Night Tide

by Anna Burke

  “Why?” said Lillian.

  “It’s seven o’clock on a Friday night. So much for that specialty nine to five.”

  “Jealous?” Lillian still hadn’t looked over at her.

  “Of exotics? Hardly.”

  Lillian swiveled in her chair. A strand of hair had come loose from her bun, and her eyes flashed. Ivy felt the familiar flare of satisfaction that came with getting under Lillian’s skin.

  “I’m surprised you have so few letters behind your name,” said Lillian.

  “I wanted to be able to fit it on a vanity license plate.”

  “Does it go nicely with your Porsche?”

  “A Porsche? On these roads?”

  “BMW, then. You like those three letter acronyms.”

  “Still driving stick?” Ivy asked.

  Lillian flushed. She’d struggled with the old stick shift Volvo she’d driven at school, twice stalling out in front of Ivy.

  “Some of us had to buy our own cars.”

  Ivy laughed, which she knew would infuriate Lillian further. “You’re not still driving that thing, are you?”

  “No.” Lillian turned back to her computer. Her perfect posture radiated fury. Pushing her further was a bad idea; she didn’t need an assistant overhearing her mocking a colleague. If she stopped, however, she’d be left to finish up her paperwork and go home to her couch, which, while cozy beside the woodstove, suddenly seemed unbearably lonely.

  “Let me guess. You drive a Prius now.”

  “A Prius? On these roads?” Lillian mimicked Ivy’s earlier statement, and she couldn’t help grinning.

  “Jeep then.” She’d seen one parked in the lot.

  “She drives a Subaru normally,” said Georgia. Ivy registered her return with a sideways glance.

  “Normally?”

  “Her car’s in the shop.”

  “Georgia—” said Lillian.

  “She didn’t hit another pedestrian, did she?” said Ivy, unable to suppress her smirk.

  Lillian made a choked sound that might have been a curse.

  “Dr. Lee hit a pedestrian?”

  “She claims it was an accident,” said Ivy. “But I was pretty badly bruised.”

  Georgia blinked.

  “Dr. Holden cut me off.” Lillian’s voice rose the way it did when she was frustrated. Ivy’s stomach tightened at the color peaking in her cheeks. Getting hit had been worth it for the brief moment of concern in Lillian’s eyes before she’d realized Ivy was mostly fine.

  “I believe pedestrians always have the right of way.”

  “In crosswalks.”

  “Dr. Lee,” said Georgia, looking back and forth between them with a mixture of amusement and concern, “I got that blood pressure.”

  “Right. Thank you.” Lillian pushed back from the counter and stalked away, leaving her alone with her fading smile. That devolved quickly. Was it possible for them to fight about absolutely every topic under the sun? And why did she have to be such a goddamn snob whenever Lillian was around? What did it matter what kind of car Lillian drove?

  “At least my parents didn’t have to buy my way into college.” Old words. Old wounds. She input her treatments with her mind still half on the conversation and was only vaguely aware of what was going on around her. Georgia emerged from the room and carried on a hushed conversation on her cell phone.

  “. . . in the hospital? Ah, mami . . . Dios Santo.”

  Hospital?

  Georgia stood in the corner with her perfectly pressed curls wrapped around her hand as she visibly tried to keep herself together.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked the technician.

  Georgia slipped her phone back in her pocket and took a shaky breath. “My mother’s in the hospital.”

  “Go,” said Ivy, getting to her feet. “I can cover for you.”

  “Dr. Holden—”

  “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “Thank you.” Georgia wiped her eyes and fumbled in her scrub pockets for a vial of medication, which she reshelved, and then took off. Shawna and the receptionist had already left for the night, which meant, Ivy realized too late, she was alone in the clinic with Lillian. The muffled sound of Lillian’s voice penetrated the otherwise silent hospital. She returned to her work with a new tension in her shoulders.

  “Where’s Georgia?” Lillian asked fifteen minutes later.

  “I sent her home.”

  “You what?”

