by P. Dangelico
Darby exits and I glance at the clock on the oven and see it’s feeding time for the horses. “Now that Mona’s kinky lover has departed, can we get to business?”
“Wouldn’t hurt you to get one too, ya know,” Mona volleys back with a wink and a satisfied smile.
I direct my growing impatience at Jessica. “Can we get to the reason for your visit?”
“Okay, yeah, so… Aidan Hughes was arrested for reckless driving and it’s his third offense.”
Celebrities flexing their sense of entitlement is not uncommon in L.A. No doubt he’ll get off scot-free. I’m just not sure what this has to do with me.
“Seems like a real winner,” I murmur as a growing sense of dread creeps up on me.
“As part of the plea deal, he needs to complete three hundred hours of community service—”
“Can I get the Cliff Notes to this story?”
“––and three months of house arrest.”
“Heartbreaking. I’m weeping inside. What does this have to do with me?” I can’t help myself. My patience is running on empty and my workday is only starting.
Biting her lips, she adds, “I sorta pitched this place.”
After parsing the words carefully, it still sounds too far-fetched to be real. “Pardon? When you say you pitched this place, do you mean planet Earth, Ojai in general, or this ranch?”
“This ranch… specifically, the rescue.”
Have you ever been in a car crash? In the split-second right before impact, everything slows down. You start to see and feel things like you’re observing it from afar. Then it speeds up all at once and your world explodes with confusion and pain. We are at that moment in the story.
“You told your boss that her criminally-negligent client can come here? To this ranch?”
The wide, toothy smile that spreads across Jess’ face feels like a personal attack. “He can complete house arrest and community service at the same time. And what better way to clean up his tainted image than by taking care of rescued animals?” Then, musing to herself, she says, “It’s next-level genius.”
She follows it up with a fist pump that scares the living daylights out of me. Jessica’s unbridled ambition is a relentless beast needing to be constantly fed.
“Were you high when you did this?”
There’s a reason I moved out here far away from the hustle and bustle of civilization to work with animals. I don’t do well around people anymore. I used to. I used to love being around people. A lot. Now I don’t love it. Most of all men. Particularly men.
“And the judge agreed,” she continues not even a little discouraged by my horrified expression. “Isn’t that great?”
The judicial system in this country is broken.
“No. It’s not. This isn’t a halfway house for overprivileged losers. Besides, Mona will never allow it.”
“I’ll allow it,” Mona bursts out, a little too cheerfully if you ask me.
“Mona, please stay out of this,” I hiss.
“And miss out on all the fun? I’d rather not.” Sashaying to the coffee pot, she pours some into a mug which reads: In My Defense I Was Left Unsupervised, which basically sums up the entirety of Mona’s very colorful life.
“Boo,” Jess pleads, pulling out the heavy guns––her pet name for me. “It’s my chance to show Cruella that I’m an indispensable asset to the agency. I’m tired of being a glorified assistant. I’ve paid my dues, dammit. I’m begging you.”
“We’ll help you,” Mona adds, brightly. “Right, Blue? Isn’t that what girl power’s about? Jessica needs us.”
“Girl power?” I mutter. “Mona, do you have any idea what this means? There won’t just be Hughes to watch over––very carefully, I should add––but probably an entourage, as well. Our little sanctuary will be overrun with L.A. assholes.”
“Oh, honey, you know I can handle those Hollywood types in my bra and panties with one arm tied behind my back.”
I suck in a breath, picturing the very real possibility of this happening. “Please tell me you don’t mean that in the literal sense.”
“I haven’t even told you about the perks yet,” Jess says, interrupting the dark path my mind’s traveling down, which ends with a certain movie star criminal requesting a restraining order against Mona. “He’s prepared to make a sizable donation to the rescue.”
Between the merchandise I’ve been selling and my steady and loyal followers on Instagram and Facebook who have bailed the rescue out of a number of animal-related catastrophes (medical and otherwise), we’ve been getting by. Barely, but we’ve managed to stay in the black.
Are we always in need of funding? Sure. Of course. Rescues don’t happen on a schedule, and saving lives is costly. The vet bills alone are enough to keep me up at night. What I am not willing to do, however, is compromise my mental health for a few extra bucks.
“No amount of money would tempt me.”
“Then think of it as part of your personal growth,” the master negotiator also known as my best friend quips back. “Like therapy––but you get paid for it.”
A small whine comes from across the counter. My attention shifts to Mona who takes a slow sip of her coffee, her groomed eyebrows steadily climbing up her forehead. “I guess this is as good a time as any…” she mutters.
“A good time for what?” I ask hesitantly. Very hesitantly.
“To tell you that I’m a little behind on the property taxes.”
If I don’t have a heart attack today, nothing will ever kill me. “How behind are you?” I force myself to ask even though I really don’t want to know the answer.
“Two years.”
“Two years! How much?”
“I got a little confused with the past due dates,” I hear her say under the rushing of blood in my ears. “Andy said we can negotiate…”
Andy, her attorney. He’s supposed to be managing her finances. Which begs the question… what else has he screwed up?
