Chapter 2
Jones Quebedeau studied his best friend. Her eyes had grown wide, and she looked back and forth.
He couldn’t remember in the history of their friendship either one of them ever keeping something from the other. He had to admit, he was a little hurt.
But he understood why she was doing it. She knew that he was taking all of the money he could possibly take to pay off his bills, because he couldn’t keep operating his clinic out of a rented garage indefinitely. The owners had just put their house up for sale since their kids were moving them to an assisted living facility, and they intended to unload it as quickly as they could. He was going to have to find a new place for his clinic, and the less he owed on his college tuition, the better off he’d be.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to worry you. I know you have your own problems.”
“I could have given you more hours. I don’t have to pay my bills down. It’s not like—”
“That’s been your plan all along. I wasn’t going to ask you to change it because of me. I don’t want you to.”
He tapped his coffee mug with one finger, wondering if this was the best time to pull out the letter he’d gotten in the mail just yesterday when he got home.
She’d been keeping secrets from him, but that didn’t mean he should retaliate, and it certainly didn’t mean he wanted to .
But he wanted her to understand that he didn’t want her keeping things from him.
That just wasn’t the way friendships worked.
“I know that you want me to be able to keep doing what I’m doing, and I do appreciate that. But you realize it hurt me when I figured out that you’d been hiding something this important from me?”
He wasn’t sure if she was going to get it, because sometimes a person thought they were doing the right thing, and they just plowed ahead, thinking it was for his own good.
But it wasn’t. They were friends, good friends, and good friends didn’t keep things from each other.
But he should have known better. Amy knew right away what he was talking about, and she was very good at putting herself in other people’s positions.
“I would be steaming mad at you right now if our positions were reversed. I’m sorry.”
That was all he needed to hear. He took his free arm, careful not to spill his coffee, and wrapped it around her neck, dragging her head against his armpit, before he ruffled her hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail and didn’t have the effect that he wanted it to, and then let her go.
That was as affectionate as they got. But a time like this seemed to call for it.
“I’m going to go to the store as soon as my clinic closes this evening and stock up on dog food, but in the meantime, I wanted to show you the letter that came last night. And before you think I’m keeping anything from you,” he said, pulling the letter out of his back pocket and handing his coffee to her so he could open it. “I want you to know that I left my clinic, came here to help you, and then we went down and picked up the kids for the parade and did the parade, and then I brought you home, and it was late when I got the mail. So that’s why I didn’t tell you about it last night. ”
“I trust you,” she said, looking down at the coffee she held. “I’m sorry. I know you’ll tell me everything. I never worried that you might be keeping something from me. And I don’t want you to have to worry about that with me.”
“I want to give you a hard time,” he said, the paper crinkling as he pulled a letter out of the envelope. “But I understand why you’re doing it. Truly I do. You don’t want me to give up what I’ve worked for just because things aren’t going well for you.”
“Maybe God has a miraculous way that He wants to solve this problem. Maybe He’s just waiting to drop money in my lap, and I just have to have faith, you know? If I go to you, if I talk to you, you’re going to give me money; I know you will. And maybe that’s not the way God wants to handle it.”
“Maybe not, or maybe it’s partially the way He wants to handle it,” Jones said without a little bit of irony.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, taking a sip of coffee, and he was pretty sure it was out of his cup.
He held his hand out, and she gave him the other cup back.
It was hers; he could see where her lip balm had made a mark on the rim of the cup.
He didn’t care, and she didn’t either, and he thought it was odd, because he would care with anyone else. But Amy was different. They’d been friends too long to worry about whether or not they got each other’s germs. If their germs were going to kill each other, it would have happened a long time ago.
“Let me read this to you,” he said. “Actually, let me just tell you what it says, and then you can read it for yourself.”
“Would you make up your mind already?” she said, trying to look over his hand at the letter.
“Just be patient,” he said. “This isn’t something I get to do every day.”
“All right,” she said cautiously, even though her body still leaned toward the letter .
“So, this is a letter from the lawyer who’s handling my aunt’s estate. My aunt is estranged from my parents, and I knew her very little growing up.”
“I know. You’ve talked about her a few times. It’s Aunt...Edith?”
“That’s the one.”
“I remember her. Before she and your parents got into that huge fight, you went out to her house for a week every summer. It was the lowest week of the year for me.”
