Chapter 5
Easton
The house smelled like her after she left.
Something she wore, faint, layered under coffee and Penny's blanket and the lemon soap on the counter. I couldn't have named it. Something green and warm.
I washed the two coffee mugs by hand. Set them upside down on the towel by the sink, the way my grandmother used to set hers.
I got married young, she'd said. It didn't work out. I came home.
No business of mine. I didn't know why I was turning it over.
I went to Penny on the rug and crouched down with my hands on either side of her face. Her eyes were half-shut. The white was creeping in around the muzzle in a way it hadn't a year ago.
"We're gonna be alright, Pen. You hear me? We're gonna be alright."
She huffed and leaned her weight into my palms.
I called Cabrera the next morning. She had a slot for Pen at nine. I wrote it on the wall calendar my grandmother bought at the church bake sale four Christmases back, the square under roses in her handwriting.
Then I crossed Maple Avenue and asked Astrid if she'd come down with me. I told her I could use a second set of hands.
She said yes before I'd finished asking.
She walked over at eight Thursday morning with Moose on a leash and two coffees from the diner on Main in a cardboard tray.
I watched her come across Maple from my kitchen window. Jeans, fleece, hair pulled back at the nape. She was pretty in it. She would have been pretty in a feed sack.
A few days ago, when she was in my yard in a bath towel, I'd told myself I wasn't allowed to look, and I'd looked anyway. I'd seen what was under the towel. Not all of it. Some of it. I wanted to see the rest.
I wasn't going to say that part out loud to a single person in this lifetime, including myself.
I pulled on my jacket and went out to meet her at the truck.
She handed me a coffee. The cup was still hot through the cardboard sleeve.
"How's she been?"
I took the lid off, blew across the top. The diner used cinnamon that turned up out of nowhere in the third sip.
"Quiet. She ate about three kibbles last night."
Astrid's mouth tightened at the corner. A micro-frown. She was already running the math on dehydration.
"Good girl, Pen." She crouched and put a hand under Penny's jaw, then straightened and let me lift her into the back.
My grandmother's quilt was folded across the back seat, the one off the porch swing—Pen had been lying on it since she was a puppy. Moose hopped up behind her and pressed his nose against the side of her face. Pen huffed at him without lifting her head.
Astrid got into the passenger side, set her coffee in the cup holder, and turned around to put a hand on Penny's flank between the front seats.
"Hi, sweet girl. We're going to see Auntie Sof. She's gonna make this so much better."
Pen gave her tail one slow thump against the quilt.
I pulled out of the driveway.
We didn't talk much for the first few minutes. She kept her hand on Penny. The early sun came in low through the windshield and lit the side of her face, the loose strands at her temple, the small freckles I'd never been close enough to count before. Then she broke the quiet.
"Sof and I roomed together third year of vet school. She was the one who got me through anesthesia. She has the best hands. She used to do gallbladders on cats for fun on her weekends."
"For fun?"
"She likes the hard stuff."
I glanced at her over the wheel. "Have you ever done gallbladders on cats for fun?"
"I have done plenty of gallbladders on cats. Never for fun."
A small smile from her side of the truck. She turned her head to look out the window, and the smile stayed there a beat longer than she probably meant it to.
I drove. The knot I'd been carrying around in my chest since the phone call to Cabrera loosened about an inch.
She has good hands. She likes the hard stuff.
Astrid said it as someone who'd put her own dog on the table for this woman. I was going to take that and hold it for the next thirty minutes.
Hudson Valley Animal Hospital was a low brick building off the highway with a parking lot bigger than the building. Cabrera came out the front door before we'd gotten Penny out of the truck. Dark hair in a braid down her back, scrubs, a warm smile that didn't have to work to get there.
She hugged Astrid first. It was a long one. The hug of a woman who hadn't seen another woman in too long.
"You look good, Astrid." Sof pulled back enough to take Astrid in by the shoulders.
"You look better, Sof."
"We're gonna talk."
Astrid huffed a laugh against the cold morning air.
