A giggle bursts out of me again, totally noticing how he tries to throw the ambrosia word back in my face.
Guess I’m not the only one at this table who can dredge up ten-dollar words.
“Willow, you’ve been to Africa?” Sawyer asks between bites of her fries, still awed by my very presence.
“I sure have, sweet girl. Lots of times...”
So begins a new rapid-fire conversation with the girls.
I tell them about the big parks with their roaring waterfalls, the wild flights on burping planes that always landed hard on rainy airstrips tucked in lush jungle, the unholy swarms of mosquitoes in the interior, and the endless visits with the friendly, big-hearted people we’d meet from Nairobi to Kinshasa to Port Elizabeth.
Grady’s phone goes off while I’m answering another hundred and one questions.
The way he frowns and then tucks his phone back into his pocket pretty fast makes me think it might be a message from Faulk, or someone else involved in cleaning up my mess.
Later, Grady picks up our tab, and as we climb out of the booth, he presses his face so close I can feel his whisper on my neck. “Hold tight. I’ll tell you the latest when we get home.”
“Faulkner?” I mouth back.
He gives me a knowing look and barely-there nod.
My insides tighten, but I try not to panic. The girls make that a little easier on the ride back, hammering me with their bottomless appetite for more adventure stories.
They want to know about all the different animals I’ve worked with and the places I’ve been.
Grady asks questions as well, which I don’t mind one bit.
It’s easy for me to forget how unique my life has been. When you’ve spent half your youth on unpaved roads tracking rhinos with your father and tensing like a stone during rare brushes with poachers, it’s just normal.
Not to Grady and his girls, though.
To them, my life is interesting, intense, and admirable.
In my teen years, I’d travel with Dad all summer, dipping out of Africa for other rhino habitats like India and Indonesia. We’d stay in fancy hotels or soaring castle-like homes generously opened up by wildlife donors. Other times, we had to pitch our own tents and hope we didn’t get eaten by a wild beast in the middle of the night.
“Oh, Willow! Were you scared?” Avery whispers, biting her bottom lip with kitten-like eyes.
I throw back an easy smile.
“I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale if anything bad ever happened. But there was this brush with a herd of forest elephants once in the Congo Basin...they came trampling through our camp, spooked by a Jeep. This huge elephant reared up right in front of me when we came stumbling out of our tents. Dad barely threw me out of the way in time, right before the animal turned at the last second and decided not to run over him.”
The girls are speechless.
Grady gives me a look like granite, a single dark eyebrow raised. “Nice knowing you’ve made it through some close calls before,” he says.
I love how he implies I might make it through one more.
“Yeah. Let’s hope I have nine lives,” I say with a smile.
The memory makes me feel better about my current predicament.
“Seriously, lady. Camping along the Congo sounds unbelievable. You’re lucky to have those stories,” he tells me.
“Oh, no question. They were the most incredible times of my life. And that was the same trip when I fell in love with big cats. A few days on the road and we were up close and personal with a whole pride of lions. I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.”
“Really? I’m going to be a writer when I grow up,” Avery says, a confidence in her tone that makes me grin.
“Yeah, well, I’m gonna own a farm and have every kind of animal possible!” Sawyer says, desperate to one-up her sister. “Maybe even tigers!”
“You go, girl. I’ll write about a farm with a hundred tigers,” Avery whips back.
“People will come from hundreds of miles to see my cats,” Sawyer replies. “And I’ll call it Sawyer McKnight’s Farm! Everybody’s gonna know the name and not to wear it out.”
“Pssh! You need a better name than that,” her sister insists. “Avery McKnight Zoo has a nice ring to it.”
As they go back and forth, escalating their grand dreams, Grady shoots me a sideways glance and we share a smile.
We both laugh softly at some of the suggestions being tossed around in the back seat.
I wish so badly the rest of my time here could be this easy.
Back at the house, they ask if I’m going to check on Bruce one more time.
When I admit he needs another quick look before bedtime, they ask if they can stand at the door.
Grady hems and haws, but finally agrees, and while I enter to check on Bruce, they stand at their father’s side in the distant entryway with the metal door cracked a sliver, just enough so he can slam it shut in a flash if necessary.
At the other end of the barn, Bruce stands in his trailer and walks to the edge of it, where I hold up a hand, encouraging him to stop. I’m sure if he takes a single step into the barn, Grady will be shoving his girls back and slamming the door shut.
But my big orange baby doesn’t move. He just stands there looking at me, lazily flicking his tail like a paintbrush.
Well? What’s the plan? he seems to ask.
I don’t know.
I wish I had one.
So I shrug slowly, blowing him a gentle kiss. “Rest easy tonight, big guy. You’re safe and sound and you need to heal that paw. When I know where we’re going, and when, you’ll be the first to know.”
The giant stretches, his hind end bowing up in bright orange. Paws bigger than catchers’ mitts taper out in front of him, and he slowly turns, pacing back into the trailer with a final theatrical flick of his tail.
I smile as he settles into his main nesting spot, as if he accepts my answer for now.
I’ll wait, lady. But not forever, those huge, lidded eyes beam back, more green than gold in the dim light.
“I know,” I whisper into the night. “I’m working hard for you, buddy. Just give me time to figure it out.”
The water trough is still full, and he’s already eaten, so I take my leave, knowing he’ll be fine.
He’s actually very content having his trailer and most of the barn area to roam.
Sadly, it’s more space than he ever had at Exotic Plains.
He was supposed to have a fenced-in exercise area outside most days, but the lions were using it every day since I’d started working there. Sam and Tilda were out there the most, a proud tawny lion couple.
Tilda had just given birth to a litter of two cubs a couple weeks before I left. Both female.
I worry how the babies are doing now.
Both Sam and Tilda were older lions, having lived in captivity their entire lives. I was afraid the pregnancy would be too much for Tilda, but she’d come through it like a tough mama.
Even so, they hadn’t been at the fake rescue for long.
Their papers said they’d arrived only a few months before I had, originating from a zoo somewhere down in the gulf. The place had a storm that flooded the lion’s habitat and they couldn’t raise enough money to fix it, so the pair were sent to North Dakota, where the Fosses conveniently had space.