“I didn’t take the blanket,” he said, not looking up. “Not exactly.”
“You told me you donated it!”
“That was, admittedly, not my strongest lie.” He winced even as he said it.
I almost laughed despite everything. Instead I lowered myself into the dirt beside him, my knees protesting, my heart still racing. “Tell me what to do.”
He hesitated only a second before he passed Susan into my arms. The moment her small, trembling body settled against my chest, I finally understood why he’d reached for that blanket instead of a towel. She weighed almost nothing — just warmth, and bone, and one furious, indignant heartbeat. “Keep her wrapped,” he said. “She loses heat fast.”
He turned back to the garden edge. Ten minutes and one increasingly irate feline cry later, Greg finally worked his arm into the gap and drew out a second gray kitten, mud-streaked and shivering.
