Tennessee Vet

by Carolyn McSparren

  “We’ll get over it. Why are you so hot about marriage? I thought you didn’t want to push things, that we were taking our time, getting to know one another...”

  “I want to introduce you as my wife, not my friend.”

  “When you introduced me to the dean, you called me your friend. What’s wrong with that? The dean was very pleasant, but then I suppose he’s nice to anyone he thinks has money to leave or a child to enroll. I could see that he wondered how on earth you’d gotten mixed up with me.”

  “That’s not true. He liked you. He told me so. He also told me he could tell we were—I don’t think he used the words in love, but he implied it.

  “I want a ring on your finger and one on mine. Bell, book and candle. I want to endow you with all my worldly goods, such as they are. I want to be with you at the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun.”

  She started back toward the truck. “How about what I want?”

  He called after her. “At least listen to me. I never thought it could happen twice in a lifetime. I figured I had lost my only chance at love. I told myself I was okay with that. But it has happened twice, and I don’t intend to lose out. Marry me and I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.”

  She stopped but didn’t turn around to look at him. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “You marched into my life, my satisfying, successful life alone. Sometimes it was chaos, but it was chaos that I felt competent to handle. I did things my way, and my way generally worked. I slept well. I made my own decisions right or wrong.”

  “Were you happy?” he asked.

  “I thought I was. Then you butted in, questioned my decisions, woke up a bunch of feelings I had gotten along without. Like you, I had one love. I lost him. Why take the chance on loving again, perhaps losing again? You have more guts than I do, Stephen. I’m scared. You’re not.”

  “The hell I’m not. But I’m even more scared of letting you go. Together our lives could be so much better. Can you admit you want me?”

  “I am a woman, Stephen, not some anchorite living walled up in a nunnery.”

  “I noticed.”

  “But one of us has to be practical. We don’t fit. You have a life, a career, a house, children, friends, responsibilities.”

  “So do you.”

  “That’s my point. I do—miles away from your life. From your sort of people, your sort of life. I spend my life up to my shoulders in gore. You spend yours neat, clean, surrounded by other people who work with their minds, not their hands. I can’t leave my practice, Stephen. I won’t.”

  “I would never ask you to. I can, however, leave my life, this career you think I am so invested in. Maybe I was once, when I thought that was all I had. If you agree to marry me, I’ll put my house up for sale this afternoon and send the dean my resignation tomorrow.”

  “Stephen, no! You don’t mean that.”

  “I do if that’s what it takes to convince you to marry me. I’m working on a compromise, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

  “If you retire, you’ll regret it, and sooner or later you’ll blame me for the decision. What would you do instead? What sort of compromise? More secrets? Don’t keep doing that.”

  “You say we need to be practical—I’m trying. Just give me a little time to work out the details. Elaine and Roger are planning to have kids. I’ll sell the house in Memphis to them.”

  “Can they afford it?”

  “They can if I hold the mortgage.”

  “What would you do if you didn’t teach? Move here permanently? To The Hovel? You really would go crazy and drive me right along with you. Doesn’t matter whether I need you or not. Your students need you. You said your Nina saw that you truly had something to give your students. That hasn’t changed. You’d have to teach during the week, not to mention maintaining office hours for your students and going to a million meetings. You’d be on the road more often than you’re home. You may think you enjoy driving now, but that would be like turning into an over-the-road trucker. You would hate it. I would hate it.”

  She turned away again, as though she could only talk to him when she didn’t see his face, when she could avoid those blue eyes that seemed to pierce her soul.

  “I said I’m working on that.” He moved toward her. “Trust me.”

  She backed away again. She was only safe from his words at a distance. “There is no viable solution—not one that I am ready to live with.”

  “Very well. Here’s the thing. Come spring I will likely be doing my classes via satellite from Williamston.”

  This time she did turn to stare at him. “What? How?”

  “The dean and I are working out the details.” He pointed a half mile or so down the lake. “Come on, walk with me. Who knows, we might even catch a glimpse of Orville.

  “It’s not a new idea. We have adjuncts all over the state doing the same thing. I’d still be commuting to the campus perhaps once a week for office hours and meetings, but the rest of the time I can work from home. Seth and Emma can always find a new tenant for The Hovel. Maybe Vince Peterson, your new hire.”

  She stared at him, then raised her hands, palms out, as though to ward off an attacker. “Oh, no. You can’t move in with me. There’s not enough room, I’m a lousy housekeeper and I have to have somewhere to get away from the animals and all the people or I’ll implode. I’m being honest, Stephen. After John died, I got used to being alone. Where would you entertain? You do entertain, don’t you? Friends, students, other faculty members. I’ll bet your wife was brilliant at it, wasn’t she? Inventive cook? I’ll bet she arranged flowers for centerpieces. You would not be able to entertain in my apartment behind a barn filled with sick and wounded animals. No matter how clean it is, it smells.”

  He slipped his hand under her arm and walked off.

  She was forced to come along.

  “Then I’ll keep my socks at The Hovel, but spend my time with you. I’ll even take some veterinary technician courses if that gives us more time together.”

