Her mother’s brow furrowed. “What happened to your car?”
“Nothing. I’m renting a moving van.”
Brenda sank into a chair at the breakfast table, tears in her eyes. Buddy hurried over to rest his head on her lap. He wore a bright green bandanna now, and smelled of rosemary-lavender pet shampoo.
“I always knew it,” her mother said on a sigh.
“Knew what?” Jane gulped down some juice.
“That you’d want to be with him eventually.”
“Mom, I—”
“I don’t want to be clingy. I just want to know you’re happy.”
“I’m renting a van to run errands with. Why would you think that I was running away?”
Her mother breathed easier but didn’t look entirely convinced. “Because I can still see the gleam.”
“The what?”
“That something that was always between you and Roy when you were together. I used to think it was just mischievousness, like me when I went out with Wade McGillam. Later, I never had a gleam. You’ve still got it. You’ve had it for days.”
“A gleam? Mom, that’s whacked. Now, get your keys and let’s go to the rental place. Otherwise I’m going to be late.”
Her mother stood up. “If you do go, what are you going to do with Buddy?”
“I’m not going anywhere but to work,” Jane insisted.
All the way to the car place, however, she had to force herself not to stare into the vanity mirror to see if she could detect the gleam.
Floating on her overnight resolution to reboot her life, she almost forgot how fresh in people’s minds the events of yesterday would be. The clinic was an instant reminder.
Even Kaylie wasn’t smiling at her this morning. She was on the phone when Jane walked in, and looked harassed. “Oh good—you’re finally here. Could you check and sign for this drug delivery Shane has? Carl’s holed up in his office and I’ve been calling Marcy, but . . .”
Jane frowned, disconcerted by the chilly reception. But she put her things down and turned to where Shane was waiting.
“I heard you’d gone into hiding,” he said.
“I had yesterday afternoon off,” she corrected, skimming her eyes over the delivery order. “Besides, why should I go into hiding? I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just there to watch his speech, and then,
wham
. Gruesome public situation.”
Kaylie hung up the phone and looked at her. “But it was so sweet, so romantic—or at least it was until you freaked out and ran. Then it was just sad. If you could have seen Roy standing up there . . .”
The mental image of Roy left standing at that podium after she’d run was horrible, but . . . “What about me standing up there in shock while my boyfriend from a decade ago proposed to me in front of my parents, the entire town, and my congressman?
That
was awkward.”
“Awkward, but not insulting,” Kaylie said.
“It was not the right moment for a rational discussion,” Jane argued. “For one thing, I didn’t have a microphone. I would have had to shout my reasons across the auditorium.”
Marcy drifted in. “If you’ve thought over such a sweet, impulsive gesture in such a cold, reasoned way, then it’s clear you have no heart.”
Jane was starting to feel cornered again. “How would you have reacted?” she asked Marcy. “Would you have said yes just because you were backed into a corner?”
“No,” Marcy said, “I would have said yes because I’d know someone who had put himself on the line like that must be really in love.”
“Seriously?”
Jane was still processing this insane pronouncement when Shane walked over to Marcy and dropped to one knee. For a moment, her heart stopped—almost as completely as it had in the auditorium.
Kaylie vaulted to her feet and leaned over the reception desk for a better view.
“Marcy, I’ve loved you since you knocked me off the monkey bars,” Shane confessed. “I just have to ask if—”
Marcy’s stunned, panicked look as she stared into Shane’s eyes probably mirrored Jane’s expression the day before. Jane was about to rush forward and intervene when Shane caught Marcy’s look. His throat hitched, and he swallowed, apparently thinking twice about going for the whole enchilada.
“—ask if you’ll go out with me tomorrow night.”
Marcy exhaled in relief. They all did.
“Tomorrow night? Of course.”
Shane straightened up from the floor, almost looking as if he didn’t trust her. “Really?”
“Yes,” Marcy said.
Shane beamed. “It only took me twenty years to ask.”
Marcy turned to Jane.
“See?”
