Of course, she couldn’t have guessed that Roy would view her very rational decision as an excuse to turn his back on her forever.
“It might be inconvenient for you,” she admitted. “Sometimes pets are demanding, especially in their later years.”
Roy jumped in. “But that’s just it. This has to be his last year or so. Wouldn’t this be saving him from a lot of pain just to do it now?”
“
Kill
him now, you mean?”
Roy flinched. She did, too, a little, half expecting a bolt of lightning to strike her, courtesy of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Kill
was not a word professionals preferred.
“I am not going to put Buddy to sleep,” she repeated.
“But—”
“Don’t worry, Roy. I won’t try to shame you into doing the right thing. I’ll find a good home for him.”
For a moment, the only parts of Roy that moved were his eyes as he looked from her face to Buddy’s. At the same time, Buddy glanced from Roy to Jane.
“Okay,” Roy said. “That would probably be for the best.”
His words hit her like a slap. No matter what she’d said, she had hoped that her offer would convince Roy to think twice. “You’d be okay with a stranger taking your mom’s dog?”
Roy shrugged. “If they want him, why not? You’ll see he winds up with good people, right?”
She gaped at him. Could this really be
Roy
? The same soulful boy who loved to draw, who had bowled her over when she was a geeky teen? The boy who had brought an entire auditorium to tears after he’d died on stage? The young man who had broken her heart when he’d left and never looked back? The man she had missed and wondered about for nearly ten years?
Couldn’t be. That Roy had been body-snatched, leaving this cold, soulless husk.
She lifted her chin. “Sure. I’ll find Buddy a good home.” She fought to keep her rising indignation from coming out as a quaver in her voice. “You won’t have to trouble yourself about him anymore.”
He stared into Buddy’s eyes, then looked at her. He was so obviously relieved, she wanted to smack him. Maybe this was the outcome he’d been hoping for from the start. “Great. God knows, I’ve got enough on my plate, getting rid of all Mom’s other stuff. And especially dealing with Aunt Ona. And then, of course, there’s the opening of McGillam Auditorium at the school next week. They’re making a big fuss over that, you know.”
Jane gulped back a knot of rage.
When she said nothing, he smiled a little awkwardly. “I’m going to be around town awhile. We should get together—maybe head over to the Blackberry Jam this weekend. It would be fun to catch up a little.”
Uh-huh. Actually, she felt she’d just been brought up to speed on the new Roy McGillam. Mesquite Creek’s big success story. Heel.
“You know where to find me,” she said.
He tilted his head, as if trying to gauge how to take that. Maybe his interpersonal radar hadn’t gone completely dead after all.
“Okay . . .” He leaned down and gave Buddy a quick pat. “Bye, Buddy. Be good.”
When he straightened, smiled, and strolled quickly out toward reception, it took all Jane’s strength to hold Buddy back. The dog whined and tried to lurch toward the door, to follow Roy’s disappearing form. She could remember the feeling well.
“You’ll get over him,” she murmured to Buddy, planting her feet so she wouldn’t be dragged out of the exam room.
Marcy hurried in, then stopped short. “You didn’t euthanize him.” The relief in the statement was palpable. Euthanizing an animal, especially one they’d known as long as Buddy, always cast a pall over the clinic.
“Of course I didn’t. He’s perfectly healthy.”
The vet tech petted him. “Why did Romeo leave him, then?”
“Because I offered to find him a good home.”
Just then, Kaylie scooted up to the door, her expression nearly rapturous. “You saved him! That was such a sweet thing to do for Roy!”
“It was not a romantic gesture on my part, Kaylie. The jerk wanted to put Buddy to sleep for no good reason. Because he couldn’t be bothered.”
“And you saved him from doing something he would regret for the rest of his life.” Kaylie sighed. “Remember how I’m writing a feature for
The Buzz
, all about Skeeter High’s productions of
Romeo and Juliet
over the years?” Kaylie’s other job was aspiring journalist for
The Mesquite Creek Buzz
. “I was going to call it ‘Three Juliets,’ and focus on the women who’ve played that part—that’s why I’ve still got to interview you, Jane. But I’m thinking now maybe I should include you and Roy together. Romeo and Juliet, reunited. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Jane was shaking her head. She already regretted agreeing to be interviewed for the story as originally conceived. Thankfully, Marcy cut short any need to respond to Kaylie’s newest bad idea.
