felt Olivia’s hand in the wind. Not gone. Not really. Just scattered into everything .

The house had been quiet all morning. Grief, by then, had softened its grip just enough to allow space for preparation, quiet hands folding sweaters into drawers, boots lined neatly by the door, Livvy swaddled in soft cream wool and sleeping deeply against Natalie’s chest. Her tiny mouth opened in a dream, her fist curled at her mother’s collarbone.

Inside, the four of them had moved in silence.

There had been no rush. No spoken urgency. Just a shared understanding that today was a threshold. A bridge between before and after. And nothing, not the clearing skies or the cooling wind or the baby’s gentle coos could stop the ache in their bones that today was the day they would say goodbye.

Natalie had dressed in a long gray coat that had once belonged to Olivia, worn wool that still smelled faintly of cedar and wind.

It was too big in the shoulders and short at the wrist, but she wore it anyway, buttoned carefully around Livvy’s sling.

A shawl wrapped around her throat, and a locket rested against her heart.

Mason wore his cleanest flannel and boots Olivia had once teased him for polishing. Davey had combed his hair with effort and stood in the hallway with his shoulders squared and his grief like armor.

“Ready?” Mason asked, his voice rough with restraint.

Natalie nodded. Davey reached for the door. And when he opened it the world stood waiting. The porch steps opened not onto solitude, not onto fog or fallen leaves, but onto rows and rows of people. The entire community had come.

They stood in clusters, shoulders close, hats in hands, coats zipped tight against the wind. Children held the leashes of shaggy dogs. One girl had a tabby cat curled in her coat. An older man stood with a hawk perched calmly on his thick glove, eyes sharp as the mountain.

Farmers, teachers, shopkeepers. The wildlife vet from the next county. The postal clerk who’d cried when he learned the news. Volunteers, interns, and neighbors who had once brought Olivia preserves in the summer, now here with offerings of silence and reverence.

And at the front of them all stood a simple wooden coffin draped in pine boughs, mountain laurel, and bundles of dried lavender.

No one spoke. But when Natalie stepped onto the porch, Livvy against her chest, Mason and Davey at her side, the crowd clapped.

Not loudly. Not the kind of applause meant for celebration.

It was soft. A slow, swelling sound, hands meeting hands in a rhythm that said: We see your pain. We loved her too. We are with you.

Natalie’s throat closed. She blinked fast, but the tears came anyway.

Mason stepped beside her and took her hand.

Davey placed a palm gently on her back. And Livvy, as if she understood, let out a tiny, breathy sigh against Natalie’s heart.

Together, they descended the porch steps.

The path from the lodge to the church at the edge of town had been cleared of leaves.

Along it, volunteers had placed lanterns, small glowing orbs that flickered in the morning wind.

And then the procession began. The coffin was lifted gently by four of the sanctuary’s longest-serving hands. Two women and two men, their eyes rimmed red but their strides steady. They led the way through the trees, and behind them walked Mason, Natalie, Davey, and Livvy. Then the rest.

A slow river of footsteps, hushed murmurs, the occasional cry of a hawk above. Dogs walked without barking. Children walked without asking questions. The forest, too, was silent. The trees stood tall and listening. The sanctuary watched.

And Olivia, if she was anywhere at all, was in every rustle of pine, in every paw print pressed into the trail. She was in the way the animals moved, the way the wind curved around the people she’d protected, healed, loved.

As they neared the church, the sun broke through the clouds, casting long beams of light across the procession.

And Natalie, heart full and shattered, whispered to her daughter, “This is your village, Livvy. This is who we are. Because of her.”

And Livvy stirred against her, a hand slipping free of the sling, fingers curling toward the light.