Chapter 16
Easton
It had been four weeks since I'd had her to myself for an evening that wasn't grief or work, and I'd been counting.
The clinic was swallowing her. She opened at seven-fifty, and the lights stayed on past six most nights. She came home in her own car, walked Moose, slept for four hours, and started over.
We were seeing each other in pieces. Coffee at her counter at six-fifteen on the mornings I went to the station.
A walk with the dogs at dawn before she had to be on Main.
Sundays on her couch with a book on her chest and Moose at her feet.
She slept in my bed twice in the last two weeks, both times in jeans, both times with her hand on my sternum.
Both times, I lay awake after she went under and counted how many days it had been since the water tower.
I walked past her window yesterday morning on a coffee run during shift.
The waiting room was empty. The sunflowers from opening day were three weeks gone.
Astrid sat at her counter with a pen in her hand, her head bent over a stack of forms. The bell went off when I opened the door.
She looked up, and the smile she had ready for whoever was coming through died on her mouth when she saw it was me.
The other smile came after. Slower, quieter, just at the corners.
I asked her how the day had been. She said steady—the answer you give when somebody's been asking, and you've been answering. I kissed her on the side of her head and went. I'd been carrying the knot through every hour of the shift since.
The eggs were in front of me at the counter.
We were at the back end of a twenty-four.
Halsey came down from the dorm at five the way he always did, and by six-thirty, he had the foil tray on the burner, the home fries on the back element, and a stack of paper plates on the island.
Duke was across from me with the section of the morning paper that had the high school football scores in it.
Duke looked up from the paper.
"How's Astrid?"
I took a forkful of eggs, chewed, swallowed.
"Busy."
"That's all I get?"
"She's good. The clinic's keeping her up."
"Mhm."
He set the paper down on the counter and put both palms on the edge of the island.
"You've eaten the same forkful of eggs four times."
I looked at the plate. He wasn't wrong.
I let out a breath through my nose and set the fork down.
"She's tired, Duke. Practice has been slow.
Caldwell's been working the diner against her, and the old-timers haven't moved their charts.
Halloran told Audrey, Audrey told Astrid, Astrid told me on a Wednesday three weeks ago, and hasn't told me anything since.
I'm reading it off her face on the days I get to see her face. "
"Are you getting to see her face?"
"Some days."
"How many of the last seven?"
"Three."
"Brother."
"Yeah."
He leaned back and looked at the bay through the window over the sink. Outside, the November light came in slant and cold across the apron.
"My mother's spaniel is overdue," he said. "She's been on me about it for a month."
I had the idea before he finished saying it.
"Take her to Astrid. I'll come with you."
He looked at me. The corner of his mouth pulled up.
"You serious?"
"Dead serious."
Halsey wandered in from the bay then, sleeves rolled up, the smell of diesel still on him.
"Are you eating those, Ford?"
"I'm eating 'em."
"You've been chewing the same one for a minute and a half."
"Christ. Does the whole shift have eyes?"
"Yeah."
He pulled a chair around to the corner of the island and hooked one ankle over the other knee.
"Are you talking about Astrid?"
"We're talking about Rhodes's mother's spaniel."
"Mhm."
A beat.
"My cat's overdue, too."
I looked at him. Halsey loved that cat. He carried her around the apartment like a baby on his off days. She was a gray tabby, nine years old, the only thing in Halsey's life he was not casual about.
"You'd bring her in?"
"For Ford? Yeah. For Astrid? Yeah."
"Mendoza's got that terrier," Duke said.
"He does."
"He's been complaining about her teeth for two months."
I rubbed my jaw.
"You're really going to walk into her clinic in uniform?"
"Straight off shift. We don't take a rig anywhere we don't need to take a rig."
"Why?"
Duke looked at me across the island.
"Because you took a feral cat out of an engine compartment without gloves, Ford.
Because you walked across the street with that cat bleeding all over your jacket, and the only place you knew to take it was her.
Because I've watched you not sleep in eighteen months, and the only sleeping you've been doing lately is the nights she's been in your house.
She opened a clinic. It's empty. You're sitting here eating eggs. That's not the man I know."
He let it sit.
"Also, my mother's spaniel is overdue. So."
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, alright."
Eight-thirty.
We came down Main on foot, the four of us.
