by Nicole Snow
There’s no choice. I don’t have time to handle the volume The Menagerie gets alone, and Ember conducted herself admirably today with the Friday flood.
She did her job, between tripping over her own feet and nearly walking into a wall once or twice.
I’m not sure how this girl has survived to adulthood.
Or how she hasn’t nearly killed herself working with animals, but it’s almost like the moment she’s got someone’s pet in her hands, there’s magic.
It soothes her.
Calms her.
It’s interesting to watch how she loses her shakiness and unsteadiness, her lack of coordination and her jumpiness. Those blue eyes focus, warm, completely locked on whatever beast is in her care.
Considering how few job prospects and even fewer potential candidates there are in a one-horse town like Heart’s Edge, I can’t afford to lose her.
Hell, I can’t afford to scare her off, either.
I sigh, shaking my head, tempering the sharp words on the tip of my tongue. “No more clients after closing time, Ms. Delwen,” I say. “Unless it’s a true emergency, tell them to come back in the morning.”
“I...of course, Doctor, I’m sorry.” She ducks her head, tucking a lock of platinum blond hair – nearly white, soft and shining in the light to make a luminous halo around her face – behind her ear. “She was just really insistent.”
Fuck. She’s rather like that. I’m quite aware, thank you very much.
But I keep my thoughts to myself, and instead brush past her to hold open the door to the waiting room. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
She blinks, darting me a quick, wide-eyed look, then glancing away.
Is this girl blushing? Can my day get any worse?
Apparently, it can, because her cheeks turn lively pink, her lashes lowering. I hope to every god in heaven she hasn’t taken Fuchsia’s barbed words to heart about my supposedly lecherous intentions.
“O-oh, um...” she stammers. “You don’t have to do that! I’ll be fine.”
I hold a sigh, still grabbing the door. “Heart’s Edge may be a small town, but we do live in interesting times, and you’re still a young woman on her own after dark.” When she still hesitates, I add, “I’m leaving anyway. Whatever computer work you have left can wait.”
That seems to be enough to convince her. She nods, biting her lip, leaving it wet and gleaming. “Right. Sure. Okay. Let me just get my bag.”
She scurries into the little closet that doubles as a locker room, then emerges with a petite pale green duffel bag embroidered with blue flowers. Slinging it over her shoulder, she glances at me without quite making eye contact, then ducks through the door and past me, her body lightly brushing against mine.
She’s so small. So fragile. She barely comes up to my ribs, and the bones of her wrists and collarbones are delicate against pale skin.
Perhaps that fragility, that delicacy, are why I feel the need to escort her into the descending evening.
I follow her out into the parking lot where she climbs into a little sea green Audi and offers me a small, shy smile. “I’m good now. Thanks. See you in the morning?”
“Of course, Ms. Delwen.”
“Ember,” she says softly. “You can call me Ember.”
“Ember,” I agree, if only to keep the peace. Then she smiles brilliantly, that soft pink blush returning, bringing color to her ivory cheeks. I’m on the verge of having to look the hell away before that smile makes my blood lava.
“I won’t ask your first name,” she says. “But I hope it’s okay to call you Doc?”
I only nod my head once and turn away.
At this point, to the entire town of Heart’s Edge, “Doc” is my name.
Guess I prefer it that way.
Better to let the man known as Gray Caldwell fade away forever, into the howling ghosts of my past.
Just as I unlock and open my own older Ford truck, there’s this wheezing, sputtering gasp from behind me.
Ember’s car.
Along with a litany of shoot, darn, heck, and oh nos coming from the open driver’s side window as she gives it another go, only for it to fail.
Just fucking lovely.
Another dead car, and another damsel in distress. That’s what ended with my friend Warren getting married not that long ago.
Seems to be a pattern around here.
If I didn’t know better from firsthand experience, I’d start to think Heart’s Edge was one of those strange little towns where gravity stopped working and cars mysteriously stalled in the middle of the road; where watches lost time and people saw strange lights in the sky, while mysterious military vehicles moved in and out of town driven by nameless men who are never seen again.
But I know the real truth about Heart’s Edge.
And I can promise you, it’s not aliens.
The rest, though, is definitely sinister enough to warrant a mention or two on Coast to Coast AM by some crank caller who’ll never be believed.
I turn back, watching her for a few seconds as she tries the key again and again.
This shouldn’t be my responsibility – except she is.
Besides being my new hire, she’s a young woman alone in a strange town, having only moved here three days ago. She told me she’d only been to Heart’s Edge a few times before in the interview.
I didn’t ask why or what could make her pack up shop and move to a place like this. Most people don’t even know this town exists, but she apparently has family here. In fact, the only thing I know about her is that she’s related to Felicity Randall, owner of The Nest, which serves up the coffee that fuels most of the town.
I don’t need to know anything else.
“You’ll flood the engine,” I say, stepping closer. “Stop. Let’s look under the hood, and I’ll give you a jump.”
She lets go of the key with a troubled look, peeking through the window at me. “What if the jump doesn’t work?”
“It’ll work,” I promise.