  “You really have this planned out without even mentioning it to me, much less discussing it, the way you did with the flight cage. I can’t live with a man who pats me on the head as though I was a slightly loopy dog and presents me with the solution to my problems, whether I like it or not. You hit me with this marriage thing when my defenses were down. Well, they are back up.”

  “I’ll keep asking you until you agree. We belong together.”

  “You barely know me.”

  “I fell for you over pimento cheese sandwiches the night we rescued Orville. Can you seriously say you didn’t feel something?”

  Looking back on that night, she knew she had. Maybe not love at first sight, but a pull between them that had grown deeper every day.

  “Marriage is not only about property and children, Barbara, and you know it. I agree that the logistics of two families, two households, jobs, finances can be mind-boggling, but we can work things out as long as we are together. We’ve both learned tomorrow is not a guarantee. I don’t want to waste even one of my tomorrows without you.”

  “Why now? Because Orville can fly?” She flung herself away from him and stalked to the edge of the water.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” He followed her, stopping short of the edge of the lake. “You say I don’t discuss with you. You wanted practical. Here’s practical. With the money from selling my house, plus my retirement income, my textbook royalties and visiting lecturer gigs, money wouldn’t be an issue. We can add on to the clinic. We can build a house with room for each of us to get away from the other when we like. You have plenty of room on your land, or I really can buy Emma’s pasture. Vince could live on site in the barn apartment. We could travel. I want to show you Florence and Paris and London.” He started to go down on one knee, then stopped. “I probably can’t get up if I do t
hat, so take the word for the deed. Dr. Barbara Carew, will you marry me?”

  “You tell me what I should do, then you tell me what you intend to do. Notice the difference? Are you planning on scheduling my root canal, too, or can I make the appointment all by myself?”

  “Whenever you like, so long as I can tell the world that you are my fiancée in the meantime.”

  “Don’t you dare. We have children who may be horrified that we’re more than friends.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be happy for us.”

  “Don’t count on it.” She rubbed her palm across her eyes. When she lifted her face, tears showed in her eyes and spilled out down her cheeks. “You should be declared certifiably nuts. You belong in a padded cell.” She hugged her arms across her chest. “I do love you, but I won’t be pushed into marrying you. Not now, not ever.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN,” Barbara said.

  “What?” Stephen asked. He looked up from the copy of the Marquette News that had just been delivered at the foot of his driveway. He had brought it with him when he came up to Barbara’s apartment to join her for breakfast.

  “Going on with your catered Thanksgiving dinner for all those people. Caitlyn emailed me and told me. When you stopped talking about it, I figured you’d dropped the idea along with Guy Fawkes. I should have known better. Stephen, it will cost a fortune.”

  “It’s simply a way to get our families and friends together for Thanksgiving. This way nobody has to cook. No pressure.”

  She fell back in her chair. “No pressure? You haven’t even met my children. I’ve only met Elaine and Anne once at that peculiar lunch in Memphis. Emma’s going to be a week away from giving birth. We’ll have to invite Seth’s mother, Laila, and Vince if he doesn’t plan to be in McComb. Neither your house nor mine is big enough for that.”

  He folded the paper and laid it beside his sweet roll. “That’s all right. We’re having dinner at the café.”

  She blew out a breath. “Stephen, honey, the café is never open on Thanksgiving.”

  He grinned at her. “They are now. I reserved it for us along with the catering. Simple. So far everyone has agreed to come.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “It’s going to be fine.”

  She simply stared at him. “You really are insane. How did you even get Caitlyn and Mark’s telephone numbers?”

  “Checked your online address book on the clinic computer. They were a bit surprised at the invitation, but they’re planning to come.”

  “You went into my address book?”

  “You were spaying a cat. I checked the clinic computer.”

  “They were both coming home anyway, but I planned to cook. Turkey is easy. Mark will probably stay for the weekend, but I doubt Caitlyn will.”

  “It’s the perfect time to announce our engagement,” Stephen said.

  “Do what?” Barbara spilled half her cup of coffee on the counter. “Stephen, I haven’t said yes.”

  “All but the words. I want our families to share the happiness.”

  “You can’t bring a roomful of strangers together and hit them with something this momentous.” Her cell phone rang. “Oh, bother!” She answered, covered the receiver with her palm and whispered to Stephen, “We’ll talk later.”

  Removing her palm, she said into the phone, “This is Dr. Carew. Oh, Mr. Baines, what’s up?” She listened and nodded. “Sounds like choke all right. I’ll be right there.” She hung up the phone and turned to Stephen. “The animals are fed and watered already. Can you tell Mary Frances I’m on a call and to open the clinic, then warn Vince he’s holding the fort? Baines has a Belgian draft gelding with a case of choke.” She slid off her bar stool. “With luck, I’ll be back in an hour or so.” She grabbed her parka off the hook by her back door, slid into her Wellington boots, leaned over to kiss his cheek in passing and stopped on the threshold. “While I’m gone, I may consider murdering you instead of marrying you.”

  Before he could reply she was out the door and gone.

