Vetted

by K'Anne Meinel

  Fiona started to laugh as she fell back to the bed.

  Allyssa turned to look at her wife and started to laugh as well. “Now, that’s a wake-up call,” she commented.

  “I don’t suppose he would wait a few minutes?” Fiona teasingly asked her laughing wife.

  “Only a few minutes?” she teased in return, her laughter winding down to a grin.

  “I’d love to spend the morning in bed with you, baby, but we have so much to do,” she said, reaching up to tuck a stray strand of hair back behind Allyssa’s ear.

  Allyssa leaned into the hand, which she captured with her own, slightly closing her eyes for a moment, remembering the touch of the previous evening and how it had felt on her body. She hadn’t known such things were inside of her and she was so thrilled to have shared those things with Fiona. She opened her eyes to see the brunette smiling up at her broadly.

  Another, “Woof,” was heard and they both chuckled.

  “I don’t think he is going to be denied. I’ll get up and let him out,” Fiona said as she began to pull herself out of their sleeping bags.

  “No, I’ll get him,” Allyssa said at the exact same time and they bumped heads.

  “Ouch,” they both said and then started to laugh again.

  “Okay, you go first,” Fiona said, rubbing her head and falling back against the mattress, pulling the sleeping bag up.

  “You planned that,” Allyssa accused as she got out from under the warmth.

  “Of course, I did. I conspired with the dog,” she admitted, her arm going under her neck to prop her head up.

  As Allyssa hopped down to the bed of the camper, she answered, “I see how it is with you two!” She looked for the socks she had thrown off the previous night and finding them, quickly slipped them on before plodding the length of the camper to squirm around an eager dog and let him out.

  As she opened the door she looked out, amazed at the brightness of the snow that had fallen overnight. “Oh, Fey, it’s so beautiful,” she gasped as Rex hesitated only a moment before jumping out and falling through the fragile crust to his chest. He stood there stunned for a moment before galloping up and over the snow drift into another one and then another, hopping until he could get to the grass that had interesting smells he could pee on. Allyssa watched him go, almost blinded by how white the snow was.

  “Hey, you’re letting out all the heat!” Fiona warned, but she was pleased that her wife liked the view. She couldn’t wait to show her all her favorite places. Some would have to wait until spring, but she was looking forward to the ones immediately around the ranch yard.

  “Sorry,” she said, realizing how cold it really was and having to pee. She was embarrassed as she closed the door, rubbing her arms self-consciously and heading for the small cubed shower and toilet receptacle. Closing that small door, she opened the lid and sat on the cold seat, very conscious of the noise of her pee going into the tank below it. She started humming to cover up this intimacy. She could hear Fiona laughing.

  Fiona knew she couldn’t stay in bed all day, so while her wife was humming, which she found hilarious and laughed out loud about, she made the bed and began to wriggle into her jeans. By the time Allyssa got out of the bathroom, she was buttoning up her shirt.

  They did a little dance to get around each other in the enclosed, narrow space and Fiona took advantage of this time to give her wife a peck on the lips, a little hug, and a gentle grope on her ass. She was rewarded with a surprised smile as she slipped into the bathroom to take care of her own morning absolutions.

  Allyssa couldn’t believe how good she felt this morning. She felt refreshed and ready to tackle all the chores they had set for themselves. She looked for and found her clothes and began changing into them. She saw that Fiona had made the bed and smiled about that too. She was putting on her boots when Fiona finished in the bathroom.

  “Do you want me to try to make breakfast in the mobile home?” Fiona asked as she grabbed her own boots to stamp on but first she shook them out.

  “Did you shake those out for a reason?” Allyssa asked suspiciously.

  Fiona looked up in surprise. She hadn’t even realized she had done that. “Well, yeah. You never know what could crawl into your boots.”

  “Oooh, like what?”

  Fiona just shrugged, not wanting to tell her anything like might scare her off. She just grinned and shrugged again. “About breakfast?” she hinted.

