Chapter Twelve #2
“We’re here!” Glamma’s voice preceded her physical body by approximately three full seconds, which was just enough time to know it was coming and not nearly enough to prepare.
I briefly closed my eyes and let out a slow sigh.
She swept in wearing what I can only describe as the physical manifestation of a 1987 aerobics competition: neon pink leggings, a matching oversized sweatshirt cut to hang off one shoulder, and a headband that had absolutely no business being that large.
She carried Coco, who was also dressed in bright colors.
After her came Grace, and then my parents.
My mother waved across the room like she was arriving at a parade, and my father nodded at everything with cheerful approval.
Dad had decided long ago to enjoy whatever happened around him.
With Glamma as his mother, I imagined he learned at a young age it was better to just go along with whatever.
“Marc, hello!” Mom called. “This looks lovely, Delaney!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kingsley,” Delaney called back, warm and genuine in a way that warmed something inside of me. My family and I were close, and some part of me liked that Delaney appreciated my family. Even if she didn’t appreciate me.
Then Martha arrived.
Then Gladys.
Then Goldie.
All three of them in matching neon outfits to Glamma’s.
Different colors—Martha in electric blue, Gladys in highlighter yellow, and Goldie in a green that could be seen from outer space—but the same unmistakable silhouette.
The same enormous sweatshirts. The same headbands.
Had Gladys, who owned the antique and secondhand shop, purchased someone’s entire ‘80s wardrobe?
They had coordinated. For a practice yoga session.
I needed a moment.
“You all match,” I said. I really should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“We do crafts on Thursdays,” Goldie said serenely.
I did not ask any follow-up questions.
Martha carried an overly large tote bag that seemed jam-packed with things not related to yoga.
Gladys was holding a kitten.
My gaze swept over her. I immediately zeroed in on the kitten. Then at Glamma who was nuzzling Coco. Both suddenly finding their animals extremely interesting.
“You’re not supposed to bring your own animals,” I said. “The shelter provides them.”
“Oh pish posh,” Glamma answered. “Coco came from this very shelter. And Gladys got the kitten from Theo on the way in.”
“I absolutely did not give her that kitten,” Theo said from the doorway. “How did you get him, anyway? The new kittens are in an area behind a locked door. You shouldn’t have been able to get in there without a badge.”
Very seriously, Gladys answered, “Maybe the question you should be asking yourself is if I needed to have a badge to get in, how did I do it?”
Theo’s hand went to his waist. Found nothing. He looked down anyway, confirming what he already knew. “What the fuck?” he mumbled under his breath. He crossed to Gladys and gently removed the kitten from her arms. Then he held out his hand. “Badge.”
Gladys withdrew it from her pocket and handed it over. Her glare intensified, and she muttered something low and specific that made Theo briefly go pale before he shook it off and headed back to the front desk.
Then Wyatt walked in.
Then Adam.
Then Logan, Adam’s older brother and our other cousin, still in his full suit.
“I heard you needed help moving things?” Adam asked, surveying the perfectly arranged room with narrowed eyes.
“Surprise,” Grace said, linking her arm through his. “You’re participating.”
Adam blinked like he’d been told something in a language he didn’t speak. “That feels highly unlikely.”
Logan surveyed the mats. “I have workout clothes in my car.”
“Good,” Grace said. “Go get them. And be quick about it.”
I had no idea when Grace had acquired this authority over our cousins, but I chose not to examine it too closely. I had no doubt it was influenced by Glamma.
Within a few minutes, Logan returned with a duffle bag thrown over his shoulder.
Wyatt leaned toward Adam and Logan. “I heard Declan’s coming back to town.”
Logan’s face lit up. “Yeah. He’s doing the launch photos for the Heritage Line. The wandering photographer has agreed to come home long enough to point a camera at something before he leaves again.”
“It’s about time,” Adam grumbled. It had been a few years since their brother Declan had been back to Ruby River.
Logan went off to change as volunteers arrived, bringing carriers, crates, and leashes. Within five minutes, the calm in the temporary yoga studio had become a small and loudly opinionated zoo.
A golden retriever materialized near the water station and knocked over a stack of cups.
His enthusiasm seemed to establish the energy in the room.
Two medium-sized cats emerged from a crate and began a thorough assessment of the structural integrity of every yoga mat by sitting, sniffing, and stretching out on them.
One elderly beagle wandered around off-leash, surveying the room with deep skepticism, sat down in the center of a mat, and refused to move.
And then there was Chaos.
Chaos, freed from his leash the moment a volunteer offered to hold it, spent approximately eleven seconds sniffing the floor before filing the yoga blocks under: potentially edible, worth testing.
Not edible, as it turned out, but that was clearly not the point.
He headbutted one across the room, watched it fly, and looked enormously pleased with himself as he bleated in triumph.
“Chaos—” I started.
He was already gone.
Not physically gone. Worse. He now had goals to accomplish if I was reading his little hops forward correctly.
The chairs lined up against the wall had apparently offended him on a supremely deep level, because he approached the nearest one with the intensity of a health inspector who’d received an anonymous tip. He sniffed it. He circled it. Made a decision.
He climbed it.
“Don’t—” I said.
He launched off of it.
