It wasn’t until Jenna tugged on my shorts and told me she was hungry that I realized hours had passed. I made her peanut butter and jelly, cutting the sandwich into squares just the right size for her hands. I took off the crusts, saving them in my pocket for Maura. And then I heard the sound of someone dying.
Grabbing Jenna, I started to run toward the African barn—where the sounds were coming from. I had a series of concussive, thunderous thoughts: Maura and Hester are fighting. Maura is injured. One of the elephants has hurt Grace.
One of the elephants has hurt Gideon.
I threw open the barn door to find Hester and Maura in their stalls, with the retractable bars that separated the two wide open. In this big expanse, they were frolicking, dancing, chortling in the artificial rain of the fire hose. As Gideon sprayed them, they turned in circles and squealed.
They weren’t dying. They were having the time of their lives.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, as Jenna kicked to get out of my arms. I set her on the ground, and she immediately began to jump in puddles on the cement.
Gideon grinned, waving the fire hose through the bars, back and forth. “Enrichment,” he said. “Look at Maura. Have you ever seen her acting crazy like this?”
He was right; Maura seemed to have lost all vestiges of grief. She was shaking her head and stomping in the spray, throwing her trunk up every time she sang out.
“Is the furnace fixed?” I asked. “And the oil changed in the ATV? Have you taken down the fence in the African enclosure or stumped the northwest field? Did you regrade the slope of the pond in the Asian enclosure?” It was a laundry list of all the things we needed to do.
Gideon twisted the nozzle of the hose, so that the water slowed to a trickle. The elephants trumpeted and turned, waiting for more. Hoping.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Jenna, honey, come on.” I started toward her, but she ran away from me, splashing in another puddle.
Gideon’s mouth flattened. “Hey, boss,” he said, and he waited for me to turn.
As soon as I did, he twisted the nozzle so that the spray hit me square in the chest.
It was frigid and shocking, so forceful that I staggered backward, pushing my sopping hair out of my face and looking down at my drenched clothing. Gideon angled the hose so that it struck the elephants instead. He grinned. “You need to chill out,” he said.
I lunged for the hose. He was bigger than me, but I was faster. I turned the spray on Gideon until he held his hands up in front of his face. “Okay!” He laughed, choking on the stream. “Okay! I give up!”
“You started it,” I reminded him, as his hands tried to wrestle the nozzle away from me. The hose wriggled like a snake between us, and we were faith healers, fighting for a moment of the divine. Slippery, soaked, Gideon finally managed to wrap his arms around me, trapping my hands between us so that the spray hit our feet and I couldn’t hold the nozzle anymore. It fell to the ground, swiveling in a semicircle before it came to rest, spraying a fountain toward the elephants.
I was laughing so hard I was out of breath. “Okay, you win. Let me go,” I gasped.
I was temporarily blinded; my hair was plastered to my face. Gideon pushed it away, so that I could see him smiling. His teeth, they were impossibly white. I couldn’t take my eyes off his mouth. “I don’t think so,” he said, and he kissed me.
The shock was even more intense than that first blast of the hose. I froze, for only a heartbeat. And then my arms were around his waist, my palms hot against the damp skin of his back. I ran my hands over the landscape of his arms, the valleys where the muscles joined together. I drank from him like I’d never seen a well this deep.
“Wet,” Jenna said. “Mama wet.”
She stood beneath us, one hand patting each of our legs. Until that moment, I had completely forgotten about her.
As if I didn’t have enough to be ashamed of.
For the second time, I ran away from Gideon as if my life were being threatened. Which, I guess, was the truth.
For the next two weeks I avoided Gideon, relaying messages instead through Grace or Nevvie, making sure I was not alone with him in a barn or enclosure at any time. I left him notes in the kitchens of the barns, lists of what needed to be done. Instead of meeting up with Gideon at the end of the day, I sat with Jenna on the floor of the cottage, playing with puzzles and blocks and stuffed animals.
One night, Gideon radioed from the hay barn. “Dr. Metcalf,” he said. “We have a situation.”
I could not remember the last time he had referred to me as Dr. Metcalf. Either this was a reaction to the coldness I’d been sending out in waves or there was a true and urgent problem. I settled Jenna between my legs on the ATV and drove past the Asian barn, where I knew Grace would be preparing the evening meals. “Can you watch her?” I asked. “Gideon said it was urgent.”