Lost and Found

I stand on the shore, staring down at the thick shroud of snow smothering my feet.

I can't spend another day alone.

Though I know Gregory wouldn't want me to give up, I have no choice. I have spent two years, seven hundred and thirty interminable days, without the love of my life, and the thought of even one more moment is agonizing.

They told me that he would have barely felt a thing once the river's brutally gray waters closed over his head and the fractured ice hid him from my view.

I'll soon know if they were right.

I take a slow deep breath, and let it out slowly, waiting to hear something in me begging me to stay.

Nothing.

Then, something.

But it wasn't in me.

Was that a baby?

Gregory and I planned to have--

I hear it again, and this time I know it's not a baby.

Not the kind we planned to have, anyhow.

I want to walk forward and leave everything behind, but some tiny piece of me refuses. That piece looks around, peering at the snowy bushes and the dead plants along the shore, until the sound comes a third time and the piece makes me turn in the right direction.

A tiny kitten, white as the snow with one ear as black as the water's depth, huddles beneath a shrub, and as I look its way it gives yet another mew. Though the sound is squeaky and almost laughable, it also sounds angry, and afraid, and agonizingly sad.

I think that piece inside me would mew the same way.

"Go away," I mutter, to the kitten and to the piece. "It's too late."

The kitten stares at me, its green eyes glowing in the chill light of the rising winter sun, and doesn't move.

"I don't want this," I tell it. "I don't want you. I don't want anything."

The kitten tips its head to one side, its eyes still locked to mine, and instead of another mew it makes a 'mrr' sound.

"Don't judge me," I say before I realize how ridiculous I'm being. But the sound it made was disdainful, somehow, as if it understood me and thought I was wrong.

Am I?

I pull my gaze from the kitten and look back at the water. No. I am not wrong. Two years ago, I stood here and watched in horror as Gregory left this world. For all I care, this kitten can do the same with me now.

I take one step toward the water, then another.

But I can't take the third.

Where is its mother? Its siblings? Why is it here all alone? 

A fierce shudder sweeps over me. I don't want to think these things. I don't want to care about anything or anyone, not even a cat. Not anymore.

I shut my eyes tight, a battle I thought I'd already won raging again within me. I have had nothing, nothing, for the last two years. I finally found the strength to accept that I'll never have anything, the courage to stop hoping. Why now, of all moments, do I have to find something to care about? 

"Anne!"

I turn, shocked, but the only one here is still the kitten. "Did you..." Of course not. Of course this cat didn't just call my name. Even though it sounded exactly like it.

"Where is your family?" I demand of the kitten. "Where? Why are you here? Why do I have to leave you? If I go, you..." I can't finish. If it really is here alone, when I go into the river I will doom it too.

It isn't until I feel the tears freezing on my skin that I realize I'm crying. I haven't cried since the day Gregory-- for two years. I haven't cried for two years.

I drop to my knees in the snow. "Kitten," I mumble, my throat so tight I can barely get the word out. "Kitten, what do I do?"

It looks at me for a long moment, then drops its head to its paws and slumps down into the snow.

It's given up.

I know what that looks like, I saw it on my own face in the mirror this morning.

And I know how awful it feels inside.

More tears flood my cheeks, warming my face, and I give the river one last glance then get to my feet and take several steps, away from it, toward the kitten.

Will it let me save it? I know nothing about cats. It'll probably run away.

But it doesn't. I inch ever closer, and though its watchful eyes never leave my face, it stays still as I approach. As I again sink to my knees in the snow, but this time before a tiny creature who needs me. As I slowly reach my bare hands toward it. As I gently scoop it up. 

It's shivering so hard it almost slips from my grasp, but I pull it against my chest and bow my head over it. From a distance, it didn't look so scared, so cold, so desperate. It looked almost in control.

I press my lips to its snow-crusted head, my tears falling onto its dirty but still soft fur. "Hello," I say, though I feel like we've known each other forever. "Hello, kitten."

Its answering 'mrr' this time is so tired and weak, and I know it needs me to warm it up. Take care of it. Give it love.

Accept its love in return.

I get to my feet and tuck the kitten into my jacket for a little more warmth, and together we look under every bush and tree for its mother. I can't deprive her of this baby, if she's here.

But she's not.

So I move carefully up the hill, the hill I came down with recklessness, the hill down which Gregory fell, toward the road. I work for my footing on the ice-covered snow, taking one tentative step at a time back to a world I intended never to see again.

I pick my way along the icy sidewalk, talking nonsense to the kitten in my jacket and looking at the glowing pink sky as the sun rises on a day I'll never forget.

"What should I call you?" I ask, peering down into my jacket into those bright eyes. "I found you at the river, but... no, not river. I don't want us to remember that. We need to look forward. Dream? Future? Peace?"

I don't have peace. Not yet. But I've got something I haven't had in two years.

"Hope," I murmur, and the kitten 'mrrs' it back.