The Wolf Keepers

by Elise Broach

  “What happened to your mom?”

  “She died right after I was born.”

  “How’d she die?”

  His voice was so matter-of-fact, Lizzie glanced at him. She didn’t mind talking about it, but most people treated her mother’s death with a respectful, sympathetic hush. “She had a seizure.”

  “What’s that?”

  Lizzie considered how to describe it. “I think it’s when something happens inside your brain, and your heart stops or you can’t breathe.”

  “Why’d that happen to her?”

  “She had some problem, being pregnant with me, and the doctors didn’t know it until she had me and then she had the seizure.”

  Tyler thought for a minute. “So she died because of you?”

  Lizzie stared at him. But his expression was only curious, as if he genuinely wanted to know.

  “No,” she said firmly. “She died because of being pregnant and having some disease.”

  “Being pregnant with you,” Tyler persisted.

  “Well, yeah,” Lizzie said. “But it’s not like I killed her. I was a baby. She just died.”

  He seemed to be thinking about that. “Okay,” he said finally. “Hey! Is that the place I’m going to stay?” The little yellow house had come into view, and some distance behind it, the garage, with its second floor full of windows.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Lizzie said.

  Tyler gave a low whistle. “Sweet!” he said. “That will be way better than sleeping on the ground.”

  “Told you,” Lizzie said happily. As they walked past the quiet house, Tyler asked in a low voice, “Are you sure your dad’s not here?”

  “No, he’s at work.” Lizzie ran straight to the side door of the garage and picked up one of the flowerpots near the stoop. “Here’s the key.”

  She dangled the brass key in front of him before inserting it into the lock and turning. She had to push her shoulder against the door, which had warped a little over the years. It stuck against the doorjamb. Whenever Grandma May visited, she deliberately didn’t close it all the way, so that she could get in and out more easily.

  “It’s kind of hard to close,” Lizzie said. “But you’ll have to really shut it or my dad will know someone’s been inside.”

  “No problem, I can handle that,” Tyler said.

  When they stepped into the dark stairwell, he slammed the door behind them.

  “Wait,” Lizzie protested. “Now I can’t see.” She felt along the wall for the light switch, but Tyler pushed past her and ran up the stairs. He opened the door at the top and sunlight spilled into the stairwell.

  “Whoa! Swee-eee-eeeet!” he crowed. “This is AMAZING!”

  Lizzie trotted up the stairs behind him, through swirling motes of dust caught in the sunlight. She stepped into the living room of the apartment and glanced with satisfaction at the bright, neat square of the room. “Well, it’s really small, but—”

  “Are you kidding me?” Tyler had raced to the opposite side and was kneeling on the faded blue sofa, looking out the windows into the yard. “This is the nicest place I’ve ever seen! It has a kitchen and everything!”

  The apartment smelled vaguely of mildew. It had been shut up all through the rainy spring and early summer, and the dampness seemed to seep into the walls and take hold there. But it was a cheerful little place. There were big windows on three sides, looking out at the woods, the driveway, and the main house, and they were bordered by pretty flowered curtains that Grandma May had sewn herself. In addition to the blue sofa, there was a puffy, oversized armchair; a coffee table; a multicolored oval rag rug; and two big bookshelves filled with books, framed pictures, and photo albums. Abutting the living room, along the rear wall, was a little kitchen with a sink, stovetop, and microwave; and pushed up against the window facing Lizzie’s house were a table and two chairs.

  Lizzie gestured down a short hall to a room that was barely big enough for a double bed. “That’s the bedroom,” she said. Then she opened a door off the hallway. “And here’s the bathroom and the washer and dryer. We can wash your stuff if you want.”

  “Yes! That would be great,” Tyler said. He spun around and pumped his fist in the air. “I can’t believe this. I can stay here, for real? And we can keep it a secret from your dad?”

  Lizzie felt a pang of guilt. She didn’t keep secrets from her dad. There was hardly ever any reason to. But in this case, she knew she wouldn’t have to lie to him. He would never think to ask her anything about the apartment.