  “Yes, but maybe it’s my turn?”

  “You know how to cook?”

  Allyssa started to blush and then she smiled cheerfully. “I can make cereal.”

  “Hot cereal?” Fiona asked hopefully.

  She shook her head and said, “No, cold…with milk.”

  Fiona started to laugh. “That isn’t cooking, you know.”

  “Where would I have learned to cook?” she asked. “We had a housekeeper for years and my mother would never have let me in her kitchen to learn.”

  “How the heck would you have coped if you were on your own?” she asked curiously.

  “My parents expected me to marry a man of means, one who could afford to hire a housekeeper too.”

  Fiona just shook her head. “That’s silly. Most guys your age would have just been starting out.”

  “Yeah, but in my parents’ minds, his parents were probably loaded.”

  “Do you want to learn to cook?”

  She considered it for a moment, really considered it. “Actually, I think I would like to learn.”

  “We’ll pick up some cookbooks or order some if we can’t find the basics. You’ll have to learn mountain cooking since we are higher up out here.”

  “What’s mountain cooking?” she asked, confused. Although she could see them, they weren’t in the mountains.

  “Well, the temperatures of things are different up here. It’s worse the higher up you go. It’s only a little change from what my grandmother showed me.”

  “Wow, is there anything you can’t do?” she asked, feeling inferior.

  “I can’t make a website, I don’t do brochures, and I hate doing the accounting, but I’ve got a partner to help with all of that,” she smiled.

  Allyssa blushed becomingly, but returned the smile over the compliments.

  They were soon back in the mobile home. Mama Cat had made herself at home and was dozing away from the kittens for the moment on top of the pile of things they had stacked in the living room.

  “We have to give her a name,” Fiona said as she rubbed the cat’s head and received a purr in response.

  “Mama Cat isn’t going to do?”

  Fiona laughed and shook her head and then got up and washed her hands. She got out a frying pan and reached into the cupboard for some instant pancake mix. She quickly mixed up some water with a cup of the mix and soon had pancakes frying.

  “How’d you do that so quickly?” Allyssa asked, amazed. She was petting the mama cat herself now and the cat was raising its chin, indicating where it wanted to be rubbed, purring loudly.

  “This stuff is easy. It’s the syrup that’s hard.”

  “You don’t buy the stuff off the shelf?”

  “Oh, heaven’s no! We make our own out here.”

  “You have maple trees?” she was impressed and then frowned, feeling like she was being conned somehow. She’d only seen pine trees.

  “No, we have something better,” and she pulled out a little bottle that said, ‘Mapeline’ on the label.

  “What’s that?”

  “A flavoring. You make a syrup with water, sugar, and a few drops of this. Voila! You have instant syrup. It’s easier than buying that stuff off the shelf and probably just as bad for you.”

  Allyssa liked her explanation as she watched her start another burner, put a half a cup of water in and wait for it to boil. She added a cup of sugar, which seemed like far too much, and just as it was boiling she took it off the burner. Next, she added a few drops of her Mapeline and stirred it in. It quickly
gave off a heady aroma of fresh syrup.

  “Here,” she said, handing Allyssa a plate with the first three pancakes on it, then handing her a fork and a knife. “Do you want butter on your pancakes?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I really should wash,” she said as she got up with the plate and looked for somewhere to put it. The cat was laying on their ‘table,’ so she couldn’t put it there.

  “I’ll guard it,” Fiona offered, taking the plate back and putting it on the small countertop.

  Allyssa quickly washed her hands of any cat dander and then before sitting down she opened the refrigerator and took out the small container of orange juice. Grabbing one of the cups they had used, she poured exactly half in it, handed that to Fiona, and then drank from the bottle.

  “We’re really roughing it,” Fiona commented as she put an additional pancake on Allyssa’s plate and poured the last of the mix into the pan making three for herself.

  “You can have the extra,” she quickly offered, seeing the uneven count.