  “Her mother’s in the hospital. It seemed like the decent thing to do. I’ll help you with whatever you need.”

  “You’ll—” Lillian broke off and ran her hands through her hair, further upsetting her bun. “Is her mother all right?”

  “I didn’t ask. She seemed too upset.”

  “Right.” Lillian looked around. “Well, I’m done here. Who’s up front?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Right,” Lillian said again. “Okay.”

  “Do you know how to check clients out?”

  “I’ve been here three years. Yes. I know how to check a patient out, Ivy.”

  Ivy bit back a retort. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No.”

  “What was wrong with Benji?”

  “What, are you a specialist now?” Lillian ripped off her white coat and flung it over the back of her computer chair.

  “I just—”

  “It’s bad enough you’re here. Don’t poach my clients. Don’t tell me how to do my job. Just—” She exhaled sharply.

  “How am I poaching your clients?”

  “You’re seeing small animal cases. My cases.”

  “I was hired to see some of your cases.”

  “You were hired for large animal. Nobody said anything to me about an additional small animal veterinarian.”

  That’s because it was part of my contract negotiation, despite the listing. She’d been firm on that point. She needed a position with flexibility, in case the progression of her disease sped up. Shame boiled in her gut.

  “Perhaps Dr. Watson thought you needed case relief,” she said, for owning up to the truth was never going to be an option. Not with Lillian.

  “I don’t need case relief.” Lillian was breathing hard. “What I need is for you—”

  “Lillian.” Ivy said her name sharply, hoping to cut her off before she finished that sentence. “Walls are thin.”

  Lillian glanced at the wall dividing them from Benji and his owners, and the expression on her face should have struck Ivy down with avenging lightning. It didn’t.

  “I swear to god, Ivy.”

  “Do you need a ride home?”

  “What?” Lillian’s glare faltered in confusion.

  “Your car’s in the shop. I asked if you needed a ride home,” Ivy repeated.

  “Georgia offered—” She paused. “I’ll call Morgan.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You’re on my way. I’ll drop you off.”

  The glare returned full-force. “I would honestly rather walk.”

  “Lil—”

  “Please shut up so I can do my job.”

  Ivy shut up. Lillian’s fingers jabbed the keyboard violently as she typed up her discharge letter, and Ivy watched her, hating herself for antagonizing her and unable to resist admiring the way Lillian’s nostrils flared with anger and the tight, upright set of her shoulders, as if her anger was a solid thing Ivy could reach out and touch. Back in Colorado, she’d thought overcoming this dynamic would be easy. They were older, presumably wiser, and if nothing else, professionals; squabbling like children should have been beneath them.

  “Let me give you a ride home,” she said quietly when Lillian’s fingers slowed. “It’s ridiculous for you to call Morgan when you’re on my way.”

  “Fine.” Lillian didn’t look at her, which gave her another opportunity to stare at her profile. Light from the computer screen lit the planes of her cheeks and the stray pieces of hair that brushed the curve of her neck.

  I w
ouldn’t want anyone else as my enemy.

  In truth, she hadn’t thought of Lillian as her enemy in years. She understood now what that hatred had always been: part jealousy, part resentment, and part desire.

  Ivy liked people who professed not to care. She went for those who, like her, had grown up aware of the advantages their privilege gave them and were neither ashamed nor afraid to use it. Yachts, trust funds, summer homes and apartments abroad. What fun could be had in constantly being reminded she’d done nothing to deserve her social status, that her grandparents and then her parents had invested in oil, that her money was stained with the blood and corruption and the corpulent weight of the fossil fuel industry? Lillian, with her righteous poverty, her scholarships, her secondhand clothes—Ivy had hated wanting her, because the judgment in Lillian’s gaze raised too many questions.

  • • •

  Lillian managed to check out her patient, cursing both the computer system and Georgia for sending home the receptionist as she struggled to remember how to put in the charges. Why did medical software have to be so damn complicated? She didn’t need another reminder of how little she actually controlled. When Benji and his owners had at last departed, she braced herself on the desk with her hands splayed against the slightly greasy surface.

