13. Wren
WREN
The coffee maker is still gurgling when Paige corners me at the supply closet.
“You have hay in your hair.”
“I do not.” My hand flies up anyway. There's hay in my hair.
“Wren.” She plucks the strand free and holds it between us like evidence at trial. “You went to the show.”
“I went to the show,” I admit.
“You went to the show without me.” Her voice rises in pitch with every word.
“You were on call.”
“I was on call for exactly one bloat colic that resolved itself by nine, and you know my ringer works.” She tucks the hay behind her own ear like a flower and follows me into exam two, where I start restocking gauze I don't need to restock.
“So let me get this straight. Seven allegedly gorgeous circus men, a Big Top, a lion, and you sat in those bleachers alone eating popcorn like a monk.”
“I didn't eat popcorn.”
“That's the part you're correcting?” she asks dryly.
Heat crawls up my neck. I turn to the cabinet and count suture packs.
Behind me, Paige goes silent, which means that means her brain is connecting dots at a speed that should require a license.
“Oh my god.”
I sigh. “Paige.”
“Oh my god. You're hoarding him. You're hoarding the hot animal tamer. You met the whole cast of a romance cover, and you're keeping them to yourself like a dragon on a pile of gold—”
“I'm not hoarding anyone—”
“Then explain the face,” she interrupts.
I play dumb. “What face?”
“That one. The one you're doing right now.” She leans against the exam table, arms crossed, victorious. “You stayed after the show. You stayed after the show and something happened, and you're going to tell me every—”
The back door bangs.
We both snap upright like soldiers. Dr. Vance comes down the hall looking like he lost a fight with his own bed—shirt wrinkled, eyes bloodshot, hair messy. He doesn't even glance at us. He walks into his office and shuts the door hard enough to rattle the framed diploma in the hallway.
Paige and I exchange a look and scatter.
She takes the phones. I take the appointment book, the autoclave, the fecal samples nobody ever fights me for.
For two hours, we are the most industrious veterinary staff in the county, and Vance's door stays shut, and the only sound from behind it is the occasional creak of his chair.
At eleven-fifteen, the bell over the front door jingles, and Earl Dobbins comes in carrying a beagle wrapped in a bath towel.
“She got up on the workbench,” he says, out of breath. “Went right through a coffee can of roofing nails. Bled all over the truck.”
“Bring her back.” I'm already gloving up. “Exam one.”
The beagle—Dixie—has a slice across her left front pad, deep enough to gape but shallow enough to close without drama. She trembles on the table while I flush the wound, and Earl hovers, hands opening and closing, until Paige puts a cup of coffee in them just to give him something to hold.
“She'll be fine,” I tell him, threading the first suture. “Two stitches' worth of cut. She won't even limp by Sunday.”
“Thank the Lord.” He exhales and sags into the plastic chair. Then, because he's Earl and Earl has never met a silence he could tolerate, he says, “You girls hear about Sam Harlan?”
I furrow my brow. “The hardware store guy?”
“The hardware store guy.” Earl leans forward, coffee forgotten.
“Somebody painted up his whole house last night. Bible verses, four feet tall, right across the front door. Something about sin finding you out. And the porch says something about a millstone. Ruth Simmons drove by twice this morning just to read it all.”
“Vandals,” Paige says, restraining Dixie's shoulder with one practiced hand. “Kids, probably.”
“That's what I said. Except.” Earl lowers his voice, though the clinic is empty. “They got the store too. Back wall of Harlan Hardware, big blue letters. And here's the thing… it wasn't just cussing or, you know, drawings. It said folks ought to ask Sam about his scholarship boys.”
The suture thread goes still between my fingers.
“His what?” Paige asks.
“He runs that scholarship. Through the school board. For boys from tough homes, you know, gets them interviewed and everything, real hands-on.” Earl scratches his jaw. “Whoever painted it made it sound like—well. Like somebody ought to be looking into it. Like there's something to look into.”
“That's a heck of an accusation to spray-paint,” Paige says.
“That's what Bill Stilton said at the diner. But then Mavis said—and I'm just repeating it—Mavis said whoever wrote it obviously knew things. Kids write curse words. They don't write about scholarships.”
Kids and scholarships.
I finish the stitch on autopilot. Knot. Snip. My hands know the work, which is good, since my brain has left the room entirely.
Because I'm thinking about the timing. The carnival rolled into Thistlewood two days ago. Thistlewood, where Samuel Harlan has lived his whole quiet, hardware-store, front-pew life without anyone ever painting a word on him—until this week.
I'm thinking about scars. Shiny, raised lines on a man's forearms. Maybe elsewhere too.
I'm thinking about scholarship boys and disadvantaged backgrounds and a man who can't be touched.
The hair on my arms lifts. Every strand, all at once, like the air before lightning.
“Wren?” Paige is looking at me. “You okay? You went white.”
“Fine. Fingers cramped.” I flex my hand, place the last suture, and smile at Earl with a face I assemble piece by piece. “There. Dixie's all set. Keep it dry, cone stays on, bring her back in ten days and I'll pull the stitches for free since she's been such a good girl.”
Earl thanks me three times, pays at the desk, and carries Dixie out swaddled like royalty.
The clinic goes quiet.
Paige starts wiping down the table. “Small towns, man. One coat of spray paint and it's the Kennedy assassination.”
“Yeah,” I say.
But I'm standing at the sink with the water running over my hands long after the soap has rinsed away, and I'm doing math I don't want to do.
It could be nothing. It's probably nothing. A traveling show arrives, and a local man gets vandalized, and it’s a coincidence. Rowe holds injured things like they're made of glass. Rowe couldn't hurt—
It's not you. I don't do well with being touched. By anyone.
Did it hurt?
That's why I did it.
I shut off the water.
Whoever painted those walls knew things. Wrote them on the house of a man who interviews boys, personally, one at a time.
And whatever happened to Rowe Holloway—whatever carved those lines into his arms and taught his skin to treat every human hand as a threat—somebody did that to him. Somebody specific. Somewhere specific.
I dry my hands slowly, one finger at a time.
I have a follow-up at the fairgrounds. Peanut's injection, day three of five. I'll drive out there. And I'll watch him.
Not the way I've been watching him—God knows I've been doing plenty of that. I'll watch the way I watched on day one, before this whole carnival got under my skin. I'll watch his face when the town comes up. I'll watch his hands.
Because either I'm inventing a story out of spray paint and scar tissue, and I owe him better than that. Or the gentlest man I've ever met came to Thistlewood for a reason.
“Hey.” Paige tosses the used drape in the bin and glances over. “You never finished telling me about last night.”
“Later,” I say, and reach for my field kit. “I've got a monkey to see.”