Living in this remote spot left me without access to reasonable employment. My street was unnamed, so I didn’t have an address. Two miles up a gravel road in an isolated mountain valley and sixty miles from the nearest city, the cottage was not an appropriate arrangement for a girl on her own. I was waiting for the fox and hoping he wouldn’t show. Pressing my hands together as if praying, I pushed them between my knees while I sat with my feet tapping the ground. On the thirteenth day, at around three thirty and no later than four o’clock, I bundled up in more clothing than necessary to stay comfortably warm and went outside. Someone may have been watching us-a dusky shrew, a field mouse, a rubber boa-but it felt like we were alone with the world to ourselves. Nothing but two meters and one spindly forget-me-not lay between us. I sat on a camp chair with stiff spikes of bunchgrass poking into the canvas. Tucking the tip of his tail under his chin and squinting his eyes, he pretended to sleep. At no more than one minute after the sun capped the western hill, he lay down in a spot of dirt among the powdery blue bunchgrasses. For twelve consecutive days, the fox had appeared at my cottage.
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