Teagan swallowed hard at the useless lump of relief that caught in his throat. Her presence here now didn’t mean anything, especially since he could see that her eyes were swollen from crying. He’d known she’d eventually come back for her things.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said inanely.
She nodded.
“I’m cleaning out the pool,” she said. “Have you put any chlorine in it recently?”
“A week ago,” Teagan replied. He waited. Darcy usually explained herself if he gave her time and space.
Darcy looked into the pool as though answers would be found there.
“I had to find somewhere to take the otters,” she said, voice very small and tired. “I... um... I took them from the zoo.”
She hadn’t come back for him. But he got to see her again, at least.
Near the back fence, Teagan could make out the large duffel bag she’d carried.
He could feel things tomorrow. He needed to focus.
“So you have how many—” She had a non-zero number of otters. It didn’t matter how many. “What do they need?”
He saw her throat bob before she spoke.
“Just some bedding and a way to get out of the pool, for now,” she said roughly. “I’ll get the leaves.”
Teagan nodded and went back in the house. He retrieved a pile of old towels from the linen closet and a large sheet of spare plywood from the garage. He got one of Darcy’s sweatshirts from the front closet.
When he went back outside, Darcy was sitting with her legs dangling into the now-clean water, her skirt hiked up over her knees. The lights in the water cast shifting patterns over her skin as she watched the three otter pups, now released from the bag, peer warily at the first stair.
“Will this work?” Teagan asked, putting the plywood over the stairs to provide a ramp. The otters scattered.
Darcy nodded as he laid the towels down in a makeshift bed.
“I got them some cat food on the way. They’ll be fine for a day or so,” she said.
Teagan gingerly approached her and offered her the sweatshirt. It was cold at night in September, especially just before dawn.
Darcy looked up at him, eyes wide and hurt. She clutched the sweatshirt to her chest. Wordlessly, she patted the ground next to her.
It took Teagan a few seconds to process that she wanted him to sit down. His head felt stuffed full of cotton balls, and the fuel of adrenaline and grief that had kept him awake was bound to run empty at some point very soon. But he carefully pulled off his socks and rolled up the sweats he’d changed into so that he could put his feet in the chilly water too.
It took her another few moments to speak. “I didn’t want you to think I didn’t have any choice but to come back here,” she said, voice tight. She sniffled and wiped her nose with an upward swipe of her palm. “But I couldn’t think of anything else to do with the otters.”
Teagan didn’t know what to say about that; you could get almost anything in New York at any hour, but otter habitat was probably pushing that aphorism to its breaking point.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead, because that would just about cover the entire field of what she might want to hear from him.
Darcy shook her head.
“Tonight really didn’t need otters on top of everything else, did it?” she said. “I didn’t think this through very well.” Her face was glum.
“I think—in light of everything else—the otters barely register,” Teagan sighed. “I probably owe you a few otters for your troubles.”
“We can’t keep them,” Darcy said. “I may have said I was a game warden. Well, not me exactly. I gave a fake name at the zoo.”
That sounded like a potential legal issue to be unraveled as quickly as possible, but Teagan could only wonder what she had meant bywe.
“It’s okay,” Teagan said dizzily. “I’ll call Mrs. Park tomorrow—I mean, later this morning. Her husband might be able to take them.”