Almost smug, she strolled away past Carl, who was standing among them now.
“What’s going on?” he asked. When no one volunteered to explain, he beckoned Jane toward his office. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
Uneasiness took hold of her. He never called people into his office except on the rare occasions when he’d had to fire someone. He wasn’t going to do that, was he? She flashed back to the couch and chairs arriving, and the awkwardness when he’d popped up at her apartment, and the surprise of the new paint. Could her mother’s spin on these events have been completely wrong? Maybe he was hoping to make a clean sweep by getting rid of her.
Catching his nervous expression as he settled himself in his desk chair, she was sure something terrible had happened, or was about to happen.
“Take a look at this,” he said.
He leaned forward and swung his computer monitor so she could see it. Jane nearly jumped back in horror. There on the screen were she and Carl, standing back-to-back in white coats, all smiles. Huge smiles, like you’d see on billboards for morning news teams and real estate agents. She leaned forward, amazed at the amount of Photoshopping and airbrushing that must have been involved to create this image. Her teeth hadn’t been that white or her skin that clear since she was four years old. Carl had been cleaned up, too. His burnt-orange hair appeared to have been toned down to a more palatable auburn. Underneath their cutoff torsos was a line of cats and dogs in various frolicking poses, sitting atop the words
Mesquite Creek Animal Clinic
.
“What do you think?” he asked. “We make quite a team, don’t we?”
A shiver went through her. “Like a demented Donny and Marie. In lab coats.”
He frowned. “You don’t like it?”
“What
is
it?”
“It’s the new sign for the clinic. Or it will be, once I send in the order. I want to offer you a partnership, Jane.” His face darkened a little. “I want to offer you more, if you’re interested.”
She thought of the old rustic woodcut sign in front of the clinic, there since the eighties or maybe earlier, from before Carl and Maggie had taken over the clinic from old Dr. Spaulding. Coming here after school, turning up the walkway at that sign and looking forward to a couple of hours of being around the vets and the animals, had been one of the highlights of her childhood. Seeing the old sign go would be sad, but replacing it with this would be a travesty. It was wrong on so many levels.
“Roy suggested the lettering,” Carl said.
That name made her even more wary. “Carl . . .”
“You don’t like it, do you?” He swerved the monitor back to inspect it some more. “Is it the composition”—he lifted a brow—“or is it you and me?”
“It’s all of it. This is your clinic, Carl. The business you built up with Maggie. I’ve never thought I was doing any more than filling in.”
“But that’s what I’m saying. I want you here permanently. I was hoping there might be a chance that you’d—”
She cut him off. “I’d still be filling in, Carl. It’s been so great to see you springing back recently, more like your old self. Maggie would want that. But I’m not the right person to turn to.” She smiled. “My mom says she could give a list of ten women who are half in love with you already.”
Carl drew back, and she worried she’d made a blunder mentioning the list.
“But you’re not on the list, obviously,” he said, his mouth turned down. “I thought you’d see things differently. I know you’re younger, but you had your big romance already, and I had Maggie. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be happy. And this is a perfect setup—we work together, have similar interests. What could be more reasonable, more practical?”
Those words chafed. He made it sound as if she should be settling in for life’s evening already. And why not? She had been on the verge of making a similar decision for herself, keeping herself earthbound with heavy furniture and soup tureens. What was the matter with her?
“That’s just it,” she said, thinking aloud. “I’ve worn myself into a reasonable, practical rut. We shouldn’t have to settle for practical. Love shouldn’t be reasonable, or convenient, should it?”
He continued to look at the screen.
“It’s the messiness, the irrationality, the impulsiveness that’s what’s so beautiful about people finding each other.” She swallowed. “Or re-finding. It can turn the second runner-up Little Miss Blackberry of 1988 into a Juliet. Twice.”
They remained silent for a moment, but her thoughts weren’t quiet. Her brain sizzled and snapped with ideas, plans, urgency. Roy was leaving today. She couldn’t let him go. Or maybe . . .
