High Country Hero

by Ford, Holly

Back on the road, the tears came silently. Lennie let them, not bothering to wipe her face as they fell.

  Turning into her grandparents’ drive, she stopped the truck, making a late attempt to patch up her face before she went inside.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ In the kitchen, Lois took one look at her before passing her the tissues. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  Lennie sat down. ‘I don’t think there’s much point anymore. I don’t think there’s anything left to say.’ Nothing that her grandmother hadn’t heard a hundred times already. She didn’t know how she would have got through the last few days without Lois’s shoulder to cry on. But even a rock had to run out of patience eventually.

  ‘Mitch again?’ Lois said.

  ‘I saw him at the gas station on the way home.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Lennie blew her nose. ‘He just drove off.’

  ‘Len…’ Lois folded her lips. ‘Can you fix it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then you have to let it go.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’ That’s what hurt. How much she hated the thought of letting go.

  •

  ‘Jesus.’ Breezing into Central Vets’ reception two days later, Benji studied Lennie, his head to one side. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Lennie sighed. She couldn’t say the same. As usual, Benji was practically glowing.

  ‘Just as well I’ve come to take you out for lunch.’ He grinned, still considering her. ‘You look like you could do with a meal.’

  Lacking the will to argue, Lennie found herself in The Hard Yard picking over a salad that might as well have been made of lead.

  ‘How’s Jim?’ Benji asked, digging into a steak sandwich.

  ‘Coming right slowly,’ Lennie lied. She wasn’t sure why she was covering for him, but she’d thought it best to keep her grandfather’s fishing trip to herself. As far as she knew, everyone else at the clinic still believed he was laid up at home.

  ‘Backs can be tricky things,’ Benji said, watching her face.

  ‘Yeah.’ Half-heartedly, Lennie speared a prawn. ‘They can.’

  ‘I herniated a disc myself throwing at the South Island champs a few years back,’ Benji said. ‘Took six weeks to recover.’

  Out of nowhere, Lennie felt the beginning of a smile.

  Benji’s eyebrows rose. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. The image of Benji’s javelin run-up was embedded in her teenage brain. ‘I was just remembering how I used to watch you training at lunchtime.’

  ‘You used to watch me train?’

  ‘Every girl in the school used to watch you train.’ As Lennie suspected he knew perfectly well. ‘Come on, you must have seen us.’

  Benji grinned. ‘I thought you were sports fans.’

  Going back to stirring mesclun leaves, she barely noticed the conversation had stopped.

  ‘Things have worked out pretty well these last couple of weeks,’ Benji said. ‘Don’t you think?’

  What? In what possible universe had things worked out—Oh. Realising he was talking about VETSouth taking over the clinic’s large-animal work, Lennie made an effort to rally her thoughts.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘they have. You guys really pulled us out of a hole. I don’t know what we would have done without you.’

  ‘In a lot of ways,’ he suggested cautiously, ‘it’s been a test run of exactly what we’ve been suggesting.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lennie admitted, ‘I guess it has.’

  ‘So has it brought you any closer to making a decision about joining the team?’

  ‘It isn’t really my decision,’ she hedged.

  ‘Come on,’ Benji said, ‘we both know that’s not true. That’s why you’re here—to tell Jim what to do.’

  ‘To help him decide,’ Lennie corrected. ‘I’m not going to tell him to do anything.’

  ‘Somebody should,’ Benji said flatly. ‘Lennie, this offer can’t stay on the table forever, you know.’

  She did know. Over the last few days, ever since she’d come back to work, it had been occurring to her that VETSouth now had the goodwill they’d been attempting to buy. She and Paul had effectively forced the farmers who’d stayed loyal to Jim and Central Vets to change teams. How likely was it that all the production animal work she and Paul had handed over was going to return? Did VETSouth even need the practice anymore?

  ‘Look,’ Benji said, more gently, ‘you’ve seen how things are. How Jim is.’ He gave a small shrug of frustration. ‘And Paul…You’ve seen how we can all work together.’

  It was true. Everything he was saying was true.

  ‘It’s a good offer,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘A fair offer. Everybody wins. Even the clients.’