“Hey. I quit going by the time I was ten.” He bumped his shoulder with hers, and she smiled. Both of them had drunk their coffees to the point where a little bump was not going to spill anything. In fact, he thought hers was almost gone. He should have brought her two cups.
“Anyway, she passed away.”
“I’m sorry. I remember you said that. What was it...just before Thanksgiving?”
“Yeah. Sometime in early November. I feel bad that I don’t really know, but she never talked to my parents again after they had their big split.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“No, although I could have looked her up when I was an adult. Anyway, I knew she had left me something, and I’d already been contacted by the lawyer. I told him to just send it to me, I didn’t need to go listen to a will or anything. But he told me something interesting.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding a little impatient.
“I’ve inherited ten million dollars.”
“Oh. My. Goodness.”
He grunted at her shocked expression. “That’s how I felt when I read it. But there’s a catch.”
“Catch? Is that legal? Can there be catches in wills? ”
“I don’t know.” He was a veterinarian. He had no idea how wills worked. “Basically, I get her entire estate, except for her house and property which she left to her maid, I think.”
“What’s the catch?” Amy said, and he bit back a smile. He did like to tease her.
“All right. The catch is, in order to inherit the money, I have to be married within one month of her death.”
“You have to be married?”
“That’s not really that big of a deal. I mean, I guess I kind of thought I would get married eventually at some point. Even though I don’t really have any person in mind and never have.” Which was true. He and Amy had gotten along so well together, he’d never really noticed the dearth of a girlfriend. He’d had a few dates in high school, nothing to write home about, and he’d met some interesting girls at college, but...he wanted someone who was more like Amy. Someone who worked hard, was unassuming, didn’t need to have the biggest and best of everything, wasn’t high maintenance, wasn’t afraid to give him a hand when he needed it, and didn’t get all uncomfortable when he went to help her. And also, who appreciated his help and didn’t micromanage him, complaining that he didn’t do it right. Also, she was always so grateful for anything he did. Like the coffee he brought, literally, every single morning. She acted like he had brought her an expensive diamond ring or something. He just really appreciated the fact that she didn’t take things for granted.
“Well, you probably ought to get your Rolodex out and start digging up phone numbers. Ten million is too much money to just let...what happens to it if you don’t get married?”
“Her maid gets it, from what I understand from the lawyer. We had a video call a while ago, but I didn’t realize we were talking about this kind of money.”
“Well. I... I’m not sure what to say. ”
“Maybe you should be getting your Rolodex out. Because you know that if I need to find a wife, the first thing I’m going to do is get you to help me.”
“Yeah. We don’t have much time. You should figure out what day she died. If you only have thirty days... She died three weeks ago?”
“Yeah. Probably almost.”
“You have a week. One week, Jones. What are you doing here?” she said, her voice raising. “You need to be out...looking for somebody to marry you.” She waved with her hands, her empty coffee cup flying as she made shooing motions with her hands.
“I just told you. I’m not going to do it without you. You’re going to help me.”
“I can’t help you! What do I know about the girls you saw at college, and...you never really dated anyone other than Sheena and Brit in high school, and you didn’t like either one of them. In fact, if I recall correctly, you spent the next four months after one date with Sheena telling me about how she picked her nose and ate it on your date.”
“I’m sorry. If that would have happened to you, it would have marked you as well.”
“I wouldn’t have gone on a date with Sheena,” she said, rolling her eyes. He had to laugh.
“Right.” He shook his head, still chuckling but knowing that they weren’t getting any closer to solving his dilemma. Ten million. He really didn’t want to let that go. And he appreciated his aunt for even thinking of him in the first place. But the marriage clause? It just seemed...tough.
“It’s almost Christmas. Just a little over three weeks. How are we going to find someone in the next week who wants to get married two weeks before Christmas to someone that she hasn’t dated, ever?”
“Well, that was kind of my problem, but I was hoping, since you’re a woman, you could figure it out. ”
“Since I’m a woman?” Her expression was incredulous. “Are women more capable than men of doing magic tricks?”
“Are you trying to make me feel like I’m so unappealing that no one would help me?”
“Sorry. The problem is most women are not going to marry a guy—any guy, no matter how appealing—they barely know after only knowing him a week. And that’s if you take a full week to get to know each other. You won’t have a chance to find a second woman to convince her to marry you!” She lifted her hands up and slapped them down at her sides.
“Hey, would you give me that mug before you end up throwing it at me?”
He drained the last of his coffee and then walked back to his pickup, setting them on his hood.
