by K. A. Tucker
I give the animal another moment of my attention and then finish scrubbing the last pot and set it to dry. The house is eerily quiet. Everyone decided it was best to go their separate ways soon after dinner. The girls even got away without finishing their broccoli. “I’m going to head home now, if there’s nothing else to do here.” I can’t help but tack on, bitterness in my voice, “While it’s still my home.”
Mom sets a soothing hand on my shoulder. “Liz and Jim have no say in what we decide to do.”
“Tell that to Liz.”
“You know your sister. She always has an opinion to share. But you need to talk to him, Marie. Neither of you will sleep otherwise. Which means I won’t sleep. So, please, sort it out.”
She’s right, and yet my feet feel leaden as I drag myself toward the living room.
My father is settled into his recliner, his cast-wrapped leg propped up with an extra pillow, Yukon sprawled on the floor beside him.
At the sound of my footsteps, Dad peers over his shoulder. “Everybody was in such a rush to get out of here. I thought you’d left, too.” His voice weighs with weariness.
“I wasn’t going to leave that mess for Mom to clean up on her own.” Bentley lifts his head enough to acknowledge me stepping over him before he drops with a thud and a huff that usually makes me laugh.
Tonight, though, my heart is too heavy.
Dad swallows. “I’m sorry that unfolded the way it did.”
“I don’t understand. I’m running the clinic because you asked me to. You wanted to retire, and you didn’t want to sell it or see it sitting there, empty. You’ve always said how much you love looking out the window and seeing the clinic running.” He said it again only two weeks ago, up in Hatcher Pass. “When did you and Mom decide all this?”
“We haven’t decided, and we don’t want to sell. At least, not tomorrow. But it is something we’ve been talking about more.” He picks at a loose thread on the blanket my mother draped over him. “Your mom and I put everything we had into this place. We talked about saving for retirement, but there was always something to spend money on. New equipment for the clinic, helping you with your tuition, cars. Remember that old beat-up Dodge you and Liz used to drive around?”
“The one that kept breaking down every time we stopped at a red light? How could I forget?”
Dad chuckles. “Anyway, I made decent money, but with three kids and a business with high overhead, I never did manage to put much away for down the road. We always assumed we’d sell this place if we needed to, even if it broke my heart. When you came home to work with me, I was so happy.” He punctuates that with a smile. “I loved knowing one of my daughters would continue my life’s work. And it still makes me happy.” He pauses. “But I wonder now if I shouldn’t have closed down.”
“Why?”
“Because you worked so hard for so long. You could be operating in one of those big hospitals, doing the kind of complex surgeries you’re trained to do, not vaccinating stray dogs in that rundown shack with one tech to support you. Even these other places in town have multiple veterinarians and techs, at least two receptionists—”
“I’m exactly where I want to be, Dad. I didn’t take the job in Anchorage because I didn’t want it. And I can do surgeries here. I have the equipment and the skill.” While we may call ourselves a clinic, that little shack has seen as many emergencies and saved as many animal lives over the years as places that label themselves a hospital.
“But not necessarily the patients.” He watches the dancing flames in the woodstove. “Your mother has always wanted to travel. She’s never been to Europe, or to the Caribbean. We talked about that a lot over the years, thought we would be able to afford it.”
“But you guys are going to Mexico this winter. You’ve been saving for it.”
“We were going to. And then Vicki and Oliver’s truck broke down, and you know they can’t afford to fix it. Those two really have no money. That boy, he needs to think about a trade or something. Anyway, that’s a topic for another day.” He purses his lips. “Liz and Jim have that walkout basement apartment. They’ve offered it to us. Jim’s never home, and Liz could use the help with the kids. It’d free up money and give us a chance to travel a bit while helping you all out.” He shrugs. “Just a thought that I was gonna bring up with you while we were on the hike. And then I had to go and do this, and I got distracted.” He gestures at his leg.
