by Jen Peters
She flicked through the rest of her presentation, capturing the attention of most of the council, then answered questions about financing and timing for another few minutes.
“I think we’ve got enough for a decision now, thank you,” Mrs. Goldberg said. She turned to look at the rest of the council. “I am fully behind Ms. Cooper’s proposal, so much so that I move that the town of McCormick’s Creek rent the said building to the non-profit organization she is setting up, for the amount of one dollar a month.”
Robin, still at the podium, gasped and hugged Augie. Scattered applause came from her supporters, with a few gasps and “hold on there” comments from others.
Mr. Thompson frowned. “I, too, am in favor of the proposal, but I see no need for this town to give up potential revenue when it is staring us in the face.”
Mrs. Goldberg argued with him for a moment, and then Mr. Novak spoke up. “That’s a nice argument, points to be made on both sides, but I think it’s academic. The more important question isn’t financial, but whether or not this shelter will benefit our residents.”
“Of course it will,” Mrs. Goldberg said curtly. “Haven’t you been listening to anything?”
Mr. Novak nodded. “I have. But I’ve also been listening to residents.”
“And we’re here!” came a call from the audience. Robin cringed.
Mr. Novak continued. “Firstly, an animal shelter comes under the description of a kennel, and that use would require a zoning change. A good number of residents came to me after someone saw the agenda notice. They expressed extreme dislike for having a kennel full of barking dogs next door, so I’m not sure the zoning board would approve it.”
“There will always be disgruntled people,” Mrs. Goldberg said, “and most aren’t willing to put their names behind their feelings.”
“These did,” Mr. Novak said, handing her a sheet of paper. “And they’ll be at the next meeting to speak in protest, should we decide to consider the project.” He turned to Robin. “Young lady, I applaud the work you do, and I admire your commitment to your cause.”
Robin’s heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach, waiting for his next words.
“I believe you are right, and our town would benefit from an animal shelter. I thank you for bringing this to our attention. However, I would be remiss if I let this simply pass without due consideration.” He turned to the rest of the council. “I move that McCormick’s Creek build on what Ms. Cooper has presented and undertake a study of an appropriate location and possible financing options for an animal shelter. I further move that the town examine the building on Ninth Street and determine its best use.”
The council members debated for a few minutes, but Robin tuned them out. She was back to the beginning—no building, no plan, no hope.
She scooped Augie up in her arms and trudged out of the room as the council moved onto another topic. Dr. Jan said something, but the words didn’t penetrate her brain. She drove home in a stupor and fell to the floor in the midst of the tangle of dogs. They licked and whimpered and rolled over for belly rubs, but they couldn’t solve her problems. She finally pulled her cell phone out and called Cliff, only to get his voice mail again.
Suddenly she had energy—fuming, stewing, exploding energy. She called the dogs to the backyard for a nighttime game of fetch and blasted the ball at an imaginary Cliff with every throw.
“Stood me up.” Slam the ball.
“Unsupportive.” Slam the ball again.
“Unreliable.”
With that last epithet, she sank onto the damp grass and sobbed. The dogs crowded around and all she could do was cling to them.
Chapter 24
Cliff trudged out to the barn and leaned on Zeus’s stall door. A year left on the ranch. A horse that needed treatment. And what then?
One thing he knew, he could pay for at least a few vet calls out of his paycheck. Or out of his former paychecks. He didn’t think he should accept any more, even if it wouldn’t make much difference in the long run.
Zeus drowsed in a corner of the stall. Cliff approached him, speaking softly, but the gelding didn’t perk his ears up. Cliff ran his hand down Zeus’s neck and back, his coat soft and comforting until he reached the swollen haunch.
It was hard and hot—infection was setting in. Cliff sucked in his breath and punched Dr. Jan’s number in his phone, but she didn’t pick up. “Zeus isn’t looking so good. Can you come out tomorrow after all?”
That was all he could do. Things were as out of Cliff’s control now as they were when his father died.
He wished his dad were around to talk to. Uncle Phil was great, but it wasn’t the same. Dad would say…
A great wave of emptiness washed over him. Grief hadn’t hit him this hard for several months, and its power surprised him. He was wrecked again, his breath sucked out of him, his stomach ready to heave.
Through the blackness, he clung to Zeus’s mane. Breathe. Images of his father flashed, laughing, concentrating, dozing on the couch. Riding, roping, driving the tractor.
He remembered late spring days, wrestling calves while his father readied the branding irons. They’d ride the fence line with tools hanging heavy in their saddlebags, his dad’s hands tough and strong as he spliced two pieces of wire together. His father had had a talent for somehow including discourses on life while he taught Cliff how to settle a nervous horse or doctor the cattle or mend a gate.
Breathe.
He ached to hear his father’s voice once more, to feel secure, to be grounded again and moving forward. Instead, he was in a vast expanse of nothingness that stretched past the horizon.
Zeus raised his head a bit and shifted his weight. Cliff withdrew from the gray fog and focused on the horse in front of him.
Breathe.