  I am not this person, she told herself. She was calm. She was a woman who grew plants and loved dogs and running in the evenings, not someone who raged at her coworker and fantasized about slashed tires and revenge. Then again, Ivy had to have an ulterior motive for her generosity. She always did. Being alone in a car with her was like walking straight into her jaws. When was the last time she’d been alone with Ivy? Years, at least. There had been that night—no. She refused to think of it, especially right now.

  “All set?”

  Ivy was watching her. Lillian felt her eyes and gathered her resolve before turning to face her. Ivy rested her shoulder against the wall. Her face looked washed out and tired beneath the clinic’s harsh fluorescence, and her high cheekbones cast dark shadows. That somehow angered her still further. How dare Ivy look tired. How dare she look human, when she was so much easier to hate in her golden, flawless, vengeful state.

  “Yeah,” she said, aware of the distance between their bodies in the same way she’d always been. It was the awareness she felt around fractious animals, conscious they might bite at any moment, and it was the awareness she imagined a predator might feel around a particularly dangerous prey; the wolf, circling the elk, waiting for a sign of weakness with one eye on the deadly antlers and the other on its hamstrings. She half wanted to growl.

  This is not you.

  Isn’t it, though? Another thought she would deal with later. Or never. She stalked past Ivy, noting the scent of her perfume beneath the smells of horse and hay, something out of her price range, to be sure, with undertones of rose, and she shrugged into her jacket.

  Rain still fell. She heard it battering the roof, though the winds had died down since yesterday, and the temperature hovered just above freezing. Ivy pulled on her own coat, grabbed her shoulder bag, and led the way out of the clinic.

  She paused to shut off the lights and lock up. When she turned around in the dark evening, Ivy’s blond hair had been whipped out of its braid by a lingering gust, and she was standing by a dark pickup truck.

  She balked. “I thought you said you drove a BMW.”

  “You said I drove a BMW,” said Ivy. “This is my baby.”

  The Dodge Ram—diesel, with those extra wheels in the back she found ridiculous—hulked in the lot. She’d seen it before, now that she thought about it, but had assumed it belonged to a client or one of the techs. She couldn’t tell what color it was in the dark. Maybe blue or gray. Regardless, it was a behemoth.

  “Compensating for something?” she said as Ivy opened the passenger door for her. The considerate gesture triggered alarm bells.

  “Yeah. The weight of a horse trailer. I used it on the job in Colorado, and for Freddie.”

  “You still have Freddie?” Lillian hauled herself into the cab and breathed in a mixture of barn and pine air freshener. Not the cheap kind, but something that legitimately smelled like walking into an evergreen forest.

  “Of course. Don’t sound so shocked.”

  “I just figured he’d be too old to compete,” she said as she sank into the leather seat. Her own car was an appropriate distance from the ground, not the level of a small skyscraper. Ivy fumbled with her keys. She seemed to be having difficulty getting them into the ignition.

  “I don’t toss my animals out when they get old.” The heat in Ivy’s voice warmed Lillian.

  Back in familiar territory.

  “Just clothes?”

  “I like variety.”

  “And waste.”

  Ivy finally managed to fit the key and turn the engine over. It rumbled to life with a roar, followed by music.

  “Bruce Springsteen?” Lillian said. “That’s so basic, Ivy.”

  To her surprise, Ivy laughed. “He’s sexy.”

  “He is not.”

  “Listen to this one.” Ivy skipped a few tracks and began to sing along to ‘Thunder Road.’ Her voice was low and slightly raspy, different from her speaking voice, and Lillian stilled in her seat. Bruce Springsteen’s voice faded as she concentrated on Ivy’s. Hot damn, she imagined Stormy saying. Girl can sing.

  “See?” Ivy said.

  “Still basic,” said Lillian, but her throat felt dry and heat coiled in her stomach.

  “I am basic. Do you still listen to classical?”

  “Yes,” said Lillian, surprised Ivy remembered. “Among other things.”

