“Mom . . .” Jane hurried after Roy to the porch.
Out of their hearing, he turned back to her, grinning. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we can get together.”
“Great,” she said.
He took her hand and gave it a firm squeeze.
When Jane went back inside, her mother’s fierce, protective look had changed to a more searching gaze. She examined Jane’s face so intently that Jane drew back a little, disconcerted.
“What’s the matter?” Jane asked.
“I just thought I saw something,” her mother murmured.
Jane’s father seemed more amused than anything else. “Roy’s looking good, isn’t he?” he said. “I thought so the other day when we were touring the new auditorium at the school. He hasn’t changed a bit.”
“No, he hasn’t,” her mother grumbled. “Still acting like a teenager.”
Jane crossed her arms. “No, you’re still acting as if I’m a teenager—chasing my friends away as though I had a curfew.”
“Did you want him to stay all night?” her mother asked.
Did she ever.
Her father began to tug her mother toward the door. “Maybe we should leave this for tomorrow, Brenda. In the light of day, this will all seem like nothing. After all, Roy’s just going to be here a few more days. He told me himself that the only reason he was sticking around was for the opening of the auditorium.”
“When did he say this?” Jane asked.
He thought for a second. “Day before yesterday? Well, he’s giving a speech Thursday, so of course he’s going to stay. But after that . . .”
Of course. She’d even known about the auditorium dedication. And yet she’d fallen for Roy’s I’m-here-because-of-you patter—hook, line, and sinker.
Her father smiled encouragingly at Jane before they left the apartment. “Don’t worry. Incidents like this blow over. Soon, Roy will go back to Seattle, life will return to normal, and everyone will remember how sensible you are.” He winked. “Good night.”
When they were gone, Jane stumbled back to bed and flopped back against the mattress.
Maybe Roy had wanted to rekindle their romance. Why not? He was breezing through town, bored, avoiding work . . . Probably he was still feeling sad because of his mom. So he’d reached out to the old and familiar. Old, familiar Jane.
Damn.
And the saddest part? She wasn’t sure whether she cared if he was sincere or not.
Everything will get back to normal.
That was supposed to be comforting. The trouble was, Roy had come back, and now normal seemed lackluster.
Chapter Six
On Sunday morning Jane waited for the promised call. During lunch with her parents, she stayed within grabbing distance of her phone, like a teen in an Annette Funicello movie. During the middle of the meal, she received a text from Roy.
Sorry haven’t called. On my way to California. Could you assure your dad I’ll be back for aud dedication? Thanks! xoxo, R
So. Back to normal had arrived even sooner than she expected.
As she came through the clinic’s front door Monday morning, the sharp odor of fresh paint brought her up short.
Jane gaped. The room was no longer its old faded eggshell white, but an eye-peelingly vivid minty green. Clutching the bag containing her lunch and the book she always read on her short lunch break, she completed a full turn.
“What do you think?” Kaylie asked. “Really brightened the place up, huh?”
“It’s . . . minty.” In fact, it felt as if she were inside a toothpaste tube. “Who did this?” But even as she asked the question, she knew. The weird streak in Roy’s hair Saturday night. The hours during which he and Carl had disappeared. All his hints about how Carl felt about her.
Of course. She’d told Carl she liked green. Carl had probably mentioned her preference to Roy as a reason for his choice of color. (Not that she’d had
this
in mind.) With his usual enthusiasm, Roy—or R, as she liked to think of him now—had probably thought helping Carl would be a lark.
“I think Carl did it himself—if you look closely you can see the sploops,” Kaylie pointed out. “He’s on the phone right now, but he’s been impatient for you to get here. He’s like a little kid with a huge secret.” She lowered her voice. “I guess a lot of people had interesting weekends.”
Jane leaned on the reception desk, remembering she’d intended to give Kaylie a piece of her mind. There had to be some repercussions for a receptionist who practiced yellow journalism on the side. “That’s the last time I’m ever speaking to you while you’ve got your press hat on.”
Kaylie laughed. “Oh, come on. I thought the article turned out great. Everybody was talking about it.”
“Were they? I guess I was too busy hiding in my apartment to notice.” After Sunday lunch, Jane had decided to put Roy out of her mind and had turned off her phone while she did furious housework. Periodically, she would check messages and feel even more aggrieved to see that there were no missed calls. No more wildly effusive text messages, either.
“I did some spring cleaning,” she added.
One of Kaylie’s blond brows darted up. “Uh-huh. Was this before or after Roy was hanging out at your place?”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s practically public record, thanks to my brother,” Marcy grumbled from the hallway. She was mopping outside the exam rooms.
Remembering Marcy’s troubles, Jane took a deep breath and strode over to her. “Jared told me what happened with Keith. I’m so sorry.”