“Speaking of regretting something for the rest of your life . . .” Marcy stepped back, crossed her arms, and darted a doubting look at Buddy. “Who’s going to adopt a ten-year-old shedding slobber-factory like this?”
“Guess,” Jane said.
Chapter Two
That hadn’t gone well.
Roy kicked himself all the way back to his mom’s place, without knowing quite what had bothered him most about the encounter. They’d greeted each other like adults, transacted their business. But still he felt a stabbing discomfort, as if he was guilty of something.
Guilty of abandoning Buddy?
Guilty of leaving Jane all those years ago?
But the problem had never been his leaving. Ever since they were high school seniors, he’d told Jane that he was going to flee Mesquite Creek as soon as possible, go far away and never look back. He had always expected that when the time came to go, she would be with him. That they’d ride off into the sunset together.
Instead, when the time came, Jane had applied to vet school, been accepted, and refused to consider other options. She’d dug in her heels, and a part of him was convinced that it was her parents talking to her behind the scenes that caused her to be so stubborn. They’d never liked him. Why would they? He was the son of the town drunk, a misfit of a kid who loved to draw and play silly pranks, although he never got caught doing anything really bad. The whole town had been waiting for him to take the same moral nosedive as his dad, but he’d tripped up their expectations by making good grades, winning a scholarship to UT, and capturing the heart of the town’s good girl—Jane: lifelong honor student, class secretary four years running, daughter of the superintendant of schools.
It was the play that had done it. He and Jane had never paid that much attention to each other. Then, for
Romeo and Juliet
, she’d been the stage manager. During the first read-through of the play, sitting around a table in the cafeteria, he’d caught her looking at him a few times, as if she’d never noticed him before. Never mind that they had been going to the same schools for twelve years.
After that rehearsal, Jane had approached him, her usual shy reserve vanishing in her enthusiasm. “Good job, Roy! You made me understand things I didn’t get even after reading the footnotes and seeing the movie.”
Of course she would have studied the text and gone to the trouble to watch the movie, even though she wasn’t actually in the play. And there wasn’t even a grade at stake. It fit what he’d always thought of Jane Canfield—nose-to-the-grindstone goody-goody. But as he watched her during those weeks of rehearsals, she actually just seemed to throw herself into what she was doing for the sheer joy of it, the way he could spend hours over a sketchbook or messing around with computer animation programs. Everyone was a nerd when it came to the activities they loved.
He asked her to run lines with him during lunch, then after school. After several weeks, two things were clear. One, he was in love with Jane, and two, she already had the whole damn play memorized. When Lacey Butler came down with mono and had to pull out of the production at the last minute, Roy suggested Jane for Juliet. What choice did they have? Not many girls could memorize so many lines in two days. People were astonished at how good she was, how moving. But to Roy, she had been Juliet since that first read-through.
Red and blue lights flashed in the rearview mirror.
Roy’s heart sank. A police cruiser was practically on his bumper.
When he pulled over and caught sight of the cop who got out of the car, he muttered under his breath and rolled down the window.
Speaking of the high school play . . . Jared Evans had been an unexpectedly enthusiastic Mercutio. Jared might be heavier now, with decidedly less hair, but he moved with the same shambling gait he’d had back then.
When Jared stopped and leaned in toward the driver window, he drew back in surprise at the sight of Roy. “Hey!” He laughed. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou going fifty in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone?”
Roy looked around at the empty street. Thirty? No signs were posted anywhere that he could see. “Is that how Mesquite Creek pays your lavish salary—as a speed trap?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it,” Jared said, laughing.
“No—”
Jared cut him off. “Heck, I couldn’t give a ticket to the town’s favorite son.”
Roy rolled his eyes uncomfortably. He hadn’t meant to wriggle out of trouble. “If I was speeding, go ahead and give me the ticket.”
“No can do. Chief wouldn’t hear of it after that new cruiser you donated—on top of everything else you’ve done. Heck, without you, the kids would be having graduation on Skeeter Field again. Everybody hated that. Turn those lights on this time of year and the poor kids were having to use their diplomas to bat away june bugs.”