I think back to that day, to the conversation we were in the midst of before he fell. It was about money, about how I wasn’t making enough. And maybe, though Dad would never bring it up, about how I couldn’t pay them more. “If you increase my rent, will that help?”
“It’s high enough.” Dad waves his hand dismissively. “But that Jim … I don’t know how someone so smart can be so damn dense sometimes.”
“It’s not even Jim who’s the problem. I mean, yeah, he’s a dumbass. But it was Liz tonight. It’s like she’d been waiting for years to unload. She made it sound like I’m some sort of failure, just because I don’t make all my life decisions based on money and marriage.”
“Yes, she could stand to focus a little less on the former. And you could stand to focus a bit more, Marie. It’s not fun, being in this boat, where you have to make tough decisions like this. And your mother and I need to start thinking about how to leave what we have to you girls in a fair and equitable way.”
“It sounds like the smartest thing for you and Mom to do is to sell this place.” The anger I felt earlier is quickly evaporating. Though I don’t want everything I’ve been building to flip over suddenly, I can’t blame them for wanting to enjoy their waning years.
It just means I’ll have to start making tough decisions of my own.
“I’m not ready to do that yet. Or to leave this place. This is still my home.” He reaches blindly for Yukon, and the dog instantly meets him halfway, giving his hand a lick. “But life doesn’t slow down any when you get old. You slow down. Boy, do you ever.” He shakes his head. “But life just keeps speeding along. Lately, it’s beginning to feel like some sort of super train. You know, the ones that go across Europe? Your mother’s always talked about maybe trying one of those out.” He chuckles. “Except this one is feeling like it has no stops. Yeah … you start waking up in the mornings, realizing you’ve missed the view you’ve been waiting for while you were sleeping, and you can’t go back.”
“I don’t want you to miss anything on my account.”
“I still like the view I got, lookin’ out that window and seeing the lights on next door. And it’s too hot for me in Mexico, anyway. Plus, there’re the sharks to worry about.”
I laugh. “You don’t even swim.”
“Hey, I’ve always wondered, where do you suppose sharks go on vacation?”
We’re switching out of this somber, depressing conversation and back into corny dad jokes, a far more comfortable area. “I have no idea.”
“You should ask Tyler. I’ll bet he knows, given he’s from Finland.”
I frown. “Why would—” The answer hits me, and I groan.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My head is down when the front door to the clinic chimes.
“You’re in early today,” Cory says in a singsong voice.
“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d do some housekeeping.” I abandon the computer screen to watch her glide across the floor to the desk. I’ve always said she looks better in blue scrubs than anyone I’ve ever met. “And you’re in an unusually good mood for a Monday morning. Why?”
“Oh, no reason.” She props her chin on her palm.
The diamond on her ring finger shimmers for attention.
My jaw drops. “No way! Joe finally did it?” They’ve been dating for almost seven years.
Cory’s round face bursts into a beaming smile.
I leap out of my chair and rush around to crash into her, my heart swelling, her excitement contagious. “Oh my God! Congratulations! When did he
do it?”
“Yesterday morning!” she squeals.
“Where? How? Hold on! Let me pee first. I’ve had too much coffee already.” I’ve been here for hours, replaying last night’s family blowout and crunching numbers to try to prove to myself that Liz isn’t right.
So far, I’m not sure I can.
“Fine, but hurry.” She taps the sign I printed and taped to the counter, reading it out loud: “‘All payments for services rendered are required same day. No exceptions.’ This is new.”
“And long overdue.” Especially when I tallied the outstanding invoices. No wonder Jim has been on my case. Brad Garvis’s bills are still unpaid, and he and his ferrets haven’t been back. A copy of his outstanding bill is printed and ready for the mail, with interest tacked on that has always been part of my policy but I’ve never enforced. “We’re going to run things a bit differently here from now on.”
“Well, giddyup. You know I’m game.” Cory stretches her arms in front of her, her entwined hands cracking at the knuckles.
