Leaving Time(115)

I smirked. “Considering I’m all she’s got.”

“No,” Gideon said. “I watch you, when you’re with her. You’re a good mother.”

I shrugged, waiting for the self-deprecating joke to come, but the words—the validation—meant too much to me. Instead, I heard myself say, “You’d be a good father, too.”

He picked up one of the dandelions Jenna had yanked out of the ground and stockpiled before she wandered over toward Maura. He carved a slit in its stem with his thumb and threaded a second through the first. “I sort of thought I would be one, by now.”

I pressed my lips together, because Grace’s secret wasn’t mine to give.

Gideon continued to string the weeds together. “Do you ever wonder if you fall for a person … or just the idea of her?”

What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe—either because he has been lost or because he has been found?

Gideon took the crown of daisies and slipped it over Jenna’s head. It tipped sideways on the knob of one pigtail, falling over her brow. In her sleep, she stirred.

“Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as falling in love. It’s just the fear of losing someone.”

There was a breeze, carrying the scent of wild apples and timothy grass; the earthy smell of elephant hide and manure; the juice of the peach that Jenna had eaten earlier, and that had dripped onto her sundress. “Do you worry?” Gideon asked. “About what will happen if he doesn’t come back?”

It was the first time, really, that we had talked about Thomas leaving. Although we had shared stories of how we met our spouses, that was where the conversation had stayed: at the highest peak of potential, at the moment in those relationships when everything still seemed possible.

Lifting my chin, I looked squarely at Gideon. “I worry about what will happen if he does,” I said.


It was colic. It was not uncommon in elephants, especially ones who had been given bad hay, or whose diet had been radically and quickly changed. Neither of those was the case for Syrah, but still she lay on her side, drowsy, bloated. She wouldn’t eat or drink. Her stomach growled. Gertie, the dog who was her constant companion, sat at her side and howled.

Grace was at my cottage, babysitting for Jenna. She’d stay there all night, so that we could watch over the elephant. Gideon had volunteered, but I was in charge now. There was no way I couldn’t be there, too.

We stood in the barn with our arms crossed, watching the vet examine the elephant. “He’s just going to tell us what we already know,” Gideon whispered to me.

“Yeah, and then he’s going to give her drugs to make her better.”

He shook his head. “What do you plan to pawn to pay his bill?”

Gideon was right about that. Money was so tight right now that we had to borrow from our operating expenses if we were going to cover the cost of emergencies, like this one. “I’ll figure it out,” I said, scowling.

We watched the vet give Syrah an anti-inflammatory—flunixin—and a muscle relaxant. Gertie curled up beside her in the hay, whimpering. “All we can really do is wait and hope she starts passing boluses,” he said. “In the meantime, get her to drink some water.”

But Syrah didn’t want to drink. Every time we came near her with a bucket, whether it was heated or cooled, she huffed and tried to turn her head away. After several hours of this, Gideon and I were both emotionally wrecked. Whatever the vet had administered did not seem to be working.

It is a pitiful thing, seeing such a strong and majestic animal laid low. It made me think of the elephants in the bush I’d seen who had been shot by villagers, or injured by snares. I knew, too, that colic wasn’t something to be taken lightly. It could lead to impaction, and that could lead to death. I knelt beside Syrah, palpating her, feeling the tightness of her abdomen. “Has this happened before?”

“Not to Syrah,” he said. “But it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.” He seemed to be chewing on a thought, equivocating. Then he looked at me. “Do you use baby oil on Jenna’s skin?”

“I used to put it in the bath,” I said. “Why?”

“Where is it?”

“If I still have any, it would be under the sink in the bathroom—”

He stood up and walked out of the barn. “Where are you going?” I called, but I couldn’t follow him. I wouldn’t leave Syrah.

Ten minutes later, Gideon returned. He was holding two bottles of baby oil and a Sara Lee pound cake I recognized from my own refrigerator. I followed him into the kitchen of the Asian barn, where we prepared meals for the elephants. He started to unwrap the cake’s packaging. “I’m not hungry,” I told him.