  “Definitely,” she told Tyler. “You’ll be safe here.”

  * * *

  The afternoon was spent getting Tyler settled. Lizzie thought it was not so different from getting Grandma May settled when she came for a long visit—except that Tyler brought nothing with him besides a blanket and a dirty old backpack.

  Lizzie went from room to room opening the windows. The soft summer air rushed in, with the faint, sweet scent of jasmine. She turned on the washing machine. As warm water flooded the tub, she poured in a generous cup of detergent.

  “Just throw all your stuff in here,” she said. Lizzie had done the laundry for Mike and herself for years. Usually she would separate the dark and light clothes, but Tyler’s stuff was mostly dark—if not in original color, then from dirt—and there was too little of it to justify another load. She pushed the grimy blanket into the fluff of white suds.

  Tyler handed her a couple of sodden T-shirts, some underwear, and a pair of shorts that had been shoved deep down in the backpack.

  “What about the clothes you’re wearing?” Lizzie asked. “Your socks are really dirty.”

  “Yeah, I forgot socks,” Tyler said. “When I left,” he added. He looked doubtful. “Then I won’t have anything to wear.”

  “I can give you a T-shirt and gym shorts,” Lizzie said.

  Tyler grimaced. “I’m not wearing girl clothes.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. “They’re not girl clothes. They’re zoo shirts and shorts from the gift shop. They’re for anybody.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Okay, but if they look girly, forget it.”

  “You’re in no position to be fussy,” she told him. It was something her grandmother would say, and she felt like she was summoning Grandma May’s spirit, here in the bright little apartment, as she cleaned and put everything in order.

  “All right,” Tyler said, sounding more solicitous. “I’ll take a shower and you can wash these, too.” He went into the bathroom and closed the door. A minute later, he opened it a few inches and dropped an armful of dirty clothes on the floor. “Thanks!” he yelled over the roar of the water.

  “Is there shampoo and soap in there?” Lizzie asked.

  “Yeah, it’s got everything,” he answered jubilantly.

  Lizzie dropped the rest of the clothing into the washing machine. There was something deeply satisfying about watching the water darken and the suds turn gray as the clothes sloshed back and forth.

  “Can I wash your backpack, too?” she called to him. The backpack was filthy, but she wasn’t sure it was the kind of thing you could wash.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Tyler answered. “But take everything out of it.”

  Lizzie unzipped all the pockets and shook the backpack over the floor. Out fell a handful of coins, two crumpled dollar bills, a pen, and two sticks of chewing gum. She reached inside the outer pocket and felt around to see if there was anything else. Her fingers grazed a piece of paper, tattered at the edges. Gently, she drew it out. It was a photograph.

  Chapter 8

  PICTURING THE PAST

  GINGERLY, LIZZIE CARRIED the photograph into the living room and set it down on the coffee table. It was a picture of a teenage girl with long, straight blond hair, laughing down at a skinny brown baby in her lap. The baby had dark shining eyes, and he was looking straight at the camera. Tyler. She recognized him instantly. But who was the girl? A babysitter? Someone from his foster family? The photograph was creased, with
frayed edges; it looked like it had been handled a thousand times. Something told Lizzie that Tyler would not be happy she’d found it. She considered putting it back, but then she couldn’t wash the backpack … and it was so dirty. She shrugged to herself and picked the backpack off the hallway floor. She tossed it into the washing machine and slammed the metal lid.

  “I’ll get you some clothes from the house,” she called to Tyler.

  “Okay,” he yelled back. “I’m going to stay in here a while longer.” She could hear him humming happily in the bathroom. She wondered how long it had been since he showered.

  In her house, Lizzie quickly found a large white T-shirt with the colorful zoo logo on the front—a silhouette of John Muir surrounded by a bear, a wolf, and a parrot. She snatched it from her drawer along with a pair of navy gym shorts, and then raided Mike’s top drawer for socks. As she climbed the garage stairs to the apartment, she could hear the rush of the shower. Tyler was still humming when she set the clothes on the floor of the hallway.