* * *
“What did you feed him?” I can’t help the accusatory tone. When Cory begged me to squeeze in her future brother-in-law today, I thought it was for a simple examination. Looking at the ball python on my table, its head and body riddled with vicious bite marks, it’s clear a thawed mouse wasn’t on the menu.
“A rat.”
“A rat.”
“My friend down in Florida feeds his snakes rats all the time. I thought it was okay!” Ivan shrugs.
“Like, a feeder rat from the pet store?”
He hesitates.
“I need to know what happened, so I can help him.”
With resignation, he admits, “I flew down to Juneau with a buddy in his plane so I could visit my mom, and she was complainin’ about some rats in her shed, so I figured I’d catch them and bring them home for Benny.” He shrugs a second time. “It’s a free meal, right?”
“You brought rats home from Juneau and fed them to your snake,” I say slowly, my face surely a mask of dumbfounded shock. “Okay, there are a few issues with this, Ivan. First of all, what you caught are wild rats. They’re not the same as a feeder rat your friend in Florida buys at the pet store. Wild rats do this—” I point to the snake in the container. “Secondly, bringing rats here is a big problem. They are highly invasive. You could get into a lot of trouble if people found out you did that.”
The Anchorage area has so far avoided the kind of rodent problems that some of the islands and cities like Juneau can’t seem to shake, and they’ve done it through stringent laws and vigilant measures. To have a rat-free port is unheard of, and yet Anchorage has worked hard to maintain it.
The twenty-two-year-old blanches. “Really?”
Cory warned me this guy is far from the smartest person I’ll ever meet. “How many did you catch?”
“Three.”
“And where are the ones you didn’t try to feed to Benny? Tell me you didn’t let them go?”
“Uh … I didn’t let them go?” he says slowly, unconvincingly.
Hopefully, a fox catches them. And they’re both male. “Okay, Benny is going to need surgery.” I haven’t operated on a snake in years, but this is fairly straightforward. “Luckily, I have some time in my schedule today.” Otherwise known as my lunch break. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to save his eye.”
“Really?” He stares at his injured pet as he processes it. “So … I’m gonna have a one-eyed snake?” A slow grin stretches across his face. It vanishes when he sees that my stony expression isn’t breaking. “How much is this gonna cost me?”
“If you wait in the lobby, Cory will give you an estimate in a few minutes, but Ivan? A whole lot of frozen mice.”
A curse slips from Ivan as he exits the exam room.
* * *
“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be getting the family discount. You deserve to pay every penny of this, dumbass.” Cory delivers the insult to her future brother-in-law with a grin, saying to Ivan what I desperately want to.
“Yeah, I guess I do.” He grimaces, his fingers twirling the shaggy hair at his nape. “Just fix him for me. Please.”
I offer a sympathetic smile because the idiot genuinely didn’t mean any harm. “I’ll do what I can on my end, but you need to go home and disinfect everything. Especially his habitat. Wild rats carry diseases.” Behind me, the bell on the clinic’s door chimes as another customer walks in. “We’ll give you a call when he’s ready to be picked up.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles.
I’m still wearing the smile when I turn to greet the person who has come in.
It falls off at the sight of Tyler holding open the door for Ivan, who grunts his thanks.
With a curious look at the sullen guy’s back, Tyler wanders into the clinic. He’s off duty today, in a faded black concert T-shirt that hugs his body in all the right places without being tight, blue jeans, and a New York Yankees ball cap pulled low over his brow. He probably rolled out of bed and threw on the first thing he pulled from his dresser. How do men like him make such a casual outfit look so good? He didn’t even bother to shave this morning, his stubble a fine dusting over his cut jaw.
Keys dangle from his fingers. I steal a glance behind him, to the lot, expecting to see the shiny new truck he won at the Iditarod. But instead, it’s the forest green pickup that was buried under snow in his driveway the day I basically accused him of animal abuse.