It’s got to. We both need a break after the day we’ve had.
It doesn’t work.
Not even after stripping out of my lab coat, rolling up my sleeves, and spending the next twenty minutes ratcheting about under the hood. I’ve checked the hoses and gaskets. Everything is properly connected, nothing slipped or burst or leaking. No puddles under the front tires.
I think I’ve brought dogs back from the brink of death far more easily than this.
Hooking up her battery to mine and trying a jump? Just results in more wheezing, coughing, and sputtering.
Only some of it’s the engine, after I get a face full of belching black smoke.
After the fourth try, I have to concede defeat. Straightening, I brush at the grease on my forearms and soot on my jaw. “You’ll have to call the garage in the morning. I can give you a ride home.”
“A ride?” She clutches at the strap of her bag. She’s been standing there watching me silently the entire time, tiny inside the lab coat that nearly dwarfs her elfin frame. “You don’t have to do that, Doc. I can just call an Uber.”
“This is Heart’s Edge, Ember. We don’t have regular taxi service, let alone ride shares.” I almost want to smile – almost. “When everything’s in walking distance, you don’t need a cab.”
She blinks. “But...it’s miles to my place. That’s not walking distance.”
“It is in a mountain town.” I pull the passenger side door of my truck open. “Come on.”
After hesitating – she’s so timid, this tiny nightingale of a woman with her dainty, darting movements – she finally climbs up in my truck and settles in the passenger seat. I take my place behind the wheel and lean over to fetch some napkins from the glove compartment.
When my wrist brushes the denim over her knees, she makes a soft sound, clutching her bag tighter in her lap, then holding perfectly still until I pull back and wipe at the grease on my hands.
“So where are you staying?”
I ask.
“Oh, for right now, I’m at the Charming Inn,” she says. “I’m there until I can get a place of my own. My cousin tipped me off that off-season rentals are actually cheaper than an apartment right now.”
“Ah, Charming. Good choice.”
I’m suddenly even more glad I hadn’t left her to her own devices or in a stranger’s hands. The Inn is a few miles outside town and off the beaten path, down a lonely stretch of highway where no young woman should ever walk alone.
“Buckle your seat belt,” I say.
She obliges with fumbling fingers, hands that had been so steady on the animals she handled today suddenly turn nervous and unsure. I wait until I’m sure she’s secure before starting my truck and backing out of the lot, taking to the main road that’ll lead us to the highway and the inn.
Silence is king. For her it’s a nervous silence, her fingers always plucking at her bag.
For me, silence is the norm. Preferable. I don’t know when I stopped talking more than I need to or when I came to have so little to say.
Maybe when I knew certain words out of my mouth would have to be redacted, the secrets that surround this small town smothered with my voice.
We’ve just made the turnoff from Main onto the highway, chasing the twin spots of my headlights down the yellow-striped highway, when she speaks. “So, um, are you okay?”
I arch a brow, glancing at her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just that woman. With Baxter. And then dealing with my car after that...” Ember’s looking out the window, her brows drawn together in a worried line, her pink little mouth soft with concern. “It seemed like she upset you. Like you knew her.”
“You spoke with her as much as I did,” I deflect. “She was a client. Apparently, new to town. She mentioned moving. Why would that upset me?”
“I don’t know.” She trails off, her eyes narrowing before she ducks her head, tucking her hair behind one ear with a self-deprecating little smile. “Ignore me. I fuss over everything. I guess I just thought maybe...”
“You thought?”
“That you might be in some kind of trouble,” she whispers. “That you might need help. Ridiculous, I know.”
“And how would you help me?” I retort before I can stop myself, then swear softly under my breath.
It’s instinct. This need to shove any implications of trouble, of history, of past problems away from me as quickly as possible.
Trouble is, those problems might not stay buried where they belong much longer.
I don’t know why Fuchsia’s in town.
Frankly, I don’t care. I just need her to get the hell out.
And I also don’t need someone as young as Ember Delwen getting wrapped up in the disaster Fuchsia inevitably brings.
If you could make a human being bad news incarnate, Fuchsia would do a mighty fine job.
And I can’t shake the sense of foreboding that trouble is about to return to Heart’s Edge, hot on Fuchsia Delaney’s heels.
I expect Ember to retreat into silence. Instead, she smiles a strange, sad, wistful smirk that shadows her meek face. “I guess you’re right. What could I do for someone like you?”
“Someone like me? And what am I like?”
She shakes her head slightly. “It’s nothing.”
“No, Ember. Do enlighten me.”
Damn it. There’s that cold, cutting edge to my voice again. I can’t stop it. Not after I was ambushed by a monster today.
That’s got to be why this sweet girl gets under my skin.
Maybe why I care what she thinks of someone like me, and how she might see me.
She takes a shaky breath, peeking at me from the corner of her eye, watching me through the windswept tumble of her hair. She’s all natural like a flower child, letting her hair grow wild and free without any particular style. There’s a softness to it, to her, that makes her seem like this unspoiled thing waiting to be plucked.
Sullied, if she gets too close to me.