Roy smiled. “Look, I’m happy about the auditorium and the police car—I’ve been lucky—but I still think you should give me the ticket. You don’t want to be accused of favoritism.”
“Lucky?” Jared was grinning. “And when I think of how teachers used to ride you for doodling in class.” A laugh burst out of him. “Doodling! I bet that one commercial—the dancing pretzels?—made about a gazillion dollars. Am I right?”
Roy smiled. “Well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. We should get together for a beer while you’re in town.”
“Let’s do that.”
Before Roy could get the window up, Jared leaned in. “You seen Jane yet?”
“I was just at the animal clinic.”
“Yeah? My little sister, Marcy, works there now.” Jared straightened, shaking his head. “I’ve been telling everybody for years that you and Jane wouldn’t be able to stay away from each other forever.”
“It wasn’t . . .”
But Jared was already strolling back to his cruiser.
Roy drove—carefully—the rest of the way back to his mom’s house. The new house. During his brief visits home, he always avoided the house he’d grown up in. Some people might feel nostalgic about their childhood homes, but not him. His father had built a squatty cinder-block structure that had been a furnace during the summer, a meat locker during the winter, and hideous all year long. After his dad died, his mom had attempted to pretty the place up by painting it yellow and planting a few shrubs, but no matter what, Roy always thought it resembled a Soviet outhouse.
The home Roy had built for his mother, while not deluxe, was in the nicest part of town, the same neighborhood where Jane’s parents lived. As a kid, he’d always thought of this as the rich neighborhood, but most of the houses there were pretty simple one- and two-story houses, nothing like the McMansions of modern suburbs. His condo in Seattle had cost twice as much as building and furnishing Wanda’s house from scratch.
He parked next to the For Sale sign and went inside, then immediately wished he had somewhere else to go. The silence unnerved him. One thing his mother’s house had never been was quiet. She’d always had something on, usually the television. The noise used to drive him nuts, but now its absence was even worse. And what seemed strangest? No Buddy coming in to offer him a slobbery welcome.
Guilt shuddered through him, and he hurried back to the kitchen and sank down into a chair. Why had he done it? Buddy was his mom’s best friend. No, he didn’t have a place in his life for a big arthritic dog, but maybe he could have managed somehow. There were pet sitters and dog walkers. Yet it still would have meant poor Buddy logging a lot of alone time.
Part of him wanted to get back into the car and drive to the clinic. But if Jane could find Buddy a better home, maybe that would be best for everyone.
A business card lay on the glass-topped kitchen table, letting him know that Lou Barrentine, a local real estate agent, had been by. Maybe that accounted for some of Roy’s unsettled feeling. It was strange staying in a house where strangers could tromp through at any moment.
As soon as the thought occurred to him, the front door opened. Roy jumped up, not sure what to expect.
“Roy?”
He tensed. A whole flock of house hunters would have been preferable to a visit from Aunt Ona.
She marched in, offered no greeting, and tossed her purse and keys on the glass tabletop. Ona was a small woman, sparer than Wanda had been, but with a sour personality that fit someone who had worked twenty-eight years at the DMV. “It’s so quiet here now!” Her gaze glommed onto the business card, which she scooped up. “Oh! Who did Lou bring through?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should call him and find out. Maybe we’ve gotten a nibble. He could be back at his office drawing up an offer right now.”
“Then we’ll find out soon, won’t we?”
Ona frowned at him. As co-beneficiary of Wanda’s will, she would receive half the proceeds of the sale of the house. But his mother had made him executor of the estate, so he had control of when to dispose of her belongings. Ona had nagged him to come down and try to wrap things up sooner than later. She had loved her sister, he knew that, but she wasn’t one to dwell on sentimentality when there was money at stake.
“Hey—where’s the dog?”
At the mention of Buddy, Roy drummed his fingers. “At the animal clinic.”
His aunt’s sharp gaze locked on him. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to stay away from her.”
“I took Buddy to the animal clinic because you didn’t want him.” Of course, neither had he. “Like a jerk, I was going to put him to sleep. Dr. Fenton could have done it, for all I cared.”