“So, this is your clinic.”
“It is.”
“And that little cabin over there, where your truck is parked, is that where you live?”
“Yup.”
“I like it.” He pauses to scan the various certificates on the wall—my undergrad, my veterinarian license, and the one that proves I’m a board-certified surgeon. He stalls on that last one a moment before shifting to the wall of photos. He frowns at my picture.
“The police station was kind enough to send over Marie’s mugshot the last time she was arrested,” Cory calls out.
“She does have a habit of trespassing,” he throws back without missing a beat.
I shoot Cory a glare, but she’s not paying attention to me, her vivid blue eyes locked on Tyler’s backside. “What are you doing here?”
“Just in the neighborhood. Thought I’d see how your dad is doing.”
Was he really? We’re west of Wasilla, and there’s nothing to draw Tyler out this way unless he’s driving to Trapper’s Crossing, which has even less of a draw. “He’s fine. Back home, in a cast. Pestering my mother.”
Tyler’s attention shifts around my tiny lobby as if searching for something.
“Hi, I’m Cory, Marie’s vet tech and admin.” She rounds the desk to offer him a broad smile. “And you look awfully familiar.”
His smirk is coy, as if he knows she’s feigning cluelessness but is willing to play along. “Do I?”
“This is Tyler Brady,” I supplement, mainly because I don’t want this exchange to drag on any longer than it needs to. “He won the Iditarod this year.”
“That’s why I know your face. It was plastered all over the local news.”
Local? More like statewide, along with the major national outlets. And Cory spent several days buying up the various papers just so she could drool over the sport’s new golden boy.
“I have a snake waiting for surgery, so if there’s nothing else …” I’m already moving for the door to the back of my clinic.
“Wait.” Tyler holds up a hand. “Can I have a minute or two of your time?” He pauses, steals a glance over his shoulder at Cory, still gawking shamelessly at him. “In private?”
My heart races. What does he have to say that needs privacy? “Cory, can you get the room prepped for surgery?”
“Sure thing, boss.” She trots over to flip the In Surgery sign before disappearing into the back, mouthing “so hot” with dramatic flair at Tyler’s back on her way past.
Despite everything, I str
uggle to suppress my laugh. “So? What do you need?”
He falters. “You’re operating on a snake?”
“Apparently. The owner tried to feed his pet python a wild rat to save money.”
“Ouch. The kid who just left?” He jabs a thumb toward the lot, though Ivan’s long gone.
“Yup. And now I have to remove one of its eyes.” While I’ve never been a fan of reptiles as pets, I don’t relish seeing any living creature mutilated.
Tyler’s cringe morphs and his hand goes to his face. He looks to be hiding his amusement.
“This is getting old, fast.” I guarantee when I tell Jonah this story, he won’t even bother to hide his deep bellow of laughter.
“Oh, man.” He loses the battle, flashing a wide, honest smile that shows off those straight, white teeth my father was admiring. “Tell me the fool didn’t make that joke.” His chuckle is deep and soft, and I fight my own threatening smile, despite the morbid topic.
“It’s not funny.” And I can’t allow myself to be drawn into Tyler’s easy charm again. “Did you get in touch with Don?”
His laughter dies and he smooths his expression. “That’s actually why I’m here. I don’t want Don Childs, or Frank, or anyone else.” He settles his steady gaze on me. “I want you.”
His words and that look make my breath hitch. They don’t mean what I wish they did, but it’s nice to hear all the same.
His throat bobs with a hard swallow. “For my dogs,” he amends. “I want you to be my dogs’ veterinarian. I guess I wasn’t clear enough the other day.”
“No, you were. I just …” What is my valid excuse for peddling another veterinarian on him, besides the truth, which I’m not about to spell out in painstaking, embarrassing detail?
“You just what?” he urges.
“You said you don’t want to complicate your life. Well, neither do I.” And my gut tells me that spending too much time with Tyler will complicate everything for me.