  “Goodbye to you, too! And have a nice day,” he called after her. He rinsed both coffee cups and put them in the dishwasher. “They will be happy for us. Once they get used to the idea. They have to be. Then Barbara will be.”

  * * *

  AFTER VELMA AND the waitstaff finished clearing the Thanksgiving dinner and serving the coffee, Stephen touched Barbara’s hand under the table, stood and clinked his knife against his wineglass. “Everyone, listen up.”

  It took a few seconds for the conversations to dwindle away to silence and heads to turn to listen to what he had to say.

  He set his half-full glass of Chardonnay beside his dessert plate. His hand didn’t shake, nor did he spill any of the wine, but inside he was shaking.

  Good grief, he was afraid of his children! He was even more afraid of Barbara’s.

  He and Barbara were adults—they had changed diapers, attended parent-teacher conferences and waited up every time a child was late coming home. And all the other adult jobs parents did.

  Now they were considering the one thing parents must never, ever do. All right, the second thing—the first was dying and thrusting said children into the world of adulthood without backup.

  The second unacceptable action was to change. Overthrow the status quo. If you couldn’t rely on your parents to stay the same while you were allowed to change around them, what good were they?

  He’d had to promise Barbara he wouldn’t mention marriage. A great deal rested on the outcome of this dinner.

  Reserving the café for the two families was enough to give the dinner a cachet it wouldn’t have had otherwise, even at Thanksgiving.

  The children were not stupid. His family plus her family sure looked like an attempt to create “our family.” So far everyone was on their best behavior, but that could change quickly.

  “Thank you all for coming to this holiday dinner. I hope it will be the first of many.”

  Smiles and lifted glasses. Except Elaine on one side of the table and Caitlyn on the other. Stephen glanced down at Barbara. She was watching for any adverse reaction. Elaine was staring at her with mounting suspicion.

  Stephen swallowed a gulp of ice water, because his throat was so dry he didn’t think he could get another word out without croaking. “We’re both making major changes in our lives in the coming months.” This was not the engagement announcement he had originally thought to make, but until Barbara relented—and she would—it was the best he could do.

  “Barbara has finally hired another vet to come in with her, as well as some office help. She’ll no longer be on call twenty-four/seven. In the same vein, I am continuing to stay in Seth and Emma’s rental house for the foreseeable future. I will be teaching in the spring semester as an adjunct professor, largely over the net.”

  Everyone began talking at once.

  “Who said the only constant is change?” he said and sat down.

  “What about Mother’s house in Memphis?” Elaine asked. “It’s home. You can’t sell it and move away. Can you afford to cut back teaching full-time at school?”

  “Sixty miles is not Antarctica, Elaine, and my finances are not your concern.”

  “I’m glad you’ll have some help, Mom,” Mark said. “Is there enough business for two vets?”

  “As Stephen said, Mark, darling, don’t you worry about that. I haven’t had a vacation in years. John and I kept planning to travel, but there never seemed to be time or money enough. Maybe there will finally be both.”

  Anne whispered to Elaine, “Alone or with a roommate?”

  Elaine glared at her.

  Barbara lifted her arms in a who-knows? gesture. “I might even build myself a house on the property and let the new vet move into my old apartment. I’m comfortable enough in my apartment, but a real house would be wonderful.
”

  “What about all Daddy’s stuff?” Caitlyn asked.

  “You can help get ready for the garage sale.”

  “No way. You can’t.”

  Elaine turned to her father. “You’ve only been here a few months, and you’re upending your whole life for her?”

  “Come on, Elaine, don’t be rude,” Anne said.

  “Think of all the attractive women in Memphis crazy about you. I knew we should never have allowed you to come up here all alone. You’re just lonely. You can’t give up your job and move to...what does Emma call it, The Hovel? And sell our house? My father must not live in a a barn. What would people think? The two of you are completely incompatible.”

  “We are not incompatible. I promise you.”

  “And you know this how? Don’t answer that!”

  “I hadn’t planned to.”

  “I can certainly see why she would want you. I do not see, however, why on earth you respond. You have nothing in common. It’s because you’re so isolated up here. Come back to town. I guarantee you in a month you’ll be back in your old groove.” With each sentence, Elaine’s voice rose a few decibels—whispers had reached a conversational level, but with an edge.

  “Don’t bet on that,” Stephen said. He vacillated between anger at his bossy child and amusement that she thought all she had to do was wave her hand to break up his romance. Bad fairy or bossy witch? Didn’t matter. Wouldn’t work. “You mean well, but stop trying to make my decisions for me, and try to remain civil.” He caught his breath and turned to stare at Barbara with his mouth open.

  Wasn’t that precisely what he had been doing to Barbara? His heart was in the right place, too. He was trying to help, impress, present her with ready-made solutions. No wonder he annoyed her.

  “Hey, Daddy, you’re a catch,” Anne said. “Otherwise how come half the widows in Memphis brought you casseroles after Mother died? You’re reasonably attractive, with a fantastic job, a respected position in the community and a fair amount of money. You’re not supporting ex-wives or minor children—”

  “I beg your pardon?” Stephen said.