  “Here you go,” Lizzie said. “I’m leaving them right outside the door.”

  “Okay,” he called.

  She returned to the living room to wait. Finally, she heard him turn off the shower and open the door, rustling through the pile of fresh clothes.

  A minute later, he appeared, damp and glowing, with the white T-shirt sparkling against his skin. “It’s kind of big,” he said. “But it’s okay for now.”

  Then he saw the photograph.

  He frowned and snatched it from the table. “Hey! What were you doing going through my stuff?”

  “It was in your backpack,” Lizzie said. “It fell out.”

  Tyler glared at her. Folding the photo in half, he shoved it in the pocket of the shorts.

  “Who is that?” Lizzie asked.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “She’s pretty.”

  Tyler took a breath, his expression wary. “It’s my mom.”

  Lizzie couldn’t hide her surprise. “It is?”

  “Yeah. I know, she doesn’t look like me. My dad is black.” He sounded tired suddenly, as if it was something he’d had to explain many times before.

  “No,” Lizzie said quickly, flooded with embarrassment. “I just meant, she looks so young.”

  Tyler turned away. “She was eighteen when she had me.”

  “Well, that is young,” Lizzie said. “That’s only six years older than me.”

  He turned back to her. “Me too,” he said, half smiling.

  Just then the washing machine rattled loudly and banged to a stop. Lizzie jumped up. “I’ll put the clothes in the dryer.”

  When she came back, Tyler was standing in front of the bookcase, looking at the pictures that crowded the shelves. “There’s no TV,” he announced.

  “No. There isn’t really room for one.”

  “That’s okay. Every house I ever been in, the TV was on all the time. It’s nice to have it quiet.”

  He picked up a picture from the shelf in front of him and rubbed the dust off the front with his T-shirt. “Who’s this?” he asked.

  Lizzie took the framed photograph. “That’s Grandma May. My mother’s mother, the one who stays here.” She looked at Grandma May’s delicately lined face, the crinkles that fanned her blue eyes. Lizzie knew that hardly anybody liked the signs of age, that wrinkles were supposed to be a bad thing, and some people would do almost anything to cover them up … but she loved the way her grandmother’s face looked. She liked the pattern of thin lines, so much more interesting than smooth skin, with their little forks and valleys, their history. And she liked the thin, crinkled, bluish skin of Grandma May’s eyelids. It was so delicate. It made her feel protective toward her grandmother.

  Tyler had moved on to another photo. “What about this one? It looks really old.”

  Lizzie took it and tilted it toward the sunlight. It was a faded black-and-white picture of a serious-looking young woman in a skirt, blouse, and hat, sitting astride a horse in a wide, grassy meadow.

  “That’s a cousin of my grandmother’s, Clare Marie Hodges,” she told him. “My mom was named for her. She was the first woman park ranger ever. She worked in Yosemite. My grandma worshipped her.”

  “Really?” Tyler took the photo back and stared at it. “Cool. How come there weren’t women park rangers?”

  “It was, like, a hundred years ago,” Lizzie said. “They didn’t let women do that kind of thing back then. Until her.”

  “So she rode a horse in Yosemite?”

  “Yeah. And did park ranger stuff, like checking on the trails.”

  Tyler set the photograph back on the bookshelf. “How about this one?” he asked, taking down another black-and-white photo, this time of a tall, rickety wooden shack surrounded by trees.

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said. “Just some old cabin, I guess.”

  “It kind of looks like a tree house,” Tyler said, squinting at the picture. “See how many levels it has?”

  Lizzie looked more closely. It did appear to have two or three floors, and jutting out of the top was a little shed that looked like a human-size birdhouse.

  “It’s cool,” Tyler decided. “We could make something like that. If we had the wood.”

  Lizzie stared at him, startled both by the suggestion and the way he was now including her in his plans. She loved the idea of a tree house. She imagined sitting high in the branches, with the zoo unfolding before her like a colorful map. She could take her notebook up there and write and write about everything she saw. But even while lost in this reverie, she realized there was no possible way for them to build a tree house in the yard as long as Tyler had to be kept hidden.