  ‘Benji,’ Lennie pleaded, giving up on her fork, ‘I’ve had a lot going on these last couple of weeks. I haven’t sat down and thought about things too clearly. Can we just…Can you give me some time?’

  ‘Sure.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Sure,’ he said. Locking his hands behind his head, he stretched, his eyes wandering briefly around the room. ‘Do you want another lime and soda?’

  Lennie shook her head. ‘Thanks. I’m done.’

  ‘Was that salad not good?’

  ‘No, it’s nice.’ She poked at it one more time. ‘Sorry, I’m just not that hungry, that’s all.’ Lennie looked around for Fifi. ‘I should probably get back to work.’

  ‘Speaking of food,’ Benji said, ‘there’s the Autumn Festival dinner on over in Alnwick on Saturday night. You want to go?’ ‘Sure.’ Lennie shrugged. Whatever. She didn’t have anything better to do. ‘Who else is going?’

  He laughed. ‘A fair few people, I’d say. But if you mean with me, I was planning on taking a table for two.’

  Oh shit. Lennie tried to frame some sort of response.

  ‘Is that not okay?’ Benji was looking highly amused.

  ‘No.’ Shit, shit, shit. ‘I mean, no, it’s fine.’ There was no earthly reason she shouldn’t have dinner with Benji. God forbid she might actually have a good time. ‘Saturday night?’ she finished lamely.

  ‘It starts at seven,’ Benji said, ‘so I’ll pick you up, what, about six?’

  ‘Sure,’ Lennie managed. She checked her watch. ‘Sorry. I’d really better get back.’

  ‘Go.’ He got out his wallet. ‘I’ll get this.’

  In the doorway, Lennie paused, glancing back. Had that just happened? From the bar, he shot her the vintage Benji Cooper smile. ‘See you Saturday.’

  •

  At home that night, Lennie checked her private email account. The reply she’d been expecting from her old Professor of Behavioural Medicine at Atlanta Tech had finally come through.

  I’d be honored to help Chase settle into the West, Jack Grieve had written. Here’s a list of the boarding facilities I’d recommend. Tell your friend Mitch to get in touch if there’s anything more I can do.

  Quickly, not allowing herself time to dwell, she forwarded the email to Mitch.

  Jack’s a great guy, she typed above it. Don’t be afraid to ask him for help.

  Lennie hit send. There. All done.

  She looked up at Lois, who had stopped chopping broccoli and was watching her with a furrowed brow.

  ‘Everything alright?’ her grandmother asked.

  ‘Everything’s fine.’ Lennie nodded to underline her point, the gesture rocking her slightly on her stool.

  Lois sighed. ‘Is it really?’

  Lennie jumped as her phone blipped in her hand. She glanced down at it. To her great surprise, a reply had come back from Mitch.

  Thank you, he’d written.

  Staring at the message, Lennie bit her lip hard, focusing on that sharper sting, determined not to cry.

  ‘Did you manage to make a time with Jeanette to see the house?’ Lois said gently.

  ‘Yes.’ Lennie pulled herself together. ‘Saturday. I’m meeting her there at eleven-t
hirty.’

  ‘That’s exciting,’ her grandmother suggested cautiously.

  ‘Yeah,’ Lennie said, taking the hint. ‘Yeah, it is.’ She might be about to buy her first house. The villa was the ideal project to throw herself into, the perfect way to use up all the spare time that suddenly didn’t seem her friend. Something positive to think about instead of…instead of the look in Mitch’s eyes on the gas station forecourt as he’d turned away.

  Twenty-one

  Pesh pressed her head a little deeper into Lennie’s armpit, standing stoically as Krystal pulled the final stitches from her chest.

  ‘There.’ Krystal straightened, reaching for the jar of liver treats on the recovery room’s counter. ‘All done.’ Pesh’s eyes followed Krystal’s hand. ‘That’s got to feel better, eh?’

  As a stalactite of drool hit the floor, Lennie’s pocket began to vibrate. She fumbled her phone out of her scrubs. Stan Solomon was calling her mobile? Something must be up with Peg. Lennie accepted the call, trying not to assume the worst. Maybe Stan just needed some advice. Or a new prescription.

  ‘Lennie? It’s Tess Drummond here, up at Broken Creek.’ Tess sounded a touch furtive, as if she was trying not to be overheard.