“But it wasn’t Carl you saw, was it?”
He shrugged. “He was out.”
“Uh-huh.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake
. “Jane’s a vet. It was all very professional. She wasn’t even very friendly, to tell you the truth.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Those Canfields were always too good for everybody else in this town. Or at least
she
thinks so.”
She
did not refer to Jane, but Jane’s mother, Brenda. There had been nothing but hostility between Brenda and Wanda—and by extension, Ona—since they’d all been in high school. Brenda had won the homecoming queen title over Wanda by one measly vote. The enmity that had begun when they were teenagers continued on through marriages—Wanda to the no-good Wade McGillam, and Brenda to that pillar of the community, Doug Canfield. And now, when both Wade and Wanda were gone, Ona was carrying on the feud for her sister’s sake.
“Jane said she’d find Buddy a good home.”
His aunt snorted. “Who would adopt him?”
He frowned. She was right. Nobody would. Which meant . . .
“It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if she took that dog in just to lure you back,” Ona said.
“Ridiculous.”
“Is it?” One jet-black eyebrow peaked into her forehead. “You two are on the tips of everybody’s tongue today. Jared Evans said that’s where you were coming from when he let you off the hook on that speeding ticket.”
So she’d already known where he’d been before she asked him. Of course. The grapevine in this town was as fast and tenacious as kudzu.
“I don’t know why you look so put out,” Ona said. “Jared never lets me off on traffic tickets. But I don’t have a building named after me, I guess.”
“I made the donation in the name of the whole family. That includes you.”
“My name’s not McGillam—and believe you me, most of my life I’ve considered that a good thing.”
Roy’s face reddened—just out of reflex, though, not because he disagreed with her. His father was a violent lush who had died in a drunk driving accident that miraculously had killed no one else, and not a soul had mourned him, least of all Roy. He’d worked his whole life to be different from his father, to make the name mean something to people. Even if that something was just dancing pretzels in a TV commercial.
“If you won’t call Lou, I will,” Ona said, dropping the card in her purse. He could have sworn she looked pleased to have irritated him. “Be great if we could get this house sold quick. I haven’t taken a real vacation in ten years. I’d like to feel some sunny sand between my toes this summer. Although you might not be in such a hurry yourself, now that Jane’s in the picture again.” She pierced him with a knowing gaze. “Wanda guessed you only really got over her a year or so ago. Never too soon to start torturing yourself again.”
He scowled. Maybe Ona figured if she upset him enough, he’d agree to take the first offer that came along, just to get away from this town, its memories, and Jane.
Maybe she was right.
Jane wasn’t in her house thirty seconds before her phone rang. Knowing exactly who it was, she ignored the ringtone as she plowed her way toward the kitchen, through dogs hopping around her, nervous and demanding, and hungry cats weaving around her legs. Buddy had handled the stairs up to the apartment okay—albeit slowly—but now in the strange place with new animals, he seemed bigger and more slobbery than ever, and was evidently only comfortable staying six inches in front of her. His main competition for floor space was her three-legged poodle, Squeak, and two cats. A third cat, Olive, preferred to travel around the apartment doing her fox-stole impersonation around Jane’s neck.
The phone didn’t let up, so Jane retrieved it from her purse. “Hey, Mom.”
“Good, you’re home.”
Jane laughed. It was so like her mom to pretend they were across town from each other when Jane was just across the driveway in the garage apartment.
“What’s so funny?”
Olive purred and nuzzled into the phone, so Jane switched ears. “A, this is my cell phone, and B, you saw me drive up so you knew I was home before you called.”
“How do you know
I’m
at home, Miss Smarty-pants?”
“Because I saw your car in the drive a minute ago, and the drapes twitched as I walked past the kitchen window.”
“All right, I’m being nosy. But I couldn’t help noticing that dog . . . where did it come from?”
“Just a sec.” Jane battled her way to the laundry closet, where the food bowls for the cats were kept. She scooped a quarter cup of dry food in each, which served to disentangle her from the feline portion of her menagerie, at least, and also to buy time to decide how much about Buddy she should mention. No topic riled her mom like the McGillams.