"After this."
Cabrera turned to me, and the smile shifted into the professional version of itself without losing any warmth.
"Easton. Hi. Bring her on in."
I lifted Pen out of the back. Astrid clipped a leash to Moose's collar and helped him down. He stuck close to her hip across the lot.
In the exam room, Cabrera was fast and gentle. She lifted Pen's lip, made a small face when she saw what another vet had already seen. Moose was at Astrid's hip with his ears up, watching.
"Yeah, Astrid, you called it. Fractured upper P4. Inflammation at the gum line. We're gonna pull it. She'll be a different dog." She straightened and peeled off her gloves. "Easton, I'm taking her back. You can wait out front. About ninety minutes, give or take."
"Thanks, Doc."
Cabrera put a hand on Pen's head.
"Hi, beautiful old girl. We're going to get that out of you."
Pen lifted her tail.
Astrid set her hand on Pen's head one more time. Moose stretched up to press his nose against Pen's side. Then Astrid stepped back from the table, eased Moose back with her, and came around behind me to stand at my shoulder.
The shift moved through the room before I could name it. She'd been the vet in the room until that second. Now she was the person on my side of it.
I followed her back out to the waiting room.
We sat on a vinyl couch the color of an avocado. A fish tank bubbled in the corner. Moose lay down at our feet with his head on his paws, watching the door to the back.
Astrid had her hands wrapped around her empty coffee cup. She was turning it slowly against her thigh.
"Thanks for coming with me," I said.
She looked over.
"I didn't know how to do this part." I kept my eyes on the door to the back.
It was easier than looking at her for what I had to say next.
"I've never had a dog of my own before. Pen was my grandmother's.
I came in at the end. I've been pretending for a year and a half that I knew what I was doing with her, and I didn't. I didn't know what to ask Caldwell.
I didn't even know it was a tooth until you told me it was a tooth. "
"Easton."
She set her coffee cup down on the table and turned in her seat to look at me. Full body turned.
"You noticed she wasn't right. You brought her in. When you didn't get the right answer the first two times, you didn't stop. That's what a pet owner is supposed to do. That's the whole job."
"Yeah."
"That's the whole job. You did it. You're doing it right now."
Moose lifted his head off his paws and put it down again.
I let my head go back against the wall behind the couch and closed my eyes for one beat. When I opened them, she was still looking at me. Her shoulder was against my arm. I let it stay.
We talked about other things for the rest of the wait. Small things. Silly things.
She told me Moose had eaten a cork out of a bottle of wine her first month with him and survived, against considerable veterinary odds. I told her about Halsey's eggs at the firehouse, which were the only reason any of us got fed on shift days.
She made me laugh twice. I made her laugh once.
I hadn't felt this easy with another person in a long time.
Cabrera came out at eleven-fifteen with her mask down around her neck. Moose was on his feet before she'd opened her mouth.
"She did great. Tooth came out clean. Root and all. No abscess yet, which is a small miracle. She's gonna feel like a different dog by the weekend. I want to keep her until three or four o'clock, let her come up fully, walk on her own, and eat a little. I'll call you."
We grabbed lunch at a diner two exits up the highway with a back patio that took dogs. Moose got the corner of a bench to himself. Astrid took half my fries without asking. I let her.
I'd been checking my phone every couple of minutes since we sat down. I wasn't being subtle about it.
Astrid set her sandwich down and looked at me until I looked back.
"Sof would call you inside of a minute. She's gonna be fine."
"I know."
She reached across the table and turned my phone face down. Her fingers stayed on it for a second, like she was making sure it would stay there.
"I'll listen for it."
She slid two of the fries she'd taken earlier back onto my plate. Moose put his head on my knee under the table.
We were back at Hudson Valley at three-fifteen.
Cabrera met us in the lobby. Pen was on her feet, wobbly but on them, still working out where her legs were after the anesthesia. She saw me before I saw her. The whole back end of her wagged.
I went down on one knee. She came over on her own legs, listing slightly, and leaned her weight into me. I put my hands on either side of her face and held them there.
