Tom returned the next morning. He seemed happy that she was there, and genuinely interested in everything that she had learned. Then he took her to her jeep and she drove it back to his cabin.
She stayed another night, sleeping beside Max on Tom’s couch under a quilt that his grandmother had made for him, as the storm blew up outside the cabin. Tom had sat up with them until it was very late, poking the fire and listening to the wind, and asking questions that Juliet was sometimes hesitant to answer.
He wanted to know everything about her. First he asked about her family, and then he asked where she went to school and what she liked to eat and what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
“I have a little sister,” she said. “Her name’s Katie and she’s eleven. I go to a big high school in Montana. After I graduate in June I’ll go to college in Montana. I love Montana.
“I like puffed rice,” she continued, and peanut butter cookies, and animals of course. I love animals. I think I even like them better than people. My mother says that’s because they can’t talk or tell me what to do. She says I should have been born a wild animal so that I could scurry away whenever I wanted to. My mother understands me, even though I make her nervous.
“I’m going to be a veterinarian,” she said, when he encouraged her to continue. “I work with a vet named Cam now, and....”
She stopped, because she didn’t like to talk about people behind their backs. Her face must have given her away, because Tom said, “You don’t like him?”
Juliet avoided the question. She ran her fingers through Max’s soft fur and when he snuggled closer to her, she pulled the quilt tighter around them.
The wind was dying down outside and the snow was stopping. Suddenly Juliet found herself thinking about the drive home, and decorating the Christmas tree with her mother and father and Katie. She wondered if they still had the angel that she and Katie had made the year before.
She didn’t want to talk any more. She just wanted to go to sleep and wake up and begin the long drive home.
Tom wouldn’t let her. “Do you?” he asked.
Juliet glanced over at him. “What?” she asked.
“Do you like him?”
“He’s all right. But he brings out the worst in me. He makes me competitive, or maybe I am competitive, and he makes it worse. I don’t know, but all I really want to do is take care of the animals. He’s a vet and I’m not ... yet.”
Juliet looked at Tom then, and saw that he was really interested in her, and it made her nervous. He noticed that, and glanced down at the fire, then got up from his chair and picked up a log and tossed it onto the fire, mumbling something.
“I couldn’t hear you,” Juliet said.
“I said, can’t you just take care of the animals? Can’t you just let him be the best, let him be the veternarian, and you help him?”
“I could try,” Juliet said, and then she felt guilty because they had talked only about her. “I’m sorry,” she added. “I haven’t asked about you.”
“There’s not much to say,” he replied. “I’m here. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m happy most of the time.”
He glanced out the window. “The storm’s letting up,” he said. “You should get some sleep if you’re going to drive home tomorrow.”
He brought her an extra pillow and said goodnight, and then he went away and came back with a blanket, and said good night again. And he didn’t come back until morning.
She dreamed of swallows that night. She dreamed of swallows and small men in caps, and a fire that glowed way, way, back behind a far-away shadow somewhere far away.
Tom woke her at eight with a bowl of puffed rice, and she wondered if he already had it or if he had gone out to the store to buy it.
“You’re welcome to stay longer if you’d like,” he said as she ate.
Juliet looked up at him and smiled. “I’d better go home,” she said. “I want to see if my angel is still in the box.”
Tom looked puzzled, but he didn’t ask any more questions, and she was glad. She climbed out from under the quilt and opened the door for Max.
Outside, the snow was deep, but the sky was clear. The main roads had probably been plowed by now. She could leave.
She felt sad again as she called Max to her. All this leaving. All this sadness. She would have to find a better way to leave. She would have to study it, as if she was studying a new skill, like sewing up a calf or diagnosing a sick horse. Advanced leaving, she thought. Maybe they have a course like that in college.
When it was time to leave, she said goodbye quickly, and turned away so that Tom wouldn’t see her face. Then, when she was settled in her jeep and settled within herself, she looked out the window and smiled, and said, “Thank you. I guess I needed a friend to talk to.”
“Remember,” he said, “just take care of the animals.”
“I’ll remember. And I’ll see you in the spring.”
“You will?”
Juliet turned the key and started the jeep. “I want to come back and see the swallow and the swan return together,” she said.
“And me?”
“And you,” Juliet said.
She waved then and drove away.