  ‘Tess,’ Lennie said. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Look, I’m going to be in town tomorrow afternoon,’ Tess said, her voice falling further. ‘I wondered if you might have time for a coffee.’

  What the hell? ‘Sure,’ Lennie said. ‘I should be able to take a break around three if you want to meet then.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Tess said.

  Pressing end, Lennie tried not to let her imagination run. This didn’t have to be about Mitch. There were any number of things Tess might want to talk to her about. It could be just business. Maybe it was about VETSouth. For god’s sake, maybe she just wanted to be friends.

  •

  Seated across the table from Tess in The Hard Yard the following day, Lennie was still trying not to jump to conclusions.

  ‘I hear Jim’s banged himself up,’ Tess said, giving a packet of sugar a thorough shake before she tore it open.

  ‘Yes,’ Lennie said politely. ‘Looks like he won’t be back at work for at least another couple of weeks.’ She watched Tess stir the sugar into her cup.

  At length, Tess put down the spoon and frowned at it for a second or two. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I know you probably don’t have much time, so I’m just going to get to the point.’ She took a breath. ‘I’m worried about Mitch.’

  The words thudded in Lennie’s stomach.

  ‘Nate doesn’t think I should be talking to you.’ Tess raised her eyes for a moment, checking Lennie’s face. ‘He says Mitch has his own way of working things out.’

  Lennie nodded.

  ‘But I’ve never seen him like this,’ Tess said, her voice low. ‘Nate says he has, years ago when Mitch first got back to the station, but all the time I’ve known him he’s been…’

  Lennie watched her struggle to find the right word.

  ‘Solid,’ Tess concluded.

  They looked at each other. Lennie opened her mouth, wondering what the hell she could say. She closed it again. She had nothing.

  ‘Things have been going so well for him,’ Tess said. ‘He’s been out there, you know? He’s flying for Mountain Rescue, doing charter work for Carr Fergusson, he’s getting a ton of ag work, the station is starting to come right…I thought he’d turned the corner.’ Tess paused. ‘Nate told you Mitch needs to take some time out every now and then, right? That he takes off up-country for a few days?’

  Lennie nodded again.

  ‘The thing is,’ Tess said, ‘he hasn’t needed to do that for over a year.’ She let it sink in. ‘And now he’s gone twice in less than a month.’

  Lennie swallowed.

  ‘Last week he cancelled a heli job for Carr.’ Tess shook her head. ‘He’s never done that. I mean, that’s just not Mitch. He doesn’t let people down.’

  ‘The accident,’ Lennie said, finding words at last. ‘The crash with the tourists last week. That must have been pretty hard on him.’

  ‘Sure,’ Tess said quickly. ‘I mean, dealing with something like that is never going to be easy for anyone.’ She fixed her eyes on Lennie. ‘But it’s not the first time it’s happened. Mitch had to lift a dead motorcyclist and a glider pilot last year. The first one knocked him about a bit, but he coped. It was nothing like this. What’s happening now, it’s all started since he…’

  Since he what? Lennie watched Tess carefully, a horrible awareness beginning to swirl in her brain as the silence continued to run.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s your fault,’ Tess said.

  But it was. It was. Lennie felt the room turning grey.

  ‘It’s just…It’s like he’s caught in some downward spiral.’ Looking away, Tess made a frustrated noise. ‘I just want to yank him out of it—you know?’

  Lennie did know. Very well. But apparently all she’d done was make everything worse.

  Tess looked back at her. ‘Nate says Mitch is the only one who can do that. We can’t force it. It’s our job to listen, not talk.’

  ‘I think,’ Lennie said slowly, ‘that Nate might be right.’

  ‘I know.’ Tess blew out her breath. ‘I know. But…Well, Mitch doesn’t show people a lot, and I didn’t know if you could see…’ She sighed again. ‘I wanted to make sure you understood that whatever’s going on between you and Mitch is having an effect.’

  ‘I can see,’ Lennie said quietly. ‘I see. But I don’t know what to do.’

  Tess was silent for a while. ‘There’s something else,’ she said.

  Not much, Lennie hoped. She wasn’t sure she could take any more.

  ‘Nate told me something Mitch said.’