Cabrera counted off the aftercare on her fingers—soft food, pain meds, no hard chews for a week—with the ease of someone who'd given this speech a thousand times and still managed to make it sound like the first. She handed me a paper bag with the pill bottles and instructions inside.
"Got all that?"
"Got it. Thank you, Doc."
She looked over at Astrid, then back at me. The corner of her mouth turned up.
"With Astrid looking after you, you're in good hands anyway."
Sof's smile didn't ask a question. It made a statement and left it there for you to do something with.
"Yeah," I said. The word came out before I'd decided to say it. "Yeah, I know."
Astrid was looking at the floor tile by my boot.
"Thanks, Sof," she said.
"Anytime, Astrid."
I carried Pen out to the truck. Moose followed at Astrid's hip.
I laid Pen on the back seat. Moose hopped up after her and lay down with his chin on her shoulder. Pen closed her eyes.
Astrid kept a hand on Pen's flank between the seats until we were on the highway.
Once Pen was clearly asleep, she settled back and pulled one knee up under her, looking out the window.
The sun was getting low. The light moved across her face in pieces as the road turned—gold over her temple, then her cheek, then the line of her jaw.
From time to time, I glanced over at her. She didn't notice. Or she did, and let me look.
I drove to the station Monday morning with the windows down.
The bay was open when I pulled in. Mendoza was hosing the apron. Halsey was hauling the trash dumpsters back from the curb. The whole station smelled like coffee and the floor wax somebody had laid down on Sunday night.
Duke was in the kitchen, already on his second cup, scrolling something on his phone with a piece of bacon held by the very tip of his fingers. He looked up when I came through the door.
"Ford."
"Rhodes."
"You eat?"
"Not yet."
"Plate's there."
He pointed his chin at a covered foil tray on the counter. I lifted the corner. Bacon, scrambled eggs, home fries. Halsey could cook. Like I told Astrid, he was the only reason any of us got fed before noon on shift days.
I made a plate and sat across from him at the counter island.
He waited until I'd had a forkful of eggs. He had a system for these conversations.
"So," he said.
"No."
"You haven't even heard the name."
"Don't need to."
"Brother." He set the bacon down. "I know I said this about Maddy. I know I said it about Cassie. But this one is different. She's a CRNA over at the hospital. Just bought a house on Linden, by herself, twenty-nine years old. She has a dog. She runs. She makes her own pesto."
"Duke."
I'd been arguing with Duke about women for nine months. I'd always had a reason ready. Bad timing. Bad month. The boxes in the hall.
This morning, the boxes weren't the reason.
I knew what the reason was. I'd known since a vinyl couch in a waiting room south of Catskill on a Thursday afternoon. I wasn't telling Duke.
He was a good man. He'd never been cruel about a woman in his life. But there was something about names and brunch and lists that didn't have a place to put what I'd been holding since Thursday. I wasn't going to make Duke find one.
I chewed eggs and felt the absence of the argument I usually had ready.
"You're being quiet," he said.
"I'm eating."
"You're being quiet like a man who's eating and thinking. Not like a man who's just eating."
"I'm not interested, Duke."
He held both palms up. "Alright. I'm done. I am formally retiring from the project. I'll tell Beth you're a closed file."
"Tell her thanks."
"I will not."
Lou walked through, clipboard against his hip, and took a coffee off the burner without looking at it.
"Rhodes. You harassing Ford again?"
"Trying to give him a life."
"Ford." Lou lifted his chin at me. "Do you want a life?"
"I'm good."
"Mhm."
He took his coffee back out into the bay.
Duke went back to his bacon. I went back to my eggs. When he spoke again, he'd dropped the pitch.
"Are you good?" he said.
"I'm good."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, Duke. I'm good."
He looked at me over his coffee one beat longer than he usually did. Then he let it go.
"Alright, brother."
I ate my eggs. I didn't say her name.
She'd bumped her shoulder against mine on a vinyl couch Thursday. I hadn't moved.