Duke had his mother's spaniel on a leash, an old cocker the color of toffee with her ears dragging at her cheeks.
Halsey had his cat in a soft-sided carrier under one arm.
Mendoza had his terrier in his arms because the terrier was the size of a loaf of bread, and Mendoza had made it clear in the truck that the terrier walked when the terrier felt like walking, which was rarely.
I got the door.
The bell went off.
Astrid looked up from her counter. She had a chart in her hand. She set it down.
She did the math. I watched her do it.
Her eyes went to me. Then to Duke and the spaniel. Then to Halsey, with the soft carrier braced against his chest. Then to Mendoza and the terrier. Then back to me. For a beat, the whole waiting room held still around her face.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't have to.
The smile she gave me wasn't the one from the morning before. It was a smile a woman gave a man when she understood, in the second between looking and not looking, what he had done and why. I was going to think about that smile later.
"Boys," she said. "Welcome to Hartsdale Veterinary."
"Doctor," Duke said.
"Mendoza."
"Ma'am."
"Halsey."
"Hey, Doc."
She came around the counter and crouched at the spaniel. The spaniel licked her chin. Astrid rubbed her under the ears with both hands, and the spaniel sat down on the floor and leaned her whole weight into Astrid's knee.
"What's her name?" Astrid said.
"My mother named her," Duke said. "I'm not telling you in mixed company."
A laugh from Mendoza by the door. Astrid looked up at Duke from the floor.
"Try me."
He told her.
She laughed. A real one.
She took them in one at a time. Duke first because Duke was Duke.
Halsey second because he held the cat against his chest like a baby and wouldn't put her down on the table without doing it himself.
Mendoza third because Mendoza's terrier had objected to the waiting room situation and wanted out of it more than she wanted out of Mendoza's arms.
I leaned against the back wall and watched her work.
Mrs. Halloran walked past the window at nine-fifteen and looked in without bothering to make it look like she wasn't. She caught my eye through the glass. I lifted my hand. She lifted hers. She kept walking.
The Bishop boy walked past at nine-fifty with his mother. He pressed his nose to the glass and waved at every dog he could see in the waiting room.
At ten-thirty, when Astrid came out of the exam room with Halsey's cat purring in his arms and a folded sheet of post-care instructions in his free hand, I was the last man at the counter.
Halsey nodded at me on his way past.
"Don't burn it."
"I won't."
He left. The bell went off behind him.
Astrid was at the counter, writing something on a chart.
I waited.
She set the pen down.
"Dinner," I said. "My place. Tonight."
She looked up.
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"Good."
"What time?"
"Seven."
"I'll be there at seven."
"Yeah."
I went out. Hartsdale, on a November morning, had its clean blue sky on. The sun was over the river.
I walked back to my truck, drove home, and slept four hours with Moose at the foot of the bed.
The cast iron was on the stove by three.
The recipe cards were in the tin on the counter where she'd kept them. The one I was looking for was second from the front, dog-eared at the corner, the handwriting careful. I read it twice through, slowly, the way I read instructions before a job.
I cut the onions, seared the chuck, and deglazed with the broth she'd written on the third card to use. I let it go in the oven low, at three-hundred, and walked out of the kitchen because the smell of it was bigger than I was ready for.
It smelled like her. It smelled like every Sunday I'd had in this house. I let myself stand in it for a count, then went upstairs to shower.
She came across Maple at five past seven.
I watched her from the front window. She was in jeans and a cranberry-colored sweater, her hair loose, a bottle in one hand. She didn't see me watching her.
I opened the door.
"Hi."
"Hi yourself."
"What's that?"
"Wine. Audrey told me not to come empty-handed."
"You weren't going to."
"I wasn't. She told me anyway."
I let her in and took the bottle. I closed the door behind her, and the smell of the kitchen hit her on the inhale.
She stopped in the entryway. She turned to look at me, and her face did the small, unguarded thing I'd been watching for since she walked in.
"You made your grandmother's roast."
"For you. Yeah."
She came into the kitchen behind me. She set her hand on the small of my back as she passed. She'd been doing that for three weeks—the unthinking touch she didn't seem to know she was doing, and which had been knocking the breath out of me at random intervals on shift.
We ate at the table. She had her elbows on it the way she did when she was tired and not performing. The roast was good. I'd done what was on the card.