  Tyler must have realized the same thing, because he abruptly set the picture back on the bookshelf. “So where am I going to sleep?” he asked, wandering down the hall to the bedroom.

  Lizzie followed him. This was the room that made her miss her grandmother the most. It was so small and tidy, with its white eyelet curtains, crisp coverlet, and four pillows lined up at the top of the bed. There wasn’t even space for a nightstand, but a little lamp was attached to one wall, so you could read in bed. Tyler sat on the edge of the thick mattress and bounced a couple of times.

  “It’s a lot better than the elephant house, right?” Lizzie asked.

  “Yeah!” He flopped backward and grinned at the ceiling. “This is the best.”

  “Didn’t you get cold there, lying on the ground all night? And bored?”

  He thought for a minute. “Cold, yeah. But not bored. I told you, there’s a lot happening in the zoo at night.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Tell me what you mean. You said the thing about Wolf Woods, but what else?”

  Tyler rolled over on his side, tucking a pillow under his head and closing his eyes. “Well, last night, for instance,” he murmured sleepily, “I was walking around, you know, in the dark, looking at the animals. Lots of them are way more interesting at night. And then over by that gray building—” His eyes popped open. “You know the one I mean?”

  “Sure,” Lizzie said. “That’s the vet clinic.” It was a low concrete building behind a chain-link fence in the far corner of the zoo, where Karen Lockport worked.

  Tyler closed his eyes again and nuzzled into the pillow. “Well, I heard a weird noise. It was so late, nobody was around, but when I looked through the fence, I saw this truck, with the engine running. And it had a cage in the back.”

  “That doesn’t sound very strange,” Lizzie said. “Except that it was at night.”

  Tyler sat up abruptly, tossing the pillow back to the head of the bed. “Yeah, but there was something in the cage—some animal. And someone got in the truck. And then the gate opened and whoever it was, they drove out of the zoo.”

  Lizzie stared at him. “With the animal in the back of the truck?”

  Tyler nodded. “That’s weird, right?”

  “What kind of animal was it?”

  He shrugged
. “It was too dark. I couldn’t see.”

  “Well, how big was the cage?”

  Tyler motioned with his hands, making a sweeping rectangle in the air with a height about four feet off the ground. “Big,” he said. “And long.”

  Lizzie shook her head, puzzled. “That doesn’t make sense. Who was driving?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “I can ask my dad about it.”

  “No, you can’t,” Tyler said. “You can’t tell him what I saw.”

  “I know that,” she said, aggrieved. “I won’t say anything about you. But maybe I can ask him without getting specific.”

  Tyler swung his feet to the floor and bounced up. “Anyway, all I’m saying is, there’s a lot that happens at the zoo after everyone leaves that you probably don’t know about. Even though you live here. So that was one good thing about staying overnight behind the elephant house.”

  “Well, you don’t really know what you saw,” Lizzie countered. “But it is strange. I’ll try to find out what happened.”

  Chapter 9

  BAD NEWS

  LIZZIE AND TYLER spent the day stocking the apartment with provisions. This had to be done with a certain degree of subtlety and care, so that Mike wouldn’t notice anything missing from the kitchen. Basically, they could only take an item to the apartment if they were able to leave one or two duplicates remaining in the refrigerator or on the cupboard shelves. Lizzie found an old cardboard box in the basement and set it on the counter. She filled it with a half gallon of milk (leaving one in the refrigerator), a bottle of cranberry juice, a box of crackers, three snack-size bags of potato chips, two apples, a plastic jar of peanut butter, and a banana.

  “There,” she said, pleased at the bounty. “This should last you for a while.”

  “Looking good,” Tyler agreed. “But what about dinner?”

  He was demanding, Lizzie thought, for someone who had spent who knows how many nights sleeping outside.

  “I can bring you dinner after my dad and I eat.”

  “Will it still be hot?”