  “Naw, mine are bigger,” she pointed out.

  Allyssa saw that and dug into her original three. They’d sopped up a lot of the syrup already and tasted very buttery on their own. It was a delicious, hot breakfast…and quick.

  “I’ll do the dishes,” she offered when they were done.

  “Good, I hate doing dishes,” Fiona smiled.

  “Well, it’s only fair since you cooked.”

  Fiona sat back on the couch and examined their pile of goods. It would all have to be gone through, including the things in the cabin, but for now, she was content. She stayed quiet as she looked around the dirty mobile home and the things they would have to clean up. Then, remembering the cat, she fed her and put the water dish up to be filled.

  “All done,” Allyssa said a while later as she handed Fiona the filled water dish.

  “Ready to go into town?”

  “Should I be excited?”

  Fiona laughed as they both struggled into their winter jackets. “It’s not much. You’d have to go farther afield if you really want a ‘big’ town,” she made quotation marks in the air.

  “What constitutes a big town out here?” she asked as she followed her outside, making sure to close the door behind her. There stood Rex, shivering and waiting for them patiently.

  “Oh, you big lug. We forgot about you while we had a hot breakfast, didn’t we?” Fiona commiserated. She debated letting him in the mobile home with the cat there. They hadn’t worked out their territory yet and she knew it might be a mistake to leave a mother cat with a big dog like Rex. One of them would kill the other and she didn’t want that. “We might have to go to Pendletown, which is up by the interstate for some things like the registration on the vehicles or our driver’s license change.”

  “Is that far?”

  “Far enough,” she sighed, sick of driving already. “Still, if we do it all in one day we can get a lot done.”

  “You do know it’s Friday, right?”

  “It is?” she asked, surprised. She had lost track.

  Allyssa nodded. “Things may close early?”

  “Well, let’s get this show on the road. Grab something for Rex to eat in the car and I’ll grab his lead.” She headed for where she last saw it hanging when they had taken it off him the night before. Snow had covered it up.

  “We’ll take both trucks?” Allyssa asked before carefully opening the door to the mobile home and grabbing the dry dog food on the cushion. They’d gone through one of these smaller bags fast. Rex was almost full grown, but he still had a lot of filling out to do. He often looked like he was all legs.

  “Yeah, that way if we decide to go up to Pendletown we can get the license and registration taken care of right away for both vehicles. Better grab our marriage license too, that is if you still want to change your name?”

  Allyssa blushed, but nodded her head, smiling to hide the blush. She was pleased to change her name to Herriot… She was really pleased about it.

  Fiona couldn’t help but smile in return.

  The ride down the dirt driveway took a while, and with the fresh snow they both had to use four-wheel drive. With the trailer much lighter behind the Jeep, Allyssa had no trouble at all as she tried to keep her tracks in the ones made by Fiona’s truck. Rex happily crunched his breakfast on the passenger seat beside her, occasionally thumping his tail as he looked up at her adoringly. Allyssa kept her eyes on the drive, not sure what it might look like under the snow and sure she might go over the edge of an embankment or hill if she didn’t pay attention. She would have liked to look around at the scenery, the little she saw at the ranch inviting further curiosity, but she didn’t dare. Fiona took a different route than the one they had come in on, this time heading northwest, and they were soon on a paved road. It was a narrow road, but at least it was paved. This led to a two-lane road and eventually, a little town. Allyssa saw the little green sign that read ‘Sweetwater’ and smiled happily. They had arrived.

  It wasn’t much to look at: a group of houses, a post office, a bank, a market, an outfitters’ store, a gas station, and a few buildings she wasn’t sure of. One of them read ‘Town Hall.’ She followed Fiona to the post office but parked along the street when her wife went into the parking lot. She didn’t want to get stuck with the trailer on the back.

  “Hey, do you want to forward your mail from your parents’ place?” Fiona asked as she came up to her window.