There was a moment—one single, crystal clear moment—where the goat was airborne, all four legs extended, completely committed to the trajectory that ended on the back of Gerald, a sixty-something volunteer in a Phish T-shirt who had not signed up for this when he agreed to help with the yoga session.
Gerald went down like a very surprised domino, and the sound he made on impact was something language had not yet developed an adequate vocabulary for.
“Is he part of the demonstration?” Martha asked, grinning from her mat like she had front row seats to a comedy show she’d paid good money to see.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Grace said at the same time.
I stared at Grace.
She conveniently started stretching, facing away from me. Her shoulders were shaking with the humor she tried to hide.
“Then why is he on Gerald?” Gladys pointed out unhelpfully as I rushed over to help assist him. Chaos jumped off his back just before I reached him.
“Gerald,” I crouched beside him. “I apologize on behalf of the goat.”
“Is he okay?” Delaney appeared on Gerald’s other side, hand already extended.
“I’ve had worse,” Gerald said, from the floor as he waved us away. “I can get up on my own.”
“Take your time,” Delaney suggested.
“No rush,” I agreed.
We both stood over him in supportive silence while Chaos watched from three feet away with the detached curiosity of someone reviewing footage of an experiment that had gone largely as expected.
And this was why we’d required everyone to sign waivers.
I retrieved Chaos by the collar, and pointed him toward the corner of the room. Then I crouched to his level and waited until I had his full attention, which took approximately four seconds and one gentle hand on his jaw, redirecting him away from my shoelace.
“We’ve talked about this,” I said. “Twice. I’m going to need you to apply the information in real time.”
Chaos stared at me. Listening. Or whatever the goat equivalent of listening was.
“The chairs are not a runway. The yoga blocks are not food. The volunteers are not new terrain to climb. Gerald, specifically, should be left alone. I want you to stay away from him.” I pointed. “Person. Not a mountain.”
A pause. He shook his head.
“I understand you have energy. I understand that this environment is stimulating. I’m asking you to make a choice about what you do with that energy, and I’m asking you to do better.”
He blinked.
From somewhere behind me I was fairly certain I heard Delaney make a sound, and quickly suppressed it.
I ignored her.
“I know you understand me. You understand tone. You understand consequence. You’re choosing not to apply either of those things, and I need that to change because this program matters and you are—” I stopped and took a breath. “The biggest variable in a situation that can’t afford variables.”
Chaos held my gaze the whole time. With a little help from me, holding his face in place.
Then he yawned—slow and enormous and deeply unbothered—and trotted toward Glamma with me whispering after him. “No snacks when we get home if you can’t behave.”
Glamma had a piece of something in her palm before he’d even arrived. So much for no snacks as a threat.
I looked at her in disbelief. “Are you feeding him?”
“Positive reinforcement,” she said cheerfully.
“For what behavior? He just landed on Gerald.”
“He got off Gerald,” she said. “Eventually.”
Behind me, Delaney wasn’t even trying to hide her laughter.
I needed to lie down.
Not on a yoga mat. In a dark room. With blackout curtains, a white noise machine, absolutely no goats, and ideally no people, either, for somewhere between several days and the unforeseeable future, while I conducted a thorough post-mortem on every decision I’d made in the last seventy-two hours that had led me to this specific moment in time.
Someone’s phone went off—a notification, not a call, but loud—and out of the corner of my eye, the two cats had resumed their study of the yoga mats.
I was cataloging. Noting everything that was wrong or a problem, and I couldn’t stop myself. It’s just what I did when overwhelmed or overstimulated.
What if Gerald had an injury and needed follow-up care?
Note for future sessions—chairs against the wall create a launchpad. They need to be removed. If Chaos continued attending with me, I’d have to research goat-proof furniture if that even existed, or not having any in the room at all.
The ratio of animals to mats was currently suboptimal. The ratio of animals to humans was also suboptimal. The ratio of everything to my current sensory threshold was critically, functionally, suboptimal.
We needed six more weeks of planning. Eight realistically. A pilot session with one animal and two participants in a controlled environment before scaling. A risk assessment. A contingency protocol for when a goat became airborne.
How were we going to make this work?
Drew and Ellie arrived next with four more people I had never met, which was saying something with how small Ruby River was.
I did a count.
Eighteen humans. Twelve mats. Thirteen animals, if you counted Chaos, which I did because ignoring him had not worked as a strategy.
“Why are there this many people?” I asked.
Ellie looked at me. “Glamma texted us to come and bring friends.”
One of the volunteers in the back raised his hand. “I saw the sign.”
“There was a sign,” I said. Not a question.
Delaney turned to my sister with a raised eyebrow.
Grace beamed. “Glamma and I put them up an hour ago. Community engagement activated.”
“This is not engagement.” I kept my voice even. Professional even. “This is eighteen people and thirteen animals in a room that was designed for twelve.”
This was a statistical nightmare.
Delaney inhaled. I watched her recalibrate, reorganize, and square her shoulders. “It’s fine,” she said brightly, in the tone of someone who had decided to make it fine through sheer force of will alone. “I have extra mats.”
Despite the fact that I’d been spiraling minutes before the sound of her voice, the confidence in her tone eased my nerves enough that my thoughts stopped circling.
And that in itself was saying something.
That, in itself, said a lot.