Bat wrapped around a heart line drawing

The bat is back in the barn. I found it this morning hanging off the rafter above the feed bin, wings folded round the tin heart your father nailed up over the door the year you left. It had its head turned away from me, as if embarrassed to be caught, and its thumbs were hooked into the rust like it meant to stay the winter.

Frost came hard on Tuesday and the water trough had a skin of ice you could stand a spoon in. I broke it with the handle of the fork, fed the ewes, and came back to find the bat still there, wing tips pinned over the top curve of the heart like a pair of hands holding something it did not mean to drop. I left the barn door open a crack so the cold would not get at it, which Dad would have called soft.

Mrs Partridge from the village says bats hibernate in the hollows of old timber and do not wake until the blossom. She also says the heart is bad luck, that tin hearts on barns bring the bats and the bats bring the mites, and she had her hands full with a rope of onions while she said it. I did not argue.

I have decided it can stay. The lambs come in February and I will need the bin, not the rafter, but the door will be shut by then and the heart can keep its visitor. When you come home at Easter, look up before you come in. It will likely be gone by then, or it will be exactly where I left it, and I shall not know which to tell you.