“That could have been your cat, Gary.” Her voice shakes. “If I had arrived a minute later… That thing had Captain wrapped up in it, and it—it eats its prey whole—”
“Deb.” Gary’s voice is low and firm.
“Don’t ‘Deb’ me. I know what I saw.”
Maisie stands.
The chair scrapes back against the stone floor, and the sound cuts through Mrs. Pritchett’s rising voice like a blade through water.
“You saw him holding Captain,” Maisie says. Her voice is hoarse from sleep, rougher than usual, and there’s an edge to it I haven’t heard before. “He’d been holding that cat for minutes before you showed up.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s mouth opens, but Maisie keeps going.
“If Oz wanted to hurt Captain, he could have done it in the first ten seconds.” She takes a step toward Mrs. Pritchett, and the older woman retreats halfa pace, her hand dropping to the table. “Instead, Captain is alive because Oz found him and kept him safe.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s jaw tightens. “It doesn’t change what it is, Maisie.”
Maisie turns to the cell, to me, and something in her expression shifts. Then she faces Mrs. Pritchett again.
“Those bars can’t hold him.” She gestures at the iron, the rust, the gaps between the metal and the sandstone. “He’s stayed because he’s choosing to stay. Because he knows leaving would make everything worse. He’s been cooperating since the moment you showed up with your clothesline, Mrs. Pritchett. You’re scared. I understand. But you’re scared of the wrong thing.”
The room goes quiet.
The fly has landed on the windowsill.
The morning light stretches longer across the floor.
Gary looks at me. His expression is still unreadable, but something in his posture has shifted.
Mrs. Pritchett’s face works through several expressions before settling on something between indignation and uncertainty.
Her mouth opens, closes, opens again.
Then the jailhouse door bangs open hard enough to crack against the sandstone wall.
Gram stands in the doorway, her gray hair pinned up in a knot, her eyes sweeping across the room in a single efficient pass.
She takes in the cell, the bars, me in the corner, Maisie on her feet, Mrs. Pritchett rigid by the table, Gary and the cat.
She processes all of it in less than a second.
Her gaze lands on Mrs. Pritchett.
“Someone explain why my granddaughter spent the night in a jailhouse and I’m only just hearing about it now.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s hands find the table edge, grip it, release. “We caught it on the ridge. This monster. It had Captain. It… Well, I thought it was going to eat the poor cat.”
Gram’s gaze moves past Gary, past Maisie, past the bars.
It lands on me.
Her eyes are pale and sharp, the same shape as Maisie’s but with sixty more years behind them.
She holds my gaze for a long moment.
I brace for the fear.
For the flinch, the recoil, the sharp intake of breath that accompanies recognition of what I am.