Defiled.
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything bad.” Again, she bites that pink lower lip. A terrible distraction I can’t let pull me from the road. “It’s just...you know, Doc. All those women waiting for you...”
“They were waiting for me because I’m the vet, and their pets needed to be seen.”
That strange smile flickers across her lips again. “Their pets were fine, Dr. Caldwell. Every last one of them.”
“Better than being sick. Are you implying our clients have designs on me, Ember?”
She makes a soft, unhappy sound, then looks out the window again. “I’m sorry,” she nearly whispers. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I frown. I don’t get her. I don’t understand this quiet sense of unrest hovering around her, like a delicate shawl draped over her slim shoulders.
And I shouldn’t ask this, but I do anyway.
“Ember?” I murmur. “What’s really bothering you?”
Silence. Silence, then another trembling breath, her lashes dipping downward. “Arielle, I guess. Jake’s owner was there to see you, and you had to defend me in front of her. Because I was that useless and incompetent.”
“Hardly.” I frown. “You did a fine job, and I refused to let her disrespect the expertise of one of my employees.”
“What expertise?” she answers, with a touch of unexpected bitterness. “I’m barely out of college, and barely have my vet tech license. I’m nothing. Not yet.”
I’m nothing.
I’ve never heard two words said with such heartfelt conviction.
And I wonder exactly what made her believe them.
“I wouldn’t have hired you if you were nothing,” I tell her. “Your resume, including your apprenticeships, spoke quite well for you. I need someone I can trust to work without endless supervision and constant shepherding. You’ve already proven capable on your first day. I can’t have my clients trying to sidestep you to run to me for every tiny thing when you’re perfectly capable of handling them on your own, simply due to their own...biases.”
I bite my tongue when it wants to say desires. I’m not stupid. She’s more right than she knows, but I’ll hardly just admit it. Because I’ve been snapping at my buddy, Warren, for years when he calls my clients 'groupies,' and if he ever heard me give it a shred of truth, I’d never hear the end of it.
I half expect a deflection from Ember, some self-deprecating comment.
Instead, she just stares at me, the pensive lines fading from her face to leave her quiet, startled, her eyes a little wide.
Hellfire, she’s blushing again.
I don’t know if I wish she wouldn’t do it so much – or just wish I didn’t notice the way it turns her into a little porcelain doll, all pert features and crafted curves. I just wish it didn’t make me want to throw this truck to the side of the road and bite her–
“Wow. You really have that much faith in me, Doc?” she asks softly.
“Faith is something earned, or something given,” I say, scolding myself for such ridiculous lust. “I’m choosing to give it to you, Ember, but you’re well on your way to earning it, too.”
There’s that silence again.
She looks down, staring at her knees, and says nothing. At least there’s the faint outline of a smile on her face.
I hold my tongue as I take the last turn onto the small winding path that runs alongside the tall, stately main house and cozy little cottages that make up the sprawling property of Charming Inn. The air feels heavy between us.
Feels like something more exists between my own words. Something I can’t quite understand but can’t look too closely at, either.
Fuck, I can’t start thinking of Ember outside any professional capacity, but I need to make sure she feels welcome. Safe enough to stay.
The clinic is too busy. I might not admit that the women who bring their pets in are trying to lure me to their bedrooms, but I can’t deny it, either.
The Menagerie’s be
en even busier since I was branded one of the town’s unlikely heroes simply for my involvement in bringing down a local drug lord and helping Warren save his now-wife Haley and her niece from an untimely end.
I’m not fond of the attention. Not for doing what anyone would in that situation.
The right thing.
The necessary thing to save not one, but two lives.
But the popularity that comes with publicity isn’t going away any time soon. Small towns have long memories. I need Ember with me to keep the practice running smoothly.
Especially now that I may need to step away from my clinic to do a little work on the side and track down why Fuchsia is back in Heart’s Edge.
Ember still hasn’t said anything by the time I pull the truck to a stop and kill the engine. “Will you be okay from here?” I ask.
She starts as if I’ve just pulled her from a dream. Her expression is distant, strange, before clearing as she looks at me oddly, then glances out the window. “Yeah! My cabin’s just over there. I’m not that helpless.”
She points.
I don’t look.
“Certainly not,” I tell her.
I need the distraction. I damn sure don’t need to know where she’s staying, where she sleeps at night.
Keeping my gaze on the steering wheel, I listen to the sound of the truck’s door popping open on the side.
“So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” she murmurs, then adds with a touch of shy humor, “if you still actually want me to show up.”
I don’t say anything, just nod firmly.
This is a strange moment, here and now. I don’t know what to do with it.
How I fit into the shape of it.
“Thanks for the ride,” she sighs. “Good night, Doc.”
“Goodnight, Ember,” I repeat mechanically, listening as the truck door closes and latches.
Then, I let myself look.
Watching her as she walks away, now and then glancing back toward me, blue eyes gleaming like distant stars in the dark.
And I don’t leave until she opens her cabin’s front door and steps safely inside, leaving me alone in the darkness of the night.