  Allyssa followed her inside and they both filled out slips to forward the mail to Sweetwater. “Don’t we have to get a box?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Fiona answered. “Leave that part blank,” she indicated the actual address. Then they got into line—no one else was there to form a line with—and a woman of about sixty came to the desk.

  “May I help– Why, Fiona! Fiona Herriot, I do declare! What are you doing in our neck of the woods?”

  “I’ve come back to live here, Margaret. I’d like to introduce you to my wife. This is Allyssa,” she said, drawing her forward.

  Margaret only hesitated a moment before holding out her hand to the younger woman. “Welcome to Sweetwater, honey. I shore hope you are going to like it here.”

  “Thank you, I hope to. So far it’s very beautiful.”

  “Well, ain’t that the truth. We got plenty of beautiful to go around. Now, what can I do for you two ladies today?”

  “I’d like to know if my grandparents’ box is still available, so we can do a change of address,” Fiona said, holding up her card.

  “Well, let me check,” she said and went into the back. She was back after only a minute or so. “Yep, we still got their box going and there’s been mail piling up. Guess no one’s sent it back for the deceased,” she lowered her voice respectfully. “I shore was sad to hear what happened to them, Fiona.”

  “Thank you, Margaret. I think I saw you at the funeral.”

  The woman nodded. “I’ll just change their card to your name and you pay the fee on the box, okay?”

  “Okay, sounds good. And add Allyssa’s name to it.”

  “Will do,” she said as she went to a small file drawer and began to rummage through it.

  “Add PO Box 100,” Fiona told Allyssa, pointing to the line she had left blank. She also told her the zip code she hadn’t filled in.

  “If you’ll just fill out one of these new cards I’ll go get your grandparents’ mail. We can go through it and send some of it back for you.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Margaret. Thank you.” She began writing in her doctor’s hand.

  “Shouldn’t I fill that out so it’s legible?” Allyssa whispered.

  Fiona grinned and slid the card to her wife. “How did you read all the doctors’ writing when you worked in the clinic? We all write terribly.”

  “Don’t you take a class in school for that? Doctors’ Writing 101?” she teased in return.

  They both were giggling as they finished up, but Fiona sobered up quickly
when she saw the pile of mail Margaret brought out for them to go through.

  “I’ll just throw out this bulk mail crap,” Margaret started to say and reached for the pile of magazines.

  “Hey, wait,” Allyssa said eagerly. “I want anything to do with gardening that her grandmother subscribed to.”

  “Good idea,” Fiona answered as she looked through the envelopes. Some were condolence cards to the family and some were things she would have to look at back at the ranch. The circulars she gave back to Margaret. “I hope you recycle that stuff,” she indicated the coupons for the local pharmacy in the next town.

  “You’d be surprised how much of this stuff gets thrown out,” she answered pertly.

  “I’m going to want to add my new business to this box to get mail here too,” Fiona told her.

  “What new business?” she asked, curious.

  “I’m going to open a large animal practice and use the schoolin’ that my grandparents insisted on.”

  “That’s right, you’re Doctor Herriot now, aren’t you?”

  “Yep,” she answered proudly. “My grandparents even came down to see me graduate. I’m so glad they lived to see that.”

  “You’ve been a vet for some time now, ain’t ya?”

  Fiona nodded. “I’ve been working down in Denver to save up for my own practice. Coming home just makes sense.”

  “Well, I’ll start tellin’ people,” she promised.

  “Thank you, Margaret. Okay, that’s it. We’ll take all this,” she indicated the pile she had separated out including all the seed catalogs and flower catalogs her wife had requested. She slid the slips they had filled out across the counter to Margaret.

  “Okay, here’s the keys. We had to rekey when it weren’t paid for. Will you be paying by check?”

  Fiona nodded and reached into her jacket for her checkbook. “That reminds me,” she turned to include Allyssa in the conversation. “We need to set up a couple of bank accounts here in town.”