Carl finally released a long sigh. “Well, this is a big fat pile of awkward. Maybe you’d like to—”
“Would it be okay if I took a vacation?” she asked at the same time. “A long one?”
“As in . . . a permanent one?” He considered this. “Roy?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe it would be the best thing if you did,” he said. “You want to go now?”
She nodded, already antsy to leave.
“E-mail me when you get to Seattle,” he said. “I’d like to know how you’re getting along . . . and whether I should be advertising for a new vet.”
She headed for the door. “Thank you, Carl.”
“Good luck.” He smiled back at her. “Oh, and when you e-mail me, could you include the names of those ten women?”
She laughed.
“You’re taking them all with you?” her mother asked, exchanging a doubtful look with Erin.
“Roy might as well know what he’s getting into.” Jane loaded the third cat box into the van. Squeak could ride up front. The last thing she had to do was secure Luther’s cage and then load up her own belongings, some of them stuffed haphazardly into Hefty bags for the voyage.
“When worlds collide,” Erin said.
Brenda held tight to Buddy’s leash. “But you can’t uproot this one again,” she said. “You’d better leave him with me.”
Buddy looked up at her and wagged his tail.
He had started life keeping Wanda company after Roy left home. Now . . .
Jane swallowed. She wasn’t going to cry. This was the beginning of an adventure. Maybe a foolhardy one, maybe even the craziest, worst decision she would ever make in her life, but it would not be launched with tears. She stopped and hugged her mother.
“Take good care of him, Mom,” she said. “And take care of yourself.”
Her father came down with her big suitcase and put it in the back. “Be careful driving. Do you have enough money to handle an emergency?”
Jane couldn’t help laughing as she gave her dad a squeeze. “I’ll be fine. Don’t be a worrywart.”
She and Erin got in the van while her parents stood in the drive and waved her off.
“I knew she was a goner the minute I saw the gleam,” she heard her mother say.
“Thanks for helping me,” Jane told Erin when they’d rounded the corner. It was only a minute’s drive to the salon, thank goodness. Squeak was squirming and panting in Erin’s lap.
“Are you sure you’ll be able to catch Roy?” Erin asked.
“I hope so. He didn’t pick up the phone, but I texted him to wait for me in front of the airport.” She intended to breathe deeply, but struggled to take a shallow breath. “I hope he does.”
“I know he will,” Erin assured her.
“I’ll miss you.”
Erin smiled. “I just wish I’d had time to cut those bangs.”
After dropping Erin off, Jane sped the rest of the way to the regional airport. Alone for the first time since making her decision, with Squeak shivering unsteadily next to her and intermittent outraged meows and squawky chirps sounding off behind her, she began to sense doubts crowding in.
This is insane. You’ve never been to Seattle. Living with Roy might be a disaster. You might never find another job . . .
At a stoplight at the turn-in to the airport, she reached for her phone. No messages. The man definitely needed to work on his telecommunication skills.
Or maybe he’d taken an earlier flight.
The light turned green, and she stepped on the gas. Her heart thumped nervously as she approached the passenger area. It was deserted.
She crawled past slowly, glancing often in her rearview just to make sure she hadn’t missed him standing beside a pole or something.
But he wasn’t there. The one-way corridor forced her to keep going, and as she approached the fork where one lane led to the exit and one led to the turnaround to circle back to the terminal, she hesitated. The last shred of her sensible self was still trying to dig in its heels.
I’ve been happy here. Mom and Dad are getting older, too. And all that Northwest rain . . .
The van hovered between lanes.
It’s a nice town. And safe.
Safe.
She wrenched the wheel to the left and took the turnaround, speeding back to the airport. At the entrance, she squealed to a stop, flipped on the emergency lights, and hopped out. Just then, the terminal’s sliding doors opened and Roy stepped out with his laptop bag slung jauntily over his shoulder, rolling a suitcase behind him. His doubtful look morphed into a huge smile when he saw her. He hurried over.
“I saw the van go by earlier,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you.”