The animals are all I can think about. What would happen to my animals who have already experienced the worst this world has to offer?
“How much, Mona?” For a moment she looks so guilty that I feel bad pressing her.
“Give or take a few dollars… forty-seven thousand.”
I glance at Jessica. Wisely, she’s not gloating. She maintains an appropriately neutral expression as she waits patiently for me to do the math, to come to my own conclusion. I clear my throat, swallow the bile rising up. “On second thought…”
“I’ll get the contract ready.”
Chapter 2
“Who did this?”
The top of the slow feeder sits in the corner of the small paddock, broken in two pieces. Trampled, it seems, by tiny hooves.
It’s a contraption that forces the animals to pull the hay through slats which stops them from consuming their daily amount all at once. No binge eating allowed at Mother Goose Rescue. Many of my little and big friends are on a medical diet and need to be fed small meals to rehab from starvation or other health-related issues.
My sidekick, Billy, sidles up to me for moral support and I automatically rub his floppy ear in return.
Running an animal rescue wasn’t what I planned on doing with my life. And yet not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for it. I don’t know where I’d be without these animals to care for. In a way, they saved me.
After the assault, I was lost, suffering from PTSD or whatever you want to call it. Even though I did my best to deny it––mostly to myself––the trauma took a toll on every aspect of my life. None more directly than on my work.
I was a paramedic once. And a good one at that. It wasn’t merely a job I loved with all my heart––it was a calling. There was never a dull moment. It was full of adventure. And the best part was that I got to help people when they were most in need. In every way possible, it was a career tailor-made for me.
Nothing beat the feeling of coming home at the end of the day knowing I helped deliver
a baby on the side of the 405 freeway. Or that we stopped a distraught teen from jumping off an overpass. Or that my team and I saved the career of a high school running back who caught a stray bullet in the leg. He eventually went on to be drafted first overall into the NFL. I made a tangible, immediate difference in people’s lives and loved every minute of it.
For years I did my job without any regard for my personal safety. It never even crossed my mind. After the incident, however, it was all I could do to not think about it. Which really messed with my head. The same confidence that had sent me running into the most crime-ridden parts of L.A. without hesitation had deserted me overnight and I had no idea how to reclaim it. My mojo literally went missing in action.
At first, I kept my head down and pushed through. Pretended I hadn’t lost my confidence. Pretended I wasn’t on the verge of a panic attack a few times a day when things got dicey as they often did. Running toward dicey situations is part of the job description after all.
Then the worst thing that could have happened, happened. I had an episode right in the middle of treating a gunshot victim. While we were stabilizing him, people living in the neighborhood loitered around out of natural curiosity. Nothing out of the ordinary; I’d been in that same exact situation thousands of times. But that day was different.
As more of them came out of their homes to see what was happening, congregating around the scene of the crime, my anxiety escalated. It paralyzed me. I locked up like a non-responding computer program. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t help anyone, most of all myself. That was the day I became a liability to my team, and more importantly, to the victim.
That’s when I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. My issues getting in the way of someone’s personal welfare was where I drew the line. So, I quit.
No mojo. No job.
“Keep busy,” they said. “Don’t think about it too much.”
Sitting around has never been my thing, so I figured a temporary job, one far away from the one I loved and lost, was the next logical step. This was L.A.; there were six-dollar lattes waiting to be served somewhere. Frankly, I was ready to do any job short of the one I was trained in.
Then a ‘help wanted’ ad caught my attention:
Desperately seeking a live-in companion. Must love country living and animals. Medical training or experience preferred.
Getting as far away as possible from L.A. felt right at the time, and country living was just what I needed. The animals were an added bonus. I’d always loved animals. Living in a two-bedroom apartment with a single parent that was mostly absent made owning any impossible. I drove out to Ojai for the interview, met her three rescue horses, and a few days later I moved into her guesthouse.
That’s how I met Mona.
She taught me everything she knew about caring for large animals since she’d been doing it all her life, and together, we started Mother Goose Rescue.
“Well? Which one of you scoundrels broke the top of this?” I tap the plastic top of the feeder with the tip of my red cowboy boot.
Two mini donkeys and three mini horses innocently stare back at me, mouths full of hay, chewing slowly. Hazel avoids eye contact, a dead giveaway she’s the guilty party.
Hazel’s our youngest mini donkey, a teenager. She’s been going through a rebellious phase recently. Pepper, our senior rescue, is more cautious and respectful. We make allowances for Hazel’s behavior because she was an orphan and not in the best of health when she came to live with us, but it may be time for some tough love.
“Hazel?”
Her response is to scratch behind her floppy ear with her back hoof. It’s as close to an admission as I’m going to get.
Grabbing the electrical tape off my tool belt, I make quick work of fixing the feeder. Fixing things is a large percent of the work around here. I wake up at dawn. Start feeding grain to those who need it. Turn out the ones that sleep in the stable at night. Fill the hay nets, clean the stalls, check the perimeter for anything broken, fix things, fix more things, administer meds––and with a number of our rescues being elderly and infirm, that means a lot of meds––rinse and repeat. All of this and it’s still only the tip of the iceberg. A million things can go wrong on a farm, and they usually do.