He stroked Zeus’s face, scratched him under his jaw. “It really is just you and me, isn’t it, buddy?” He offered a carrot, but the gelding barely sniffed it. “I know you’re hurting, but I’m glad it wasn’t worse. If I lost you too…”
Things were bleak enough now, but without Zeus anchoring him to his past, the unknown future would turn into a black vortex and suck him in. “I wish you could talk. You probably soaked up enough of Dad’s advice to quote me chapter and verse.”
He leaned his head against Zeus’s warm neck and inhaled the comforting smell of horse. Nothing better in the world.
Except maybe the scent of Robin’s hair. Especially if it came with her arms around him.
He filled his lungs with air. If there was anything he wanted right now, anything that would take the rest of the gray away, it was her arms.
His limbs still felt heavy, but he patted Zeus and left him to the darkness of the night.
Fifteen minutes later, Cliff pulled up to the Cooper house and stepped onto the porch. The numbness still surrounded him and he needed her—needed her touch, needed her voice.
He pressed the doorbell and listened to the dogs sound off. Footsteps approached, then nothing. He straightened, knowing she was looking out the peephole.
“Go away! I don’t want to talk to you,” she yelled through the door, her voice ragged.
“Robin? Robin, I—I need you.” He’d beg if he had to.
The door jerked open, the light from the porch spilling into a dark living room. “You need me? You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here and telling me that you need me.”
He stepped back, stunned. “Robin, I…it’s been a really bad day and—”
“You’ve had a bad day?” She pushed forward into the light, presenting red-rimmed eyes and unkempt hair. “I had to present to a bunch of bored council members who think they know best, and I froze. And you, you promised to be there and you weren’t, and the only thing that saved me was Augie. And they still turned me down!”
He couldn’t seem to take her words in. “They said no?”
“Yes, doofus, they said no. They said people wouldn’t like barking dogs around and they’d make a committee to
look into it. A committee! And you didn’t just bail on me for the presentation, you weren’t around after, either, when I needed you. I actually thought you were different.”
What was he supposed to say? That he was learning ranch business with Uncle Phil? Not worth saying. That he was moping about his father? He couldn’t explain it to himself, let alone to her. Words jumbled in his head, but nothing came out.
Robin crossed her arms. “How’s Zeus?” Her face was grim and demanding.
Well, that was a change of subject. “He’s off his feed and running a slight fever, but he’ll be okay in the long run. I asked Dr. Jan to come out again tomorrow.”
He watched a vein pulse on her temple as she worked her jaw. “Then there’s not much else that would justify your total lack of support. You’re selfish. And unreliable. And…and I don’t know what else, but I won’t trust someone like you again.” She took three steps backward and slammed the door.
Dumbfounded, Cliff could only stare at the closed door. It might as well have been a brick wall for all the hope he had of getting through to her. He listened to her call the dogs and retreat farther into the house, probably to shed a few more tears and call him a few more names.
He ached for her as much as for himself. He stumbled back to the truck knowing he should have explained, but having no words even now.
Chapter 25
Robin went bleary-eyed to the restaurant the next morning, forcing herself to focus on the customers—the way an old lady cut her ham just so, the chortle of a baby, the intermingled smell of syrup and bacon and coffee. She made sure she sounded cheery as she brought each customer their check, even if she felt like she was floating somewhere inside a hollow body.
Ending things with Cliff had left her numb, but part of her still waited for her phone to buzz with a text, a voicemail, any sort of contact with him. She yearned to hear the warm rumble of his laughter, to feel the touch of his hand on her hair.
“Robin, dear, the coffee cup is full,” Miss Rose scolded her gently.
Robin jerked the coffee pot up, but not quite in time to keep it from overflowing onto the saucer. “I’m so sorry, Miss Rose, I need to pay more attention this morning.”
“That you do,” Miss Lily agreed, although her voice wasn’t as strident as it usually was.
“Are you all right, dear?” Miss Rose patted her hand, the one that wasn’t holding the coffee. “You don’t seem quite yourself this morning.”
“You’re sweet to ask, but I’m fine,” Robin insisted. “Just a little distracted. Now, can I get you anything else?”
She paid more attention to what she was doing after that, and she quit hoping for Cliff to call. She didn’t want to talk to him anyway.
Even if he did call, what could he have to say to her? An apology for letting her down? For leaving her hanging with no support whatsoever? Anger rose in her again, anger with herself and anger with Cliff. Her breathing grew ragged, her throat closed.
Anger was better than numbness, right?
* * *
Cliff puttered around Zeus’s stall while he waited for Dr. Jan. He gave the horse the next shot of penicillin and took his temperature again. There were some things he could do himself, and it was nice to feel competent for once.
Zeus’s fever was down, obvious with the way he was nosing around for a carrot. “Good boy, just keep it up and you’ll be better in no time.” Cliff gave him another piece, then grabbed a pitchfork and cleaned the stall. He could have gone out and done something worthwhile, but being around Zeus helped keep the melancholy from overcoming him completely.
Robin’s words echoed in his head, ricocheting off the edges of his mind and replaying as they flew across. Selfish. Unreliable. Not trustworthy. She couldn’t have chosen words that could cut any deeper into him.