The vet tech didn’t look up. When she spoke, it was in a monologue muttered at her broom handle. “Dear Miss Lonely-hearts, I’ve been in a long-term relationship and would really like it to go to the next level. What should I do?” She answered herself, drawling sensibly, “Dear Marcy, why not pinpoint someone you know who’s barely been able to scrounge up a date for years and ask her? You might get lucky. This love expert and so-called friend of yours might advise you to corner your commitment-phobic boyfriend and ask him to marry you, and maybe you’ll even be dumb enough to take her advice. He might drop you like a greased watermelon and run as far and as fast as he possibly can.”
Jane shuffled uncomfortably. “I can’t believe Keith reacted that way.”
“Believe it. Said he just wasn’t ready to settle down—or maybe he just said settle. Then he told me that if marriage meant so much to me, it would be better for both of us if we went our separate ways.”
“That’s so awful. But at least—”
Marcy broke off her words with a bray of irritation. “Oh yeah! At least I know what kind of guy he is now. And at least there’s no uncertainty. Yup, thanks, figured that out. Glad to know.” She slopped the mop back into the janitor’s bucket and then rung it out within an inch of its life. “I’d invite you for a single-girl night of
Glee
-watching or something, but I hear
some
people’s weekends turned out better than others’.”
If misery loved company, at least she could give Marcy some consolation. “You might have been misinformed. Roy’s already flown the coop again.”
Marcy frowned. “What, already? Why?”
“Business. That’s what he said in the one brief message he deigned to send.”
“After breaking your mom’s trellis and stirring up a hornet’s nest of gossip about you?”
God, people even knew about the trellis. “Yup.”
“What is it with guys?” Marcy asked. “Do they all see their lives as having limitless romantic possibilities? There has to be some reason why they scoot out the door—or leave the state—as soon as things get complicated.” She angled a sympathetic look at Jane. “Is he gone for good?”
“Well, he does have a history of disappearing for a decade. But it’s not like we had actually gotten involved.” When Marcy and Kaylie exchanged a skeptical glance, she added, “Really.”
Kaylie sighed. “Better to have a broken trellis than a broken heart.”
Jane shook her head. “Never any risk of that. He was just here for a few days. And he’s obviously no good at long-distance relationships. Ten years ago, we didn’t bother to attempt one, and now . . .”
Marcy’s lips twisted into a disgusted frown. “So all that
Romeo and Juliet
stuff was still just playacting on his part. And Jared’s been talking him up for days as if he’s some kind of town hero. Town jerk, more like it.”
Jane felt uncomfortable vilifying him. “Well, there is the auditorium, and the police cruiser.”
“You don’t have to defend him,” Marcy said, looping an arm up around Jane’s shoulders. She looked up and gave her a bracing squeeze. “Single solidarity. I’m sorry I gave you crap for wrecking my relationship and maybe my entire future. If I’d known you were in the bleak corner, too, I’d have kept my yap shut.”
“That’s okay,” Jane said as the office door opened.
Carl came out, his face expectant. “You’re here!” He looked as if he was about to say more—probably to ask her opinion about the paint. At that moment, however, Kaylie let out a gasp, directing their attention to the clinic’s front door.
They all turned, expecting an early arrival or an emergency. But instead of anything on four legs or an owner toting a cat box, Ann from Buckets of Blooms appeared—or at least Jane assumed it was Ann. Her face was hidden by an enormous spray of spring flowers with a Mylar balloon sprouting out the top that announced
I’m Sorry
in script.
“How beautiful!” Kaylie exclaimed.
Marcy dropped her hand from Jane’s shoulder and raced to the front. She practically tackled the florist. “Who’s that for?”
Ann heaved the arrangement onto the counter. “Jane.”
At her name, Jane felt an absurd flush of excitement. She approached the flowers, which seemed even larger close-up, and picked the pale yellow card off its plastic holder. Aware of all eyes on her, she quickly opened it and read.
Sorry for the radio silence. Things are crazy here. Back soon!
“They’re from Roy, right?” Kaylie asked.
Jane nodded, trying not to smile.
“He’s sorry because it’s over?” Marcy asked.
“I think he’s sorry because he didn’t call,” Jane explained.
Marcy’s face fell.
“I was so excited when I came in this morning and saw the order online,” Ann said, standing back to take a last look at her handiwork. “Hardly anybody ever orders the Tower of Flowers. It’s only the second time I’ve done it. Lucky I had enough gladiolas!”
“You did an incredible job,” Kaylie said.
“Isn’t it a little much?” Marcy pursed her lips. “I mean, geez, couldn’t he have just sent an e-mail?”
“Flowers are a tangible manifestation of sentiment,” Ann said, as if reciting from the United Florist Association handbook.
“Yeah, and they wilt and have to be tossed out.” Marcy turned to Jane with an expression showing a lot less solidarity than before. “You might want to check with Carl to see if it’s okay to leave them there. Some people are allergic.” She skulked away to finish the mopping.