  “Like what? I’ll put it on.”

  “Brandi Carlile.”

  “So gay,” Ivy said without malice. She switched the music and turned it down, and Lillian pushed aside an unexpected twinge of regret.

  “I didn’t know you could sing.”

  “Me? I can’t sing. Didn’t you just hear me?”

  “You—” Lillian cut herself off before she complimented Ivy Holden. It didn’t matter that Ivy’s voice was slightly off-key. There was something about its huskiness that sent chills down her spine, and that was not a place she was willing to go. “You’re not terrible.”

  “My mother put me in voice lessons for years. She’d be thrilled to hear that. You still play piano?”

  “Not very often.” How do you know I play piano?

  Ivy put the truck in gear. “Where do you live?”

  She explained how to get to 16 Bay Road and marveled at how little she felt the potholes as Ivy pulled out of the lot.

  “Lil,” Ivy said as the stark outlines of leafless trees flickered past, “I didn’t come here to fuck with you.”

  “I’m not that egotistical.”

  “No, I just—” Ivy broke off. Lillian watched her profile. Ivy’s classical looks summed up everything about her: privilege. Women like Ivy got what they wanted, always. “Can we—” Ivy faltered again, and Lillian saw her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

  “Can we what?” She thought she knew where Ivy was going, but she’d be damned if she helped her get there. She’d fallen for this charade once before.

  “Can we call a truce?”

  “I don’t know, Ivy, can we?” She heard the bitterness in her voice and wished she could be less transparent.

  This time, Ivy’s laugh was humorless. “Could we try?”

  She didn’t answer her immediately. Instead, she thought about what a truce might look like. She couldn’t picture it. They’d only ever fought, in one way or another.

  “I guess. What do you want to do, come up with a safe word for when you piss me off?”

  “A safe word?” Ivy took her eyes off the road to meet Lillian’s, and she hated the thrill that look sent through her.

  “A joke, Ivy.”

  “You sure?”

  Damnit. The coy undertone slid into her bloodstream like a needle, promising the kind of high tha
t would take part of her with it when it faded. One of the many things she hated about Ivy was how much control Ivy seemed to have over Lillian’s composure. She wielded it like a weapon, and Lillian was not about to let herself get cut again.

  “Fine. Why not?” she said, deciding that playing along would show Ivy how little she cared.

  “Okay. Pick one.”

  “You pick.”

  “It was your idea.”

  The name of Stormy’s beer and Angie’s imaginary nation slipped from her lips. “Trillium.”

  “Trillium? What is that?”

  “A flower.”

  “Trillium.” Ivy repeated the word. “I like it.”

  “Ivy,” she asked, still thinking of Angie’s comic, which she hadn’t been able to throw away, “why are you here?”

  Ivy took her time answering. “I wanted to be closer to my family. Our summer home is off the coast.”

  Summer home. Obviously Ivy had a summer home. Her family probably had several, as well as memberships to ski lodges in the Alps and country clubs and all the other trappings that came with wealth. It occurred to her for the thousandth time, as they sat in silence listening to the sound of the tires crunching dead leaves and music wafting from the speakers, that Ivy Holden didn’t have to work. She certainly didn’t need to be in a backwater town like Seal Cove getting her hands dirty in a barn. People like Ivy belonged in boardrooms and behind closed doors, making the decisions that excluded people like Lillian from the table.

  And killing the planet. There was always that.

  “It’s winter,” she said, pushing her resentment down. “Is your family still here?”

  “No. My sister is in Boston, though.”

  She wondered if Ivy had any friends in the area, and then decided she didn’t care. “This is me,” she said as the lights of the farmhouse came into view. Ivy turned into the drive and put the truck in park but did not kill the engine. Lillian put her hand on the door handle, then paused. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “No problem.”

  She wanted to say something else, but she didn’t know what, and so she stared at Ivy in silence. Ivy gave her a small smile. It was unlike her usual mocking one, and Lillian wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  “Bye, Ivy.”

  “See you around.”