Page 81 of Wild Heart

The sanctuary carried it all, the ache, the hush, the ache again. It had always been a place built from survival, but never had its walls felt so fragile. Never had the woods felt so empty.

Natalie stood on the porch of the main lodge, her body still learning its shape again after childbirth, her arms wrappedaround the warm bundle of her daughter. Livvy slept nestled against her chest in the sling Mason had sewn by hand before she was born, a simple thing, stitched with care and lined with soft wool. Her tiny breaths puffed in and out, a rhythm as steady as the turning earth. One fist had uncurled in sleep and now rested against Natalie’s skin like a promise.

Natalie had not stopped crying for more than a day at a time. The tears came softly, like fog in the valley, unannounced, weightless. Sometimes it was Livvy’s smell that did it, that perfect, earthy newness that Olivia never got to breathe in. Sometimes it was the porch stairs, where Olivia used to sit with her tea at sunrise, or the sound of the screen door creaking, always that creak, like it was still waiting for her hand.

There was grief in everything. Even in beauty. Especially in beauty. It had only taken a few hours after Livvy’s birth for the storm to shift. Mason had stood in the hospital room, tears still drying on his face from the awe of watching his daughter come into the world, when the call came. And after that, time fractured.

Natalie remembered every second of Mason’s voice breaking as he told her Olivia had been on the mountain. She remembered Davey’s face when he stood at the window and whispered, “She was supposed to come back.”

But Olivia hadn’t. Her body had eventually been found, but her soul, her absence was a hole greater than anything anyone could contemplate. Now, the sanctuary was trying to remember how to breathe without her. The wolves knew. Of course they did. Ash had started howling again at sunset, a long, keening sound that shattered Natalie’s heart every time it rose across the trees. The hawks had been restless too, their cries more frequent, more fractured. Even the horses, those usually steady and stubborn creatures, had taken to pacing their enclosures inthe morning. Grief had a language. And every animal knew how to speak it.

The porch door opened behind her. Mason stepped out, two mugs of tea in his hands. His movements were slow, like someone walking through thick water. He hadn’t said much in the last few weeks, not because he didn’t want to speak, but because he hadn’t yet figured out how to say the things he felt.

He handed her the tea, his fingers brushing hers in that familiar way.

“She slept okay last night,” he said, his voice quiet as wind in the trees.

Natalie nodded. “She woke up around two, but I got her back down.”

“She’s a good baby.”

“She is.”

He stood beside her, and they looked out together. Down below, the volunteers moved slowly across the field, laying fresh straw in the goat pens, checking the locks on the bird enclosures. They didn’t talk much anymore either. Their grief had fallen into them like snow, light at first, but layering, quiet, cold.

Natalie turned to Mason. “I think we should plan the service.”

He nodded, eyes still fixed on the treeline. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted anything big.”

“No. Just honest.”

“I thought maybe the old clearing,” she said. “The one near the ridge where she released that hawk in the spring.”

Mason smiled, but his eyes glistened. “She loved that spot.”

Natalie paused, then whispered, “She called it the in-between. Not forest. Not field. Just a place to let go.”

Mason took a breath so deep it shook him. “Then that’s where we’ll say goodbye.”

They fell into silence again, and Natalie leaned her head on his shoulder, her body aching in ways deeper than recovery. Livvy shifted softly against her chest.

Inside the house, Davey moved around the kitchen, packing feed, stacking bins. His movements were methodical. Focused. He hadn’t spoken Olivia’s name aloud in days. But every night, Natalie saw him sit outside by the wolf enclosure, back straight, hands in his pockets, staring into the dark as Ash howled to the sky. She knew he was waiting. Waiting to feel her somewhere in the trees. And she also knew the sound of Livvy’s soft cries were what pulled him back inside.

Later, when Mason went to bring in the horses, and the sky turned the color of ash and rose, Natalie rocked Livvy on the porch swing and whispered stories about the woman her daughter was named for.

“She was the kind of brave you don’t see in books,” she said. “She didn’t wear armor. She wore calluses and grit and a grin that could cut through a storm.”

Livvy sighed in her sleep.

“She taught us to listen,” Natalie went on, voice cracking. “Not just to the animals, but to the things we’re most afraid of. And she loved this place so much that it became her, bark and bone and breath.”

A tear slipped down her cheek.

“But she would’ve loved you most of all.”

And in that moment, with the trees rustling their answer, and the sun dipping behind the mountains, Natalie swore she felt Olivia’s hand in the wind. Not gone. Not really. Just scattered into everything.

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