To get Carl’s verdict, Jane twisted to where he had been standing earlier. But he’d already disappeared.
There were days when she wished she’d never read
All Creatures Great and Small.
Though she’d always loved animals, it wasn’t until her father had given her a boxed copy of James Herriot’s books that her obsession had coalesced into an ambition.
Why? she wondered now. She’d started her day with an operation on a dog with a broken leg tendon. That had been followed by the usual parade of veterinary woes, including a dachshund with a disc problem, an adorable stray with feline leukemia, and a cranky cockatoo who was even more ornery when he had a cold. Around noon she’d driven out to the county animal shelter where she volunteered two afternoons per month. She was happy to do the work, but the shelter always left her feeling low. The bottom of the food chain when it came to county funds, it survived on a shoestring thanks to volunteers. But the animals who appeared in the old, crowded cages were the flip side of the animals with devoted owners she saw every day—these were the abandoned, the abused, the lost. Most people had no idea how many the shelter processed, how many healthy adorable animals were put down because there were simply not enough homes. And there was a never-ending stream of them.
Before leaving the shelter, she was called out to a farm where there was a sick horse. The problem was colic, and a dose of Banamine seemed to help the animal, an appaloosa beauty named Zelda. Just to make sure the horse was reacting well to the medicine, Jane stayed and walked her on a lead. The owner—actually the owner’s father, since Zelda’s rider, a scrappy young barrel racer, was in school—dogged Jane’s steps.
“I was expecting Carl to come out. He usually did the serious work, I thought.”
She rarely got this, but Jack Lewis was the old-fashioned type. Maggie used to joke about the expectations ingrained in old-school types when it came to veterinary medicine—the assumption that female vets were supposed to minister to kittens and hamsters. “Carl was tied up,” Jane explained.
Jack grunted. “Maybe the next time, he’ll hire a man.”
“Next time?” Jane’s head turned so sharply, she startled Zelda. She reached up to pat the horse’s neck and calm her. “I didn’t realize I was on the cusp of unemployment,” she joked.
“Well, how long are you going to last out here now that the McGillam boy’s back in town?”
She frowned. As far as she knew, Roy
wasn’t
back. She’d expected to hear from him Monday night, but again he hadn’t called. And she’d been too busy today to check messages. Not that it made any difference. “I’m not seeing a connection,” she said. “Besides, Roy and I aren’t even . . . involved.” One little kiss, that’s all there had been.
Jack snorted. “Sent you the Tower of Flowers, didn’t he?” While Jane, struck dumb, led the horse, he shook his head. “No, I imagine Carl’ll be looking for somebody else pretty soon. Or maybe he’ll go it alone. That’s what I’d do, probably, if I was him.”
Ah yes. The old “what I would do if I were a vet whose partner had run off with an old flame” scenario. A body just couldn’t help ruminating about that sometimes.
After leaving Zelda on the road to recovery, she got back in her car and started the drive back into town. It seemed half the town already had her paired off with Roy, while her mother was certain that
Carl
was in love with her. The story of the green paint—which Jane had only mentioned to her mother to get her to stop fretting about Roy’s flowers—had nearly short-circuited the maternal unit.
“Isn’t that sweet, Jane?” Brenda had gushed. “He’s like one of those little bowerbirds, making his nest appealing to you.”
Actually, the idea made Jane uncomfortable in all kinds of ways. “Why should he have to appeal to me?” she asked. “I already work there. Of course I like the place.”
“But I bet he wants to make it more attractive to you.”
“Or maybe he finally noticed that the other paint had faded to a hideous khaki color and was chipped everywhere.”
Besides, Jane had been observing Carl closely in the past day, and he had been nothing but his usual professional self toward her.
“And don’t you think if Carl and I had any kind of chemistry, we would have found that out by now? We’ve been alone together a lot, and I can swear to you that he’s never been anything less than a gentleman.”
“Well.” Her mother had sounded indignant. “I would hope so. Although, maybe if you’d give him a little encouragement. . .”
As Jane went over the conversation in her head once again—the many conversations she’d had with her mother on this perplexing topic—she began to feel weary. And hot. Afternoon temperatures were already spiking into the nineties, and she’d been going all day. She should tag the clinic and then go home and take a shower, although neither the clinic nor home seemed very welcoming.
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the blacktop road that branched off to a smaller dirt road that led to the creek. She hadn’t been there in years, but suddenly staring at water appealed to her more than going back into town. The two-lane was empty and she hit the brake and then U-turned, looping back to the blacktop road and then bouncing down the rutted lane that dead-ended at Mesquite Creek.
She was in luck. Only one other vehicle, a shiny SUV, was parked nearby. Probably a guy fishing somewhere on the creek. Or a serial killer dumping his latest victim. Whoever it was, hopefully they would leave her alone.