A Wolf Affair: Chapter 7

My mother’s bellowing from the bottom of the stairs for me to wake up came all too soon. As much as I would have liked to lay in bed for a while longer and fantasize that Kenton was in bed snuggling me, I had responsibilities to tend to. The horses would be expecting their morning feed and fresh water. I could be a few minutes late, but not a few hours.

I dragged myself out of bed and splashed cold water on my face to help rouse my body. The minty toothpaste that I used to brush the night scum from my teeth did wonders to help me feel fresh and functional. I quickly ran a brush through my wavy locks and pulled them into a smooth pony tail. Although, I doubted that it would stay smooth for long, at least it would start out that way.

“Did I hear you up in the middle of the night?” mom asked as I entered the kitchen.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I had a snack,” I said, quietly.

“Outside?” she asked.

“The moon was full. I wanted to look at it for a bit.”

She sounded frustrated when she asked, “Did you not heed any of our conversation?”

“Who were you talking to last night?” Josh asked as he bounded into the kitchen and grabbed a slice of buttered toast off the stack my mother had placed in the center of the table. “Are the eggs done?”

“What do you mean?” mom asked. “Talking to who?”

“You must have been dreaming, Josh. It was one o’clock in the morning. Who would I be speaking to at that hour?”

Panic filled me as I realized what I’d done. I’d allowed a perfect stranger to enter our house in the wee hours of the morning. Never mind my mother’s crazy werewolf claim. He could have been a serial killer, for all I knew. It could have been “In Cold Blood” all over again. I should have told the truth and faced the lecture that was sure to follow, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit what I’d done. Even more than that, I was afraid that, if I told her about Kenton’s odd tendency of walking in the night, she’d forbid me to see him.

“What’s up with the wolves around here?” Josh asked as he held his plate out for mom to scape some scrambled eggs onto it. “Scrambled? Really, mom? You know I prefer over easy.”

“Be happy you have something to eat,” she scolded. She was about to finish with, “There are children starving in Africa”, but Josh beat her to it. “Don’t be fresh, young man.”

He looked at me with a smirk and a gleam in his eye as he shoveled a forkful of fluffy eggs into his mouth; followed by an enormous bite of toast.

“Don’t be a pig,” I muttered with a wrinkled nose.

“Oink, oink,” he chuckled with his overstuffed mouth. Then, after a moment of silence while he forced the wad of food down his throat, he asked. “So, what’s up with the howling at night? Is it a full moon thing or have the wolves moved in and we’ll be serenaded nightly now?”

“It should stop in a day or two,” Mom said as she sat down and cradled her mug of coffee in her hands.

“So, is it a full moon thing?” he asked.

“Hap was here yesterday. They’re tracking the wolves,” I said. “They’ll probably move them out.”

“I like the wolves,” he pouted.

“Not if they’re roaming the woods, you don’t,” I said.

“I don’t hang out in those trees like a monkey,” he teased, “so it don’t matter to me.”

“Doesn’t,” mom corrected him.

“What?” he said with a twisted face.

“It doesn’t matter to you, not it don’t matter,” she said.

“Missy spends too much time alone in the woods anyway.” He turned to me and said, “If you’d stay out, maybe the wolves can stay.”

“Where am I supposed to ride, then?” I asked, challengingly. “I can’t very well ride the road. Roger’s too skittish for that.”

Josh shrugged. “You have that riding ring.”

I expelled air with frustration. “How would you like to be confined to running around a ring and never doing anything else?”

“There are trails in the reserve specifically for people to use and enjoy,” mom said as she scraped some scrambled eggs onto my plate. “I have no problem with your sister using them.” She looked directly at me. “All I ask is that you wait a few days and, then, keep an eye on the time.”

Josh gave me a hostile look. “Yeah, Missy. Wait a few days so that they can round up all of the wolves and remove them from their sanctuary. Then you and Roger can go prancing through the trees again.”

“That will do,” mom scolded.

The silence in the kitchen was thick enough to cut with a knife. I had a lot of things that I wanted to say, but none of them were good. I’d learned early in life to wait to speak my mind until my emotions were in check. Then, if the same speech was still on the tip of my tongue, I could say it with a calm demeanor.

Instead of being goaded into blurting out my angry thoughts, I ate my food in silence, put my plate and cup in the dishwasher, and excused myself to go tend to the horses.

When I reached the stables, I was surprised to find the door ajar. I was always very careful to lock it after I bed the horses down for the night. Had I been so distracted by meeting Kenton and the wolf howls that I’d forgotten? I couldn’t imagine being that careless, but, since there was no one else coming and going in the stables, I must have been just that.

Just to be on the safe side, I cautiously checked all of the nooks and crannies of the stable. I needed to make sure that there was no animal -like a wolf or a fox- hiding in there. Yet, I was terrified of finding one. The relief that flooded my body when I was certain that all was well was almost overwhelming.

In an effort to give Josh some responsibility, mom got a few chickens and rabbits for him to care for. I decided to venture to their shed to make sure all was well. I’d been up late the night before talking to Kenton and hadn’t heard a commotion like one would expect if a predator got into the chicken coup, but I thought I should investigate anyway.

I instantly regretted my decision to check things out when I saw the remains of a rabbit lying on the ground outside of the cage. No way did I have the stomach to clean it up. I would have to have my mother and brother figure that task out.

I stepped around the dead rabbit while shuddering with disgust and checked the lock on the enclosure. Everything was secure. Josh was going to have to see how the rabbit got out.

My brother was genuinely excited when mom informed him of his responsibility to tend to the chickens and the rabbits. He loved animals and even went so far as to ask her to add to the animal population by getting a cow and a goat. He had aspirations of becoming a vet one day. He liked my horses, but he had no desire to climb on their backs. He said that he preferred to enjoy them from the ground. I felt terrible about the fact that he’d have to be told that one of his animals was killed by a predator. It was a part of the natural order of things, but it was still awful.

For the first time, since I’d moved into great grandmother’s house, I questioned if I was cut out to be a country girl. It was proving to be far more difficult a lifestyle than urban living.