He tried to pass it off as being the heat of the moment—her hurt was still fresh and maybe she wasn’t thinking straight. But his father had explained once, after an argument with a neighbor, that whatever came out in a crisis was what a person felt deep down, even if they normally hid it.
That meant that in her heart of hearts, Robin believed she could never trust him. She believed that if it came down to a choice, he’d choose himself over her.
He hadn’t really made a choice not to support her, but if he were honest with himself, he had gotten caught up with trying to find solutions for the ranch. And then he’d been knocked sideways with thoughts of his dad.
Maybe Robin was right, she couldn’t rely on him.
Cliff scattered another flake of clean straw over Zeus’s remaining bedding, then set the pitchfork aside in favor of a brush. Long, smooth strokes over Zeus’s neck and back and belly, more for comfort than real grooming.
He’d lost his father and there wasn’t anything he could do about that. He’d lost the ranch where he thought he’d grow old and die, and it looked like his unspoken hopes of eventually taking over Uncle Phil’s ranch were gone as well. He’d lost all the Montana horses except Zeus, and even that was threatened.
And now, after he’d found something, someone, to bring him joy again, it looked like he’d lost her, too.
He was glad to hear the rumble of Dr. Jan’s truck. Besides the distraction, Dr. Jan gave Zeus a thumbs up after she examined him. “The stitches look good, and here, feel how there’s not as much heat at the edges of the swelling?”
Cliff laid his hand on Zeus’s hindquarters. The swollen area was still large, but not quite as hard or hot. “So he’s doing okay?”
She nodded emphatically and pulled out her stethoscope. “He’s healing well, and you’re doing a good job keeping it clean.” She listened to the gelding’s heartbeat and breathing, then straightened. “I’d like him to stay on stall rest for about a month. Hand-walking only, twice a day. Not far, maybe to the house and back. Some movement will be good for him, just not too much. And keep the penicillin going for another week.”
“Thanks, Dr. Jan. And, um, could you send the bill to me, not Uncle Phil?”
“Sure, I’ll tell the office. Everything okay?”
Cliff stroked Zeus’s neck. “Yeah, but he’s my horse and I ought to be paying his bills.” At least that was something he could be responsible for. If there wasn’t going to be anyone else in his life, at least he and Zeus were partners.
He stayed in the barn another hour, brushing Zeus until the horse was dozing, murmuring random thoughts to him, taking solace from him, and wondering how long it would take to get over Robin.
Chapter 26
The sun shone brightly the next whole week, and Robin wanted to shout at it to go away. Kids played and laughed outside, families picnicked, and the old men played checkers in the park, while she had a solitary cloud of gloom following her around.
She worked her shifts at the restaurant, forcing a smile into her voice, and then went home to, well, mope. Augie climbed in her lap any chance he could get, but the others could tell something was wrong, too. They settled around her feet, quietly supporting her the only way they could.
The only good thing to happen that week was taking Jinx back to the vet.
“It’s finally time for this guy, is it?” Dr. Jan asked as she entered the exam room.
“Hopefully,” Robin said. She held Jinx and calmed his quivers while the vet examined him.
“Everything feels good so far. Let’s get an X-ray and make sure it’s healed well.”
Robin waited, studying the heartworm posters and vaccination schedules that she already had memorized. The x-ray took much longer than she’d expected, and she hoped they hadn’t found anything wrong.
Dr. Jan finally returned with a smile, a vet tech following with Jinx in his arms. “Everything’s good,” she said with a smile. “The bone is well mended so we went ahead and took the cast off back there.”
Jinx wriggled in the tech’s arms, and Dr. Jan shook her head. “Without the clumsy weight, he’s going to want to run and play, but I’d like him to stay fairly quiet for
four or five days. Let him get his weight on it without dashing about.”
The tech set him down, and he cowered next to Robin. “Poor guy,” she said, slipping him a treat and rubbing his head and back. “Can I take him for walks?”
“Please do,” the vet said. “Nothing too long, maybe a block and back and only at a walk—don’t let him lunge after squirrels or other dogs. Monday or Tuesday, you can let him loose in the backyard by himself.”
“You’ll like that, won’t you? And you’ll be running with the others soon enough.” Robin bent her head to nuzzle Jinx, but he pulled his head back. She sighed. “It’s going to take a long time to get him ready to adopt.”
“You do a good job with them,” Dr. Jan said.
Robin thanked her and said goodbye, wishing she could manage a “good job” with the rest of her life.
She put Jinx back in his pen at home. His excitement from the car ride disappeared and he slid to the floor. “I know how you feel,” Robin told him, and spent the next two days trying to pull herself out of the doldrums.
She took Jinx down a short block and succeeded in keeping him calm and close to her. On a longer walk with Chance later, though, she looked up twice and realized she had no idea how she had gotten where she was.
She tried her hand at her mom’s cinnamon rolls, but they came out flat and hard.
She tried to distract herself with a favorite book, one she’d read so many times it was like comfort food, but lost the thread after a page and a half.
She put on shorts and joined the dogs in the backyard, hoping to get some late-season sun on her legs. Instead, the very air seemed to make her skin twitch.