  Lennie waited.

  ‘He said he didn’t want to have something to lose.’

  Lennie squeezed her eyes shut, misery pounding like a second pulse in her ears. ‘I don’t know what to do with that,’ she said, at last. She looked at Tess.

  ‘I wouldn’t either.’ Tess’s face was solemn, soft with sympathy. ‘I just thought that you should know.’

  •

  Parking the truck in her grandparents’ garage that night, Lennie sat motionless for a minute. The sense of dislocation that had come over her in The Hard Yard that afternoon was refusing to be dismissed. She’d walked back to the clinic in crisp autumn sunlight, but the Kimpton Valley had remained resolutely grey. Now, beyond the beams of the sensor lights steaming against the chill night air, it was wholly dark. And empty.

  Lennie felt a sudden longing for neon, for skyscrapers and crowds and badly lit kebab shops, a tide of people and litter and noise to lose herself and her problems in. A longing for the safe assumption that within a ten-kilometre radius there was somebody unhappier than she was.

  Getting out of the ute, she opened the back and coaxed Pesh down her new ramp, a firm grip on the dog’s lead. Sensing her mood, Pesh stuck to Lennie’s side, following without protest as they headed straight for the front door instead of the side gate. Lennie shivered, her cold fingers awkward on the latch.

  ‘You’re early.’ Lois flicked on the hall lights. She took in Lennie’s face. ‘And you’ve had a bad day.’

  Lennie tried to smile.

  ‘Go on in and get warm.’ Taking over Pesh’s lead, Lois squeezed Lennie’s arm. ‘I’ll take Pesh for a little walk.’ She looked down at the dog. ‘What do you think? Shall we go out and see Alice?’

  Lennie made her way slowly through the house. In the living room, her grandmother had the curtains drawn and the fire stoked up, the game show Lois liked to watch flickering mutely in the corner. Moving through the open double doors to the kitchen, she saw there was already something in the oven. Lennie sat on a bar stool, taking in the vase of daphne and bay on the windowsill. Behind it, she could make out her grandmother and Pesh on the soon-to-be-freezing lawn, Pesh sniffing the tussock border. Lennie looked down at the familiar counterto
p, her fingers tracing the veins of the stone. This ought to feel real. She looked up again. All of this. It ought to feel real.

  ‘Brrr.’ Lois shut the porch door behind her. ‘There’ll be some frost tonight.’ Handing Pesh’s lead back to Lennie, she shrugged off her coat. ‘Six degrees, they said on the radio.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lennie nodded. ‘I heard that too.’

  ‘Glass of wine?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Lennie made an effort to rouse herself. Just because her grandmother could still do everything didn’t mean that she should. Getting the bottle out of the fridge, Lennie set it down on the bench. As she stood staring at it, an arm arrived around her shoulders.

  ‘What’s wrong, Len?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Lennie tried not to let her face crumple, but it was no use. ‘I don’t even know why I’m here.’

  ‘You’re doing what you always do,’ Lois said gently. ‘You’re helping.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ Lennie sobbed. ‘I came to help Grandpa and he’s not even here.’ And as for the rest…

  ‘Come on.’ Lois stroked her hair. ‘I’m sure you have helped. You just can’t see how yet.’

  ‘Everybody keeps running away.’

  ‘And you bring them back.’ There was a smile in Lois’s voice.

  Lennie turned into her grandmother’s arms. ‘Grandma, please don’t go. I don’t want you to leave.’

  ‘Oh, Len. Sweetheart, shhh…’

  ‘I just really need somebody to stay with me.’

  •

  At eleven-thirty on Saturday morning, Lennie parked the Central Vets truck behind the real estate agent’s VW Touareg in the villa’s drive.

  Up close, the house looked just as good as it did from the road. Well cared-for. Loved. The old weatherboards sound and straight. Lois at her side, Lennie wandered from one graceful, airy room to the next, running a hand over the wide architraves, the mellowed timber of the mantelpieces. Four of them, just as she’d thought.

  ‘All the fireplaces still work,’ Jeanette said, leaning against one in the little sitting room beside the sun-filled kitchen. ‘You could soon block them up if you wanted to. You know, if you don’t want the draft.’ She followed Lennie back to the main bedroom.