“So, look… there’s gonna be lots of new people running around here tomorrow. I don’t want you to be scared…”
I checked out Aidan Hughes’ Instagram account last night and let’s just say the only way to survive the next few months with my mental health intact is with a solid strategy. However talented he may be, and he is, the man is a complete, attention-seeking narcissist.
As a matter of self-preservation, I’ve determined I can play it one of two ways: harpy man-hater or non-confrontational wallflower. Both strategies have merit, but the wallflower requires less energy, and the harpy man-hater inherently carries more risk. Plus, it’s more emotionally taxing, and I don’t do emotional these days. Being confrontational drains me.
The point is I need to keep a healthy amount of social distance from a person that will be living here for the next three months and it’s not going to be easy.
“…you guys feel free to do what you guys do.” I shovel some more hay into the feeder I taped together. “Fart, play fight, slobber. Just be yourselves, and if someone’s shoes get ruined in the process, then so be it.”
There’s something innately therapeutic about talking to animals. For starters, they’re great listeners, they don’t ever judge, and their capacity to forgive brings tears to my eyes.
Mona and I have seen cases of neglect and abuse so horrid it makes you despair at the human race. And yet those same animals have become loving and sweet when they’re shown a little kindness, patience, and consistency. They never stopped wanting to trust. They never stopped giving humans the opportunity to not fail them.
In the back pocket of my jeans, my phone rings. Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin plays.
Talk about failure.
I silence the call and wait to see if she leaves a message. As soon as it finishes recording, I hit the speaker button.
“Hello, Miss Blue Baldwin. It’s Athena Baldwin, calling to see how you are. Did you try the caffeine enema I told you about? I sent you the link on your gmail account”––I hear unintelligible voices in the background––“Dammit, they ran over the sump pump again. I gotta go. I’ll call you when I get to Port-au-Prince. We really need to connect. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
I immediately hit erase on the voicemail and stuff the phone back in my pocket.
Show me a parent who addresses their daughter by her full name and I’ll show you a parent who doesn’t know their child.
My parents separated when I was six. One random Saturday in August, my mother packed two suitcases and took off to the outer reaches of who-the-hell-knows-where in her attempt to save the world. She joined an NGO and my father became a single parent overnight with no warning.
These are two people who should’ve never been married in the first place, let alone breed. Athena is a flighty quitter masquerading as an activist and my father’s a cop, as strait-laced and set in his ways as you can get. It’s like a rabbit trying to mate with a turtle. Forget polar opposites, they’re practically a different species.
Anyway, they never divorced. To this day, and for reasons no one can figure out, she still proudly brandishes the Baldwin family name even though they haven’t been in the same room more than three times in the last twenty-two years.
Obviously, my mother and I are not close, but after the incident, she started calling more, which is just her style. Swooping in when there’s a crisis and expecting credit for the most superficial of efforts is right on brand for her. Behaving as if she hasn’t been missing in action for the last twenty-plus years is a textbook Athena Baldwin move. My mother has always played the upper hand like a fiddle in a Grand Ole Opry performance. It was hard to complain about her missing my fifth-grade flute recita
l when she explained that she had to miss it because she was saving starving children in Sudan. Especially when she then went ahead and showed me pictures of those children.
I used to harbor a lot of resentment about this. And for the most part, I’ve let it go. She doesn’t get to rock my world (in a bad way) because I won’t allow her to have any power over me. That doesn’t mean I’m rolling out the red carpet for her to waltz back into my life only to ghost me when she gets bored, and saying no doesn’t make me a bad person.
The deep-throated rumble of tail pipes cuts into my musings. I scramble out of the paddock to investigate what the ruckus is about and hit the brakes the second I round the corner of the barn.
The sound belongs to a vintage bike. Motorcycle not Schwinn. The rider, a tall man with broad shoulders, gets off with his back to me, removes his black helmet and runs his fingers through his thick, dark hair. A strange, speeding sensation comes over me as I watch him take the aviator sunglasses hanging on his black t-shirt and put them on.
It’s Hughes. It has to be Hughes. He’s got that snappy, overpriced look about him that seems to be standard issue for celebrities. Distressed jeans. Distressed black t-shirt. Distressed attitude judging by a fleeting glance I get of his profile.
But what’s he doing here?
He and his minions are supposed to arrive tomorrow per the countless emails and phone calls I’ve received since we agreed on terms. I scan the horizon and can’t locate anyone else.
Regardless, it’s go-time. I can’t hide—which, frankly, I do contemplate for a split second—and I can’t have him wandering the property. So, taking a deep breath, I muster the will to put one foot in front of the other and meet this problem head on.
This is where things get funky. And what I mean by funky is worse. Because the closer I get to him, the larger he becomes. And the larger he becomes, the more unsettled I start to feel.
In my defense, this Aidan Hughes, the one in real life, is a lot more than the one on screen. Bigger. More rugged. More intense. Where’s the dude who posted a video of himself getting a pedicure with black polish on Instagram? Because this is not it.