She seemed a little calmer when he turned around, but her movements were still jerky, like she was still agitated. “All right. I need to finish scooping the poop before I can do anything, but I think we need to get started on this right away. It’s kind of urgent.”
“It’s not like I’m going to die if I don’t get the money. I mean, it would sure make things a lot nicer, but I’m fumbling along just fine. Although, I did think that it would be really nice to have a brand-new building for my vet clinic, and with ten million bucks, even minus taxes, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to have to worry about funding for a really long time. Because an anonymous donor is just going to so happen to give you plenty of working capital every single month.”
“That would be awesome if you had that kind of money, but...we need to get it for you first.”
He grinned and walked with her to just inside the building where they kept the rest of the shovels. He grabbed one, after sticking his gloves on.
Normally she might tease him about needing gloves to work when she wasn’t using them, even maybe giving him a lecture about how feeling things with his skin was important to his mental health, but she was quiet, and he figured she was spinning her brain trying to figure out how to get him the money. He should be more concerned about it, but somehow the idea of getting married left him...apathetic.
They walked to the first pen, with her snapping a lead on the dog to take it out and take it for a walk while he cleaned the pen.
They took turns, with one of them cleaning the pen while the other walked the dog, although they each had their favorite dogs, and they knew who their favorites were, so they didn’t have to talk about who was going to walk and who was going to shovel.
Although there were a couple dogs they fought over sometimes. Not today. She was probably too busy thinking.
“You know, my mom knows a lot of people. She has some friends down in Whisker Hollow, and maybe they would know people who know people. I mean, surely they can find a woman who is desperate enough to marry someone she doesn’t know, especially if I give you a good recommendation.”
“Really? You’re going to give me a good recommendation?” He planted the shovel in the ground and tilted his head.
“The very highest,” she said as she walked away with a dog.
He went to work shoveling the waste and throwing it in a wheelbarrow that had been left right beside the pen the night before.
Amy, thankfully, believed in doing as much as she could the night before, to make the morning chores easier. A lot of times, he would have to run to the clinic to get there in time to open, and he didn’t like to leave before everything was done. And maybe someday he’d be able to sleep in on his days off, but helping his friend meant more to him than staying in bed.
He knew that Amy would get out of bed on her day off for him. She’d stayed up multiple times and gotten very little sleep after going out on farm calls with him.
He owed her .
Whoever he married, that was his requirement: they were going to have to love Amy. Because where he went, she went too.
He finished scooping the poop as she brought the dog back. It wasn’t a terribly long walk, but it was the best they could do. Plus, they’d made the pens extra large to give the dogs as much running area as possible. Some of them had been there for a long time.
“Do you have to stay married?” Amy asked as she grabbed a shovel and he snapped the lead on the next dog.
“I’m assuming that we’ll stay married forever. That’s what marriage is.”
“That’s what we think marriage is, but if you’re getting married in order to get an inheritance, are you required to stay married forever?”
“Just because you’re doing it to get something doesn’t change the institution of marriage. It’s still a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman.”
She didn’t have a chance to answer him as he walked away. He knew that she agreed, although he could see how some people might think it didn’t really matter, if they were just doing it to get something. But to him, if he made vows, he wasn’t going to not keep them. Marriage was a holy institution, ordained by God, and one that man had trashed to no end, but Jones wasn’t going down that road. To him, marriage was sacred.
Maybe he should just forget about the ten million.
“So you wouldn’t even consider an annulment?”
“Don’t you have to be Catholic to get an annulment?” he asked as he put Mocha back in her pen and scratched her ears and belly before he walked out and closed the gate behind him.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. Still, I think one of the requirements should be that she and I get along, because if you marry someone you barely know, and she decides she hates me, I’m not sure I wouldn’t be at your doorstep every day begging you to get a divorce. ”
“Don’t say that word,” he said. Not that he was superstitious, but he just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. It wasn’t a word he was going to talk about.
Maybe someday he’d have to. He couldn’t control the person he married, he couldn’t keep them from leaving him, couldn’t keep them from cheating or whatever it was that led to divorce, he just knew that he didn’t want it to be part of his life story.
“You think your mom will have someone in mind?”
“My mom always has answers. She’ll know something or someone,” Amy said, opening up the latch on the next kennel. She didn’t open it very wide, because Molly had a tendency to run off and escape.
He got her hooked and said, “All right. I’ve got her.”
She opened the gate farther. “We can ask my siblings too. They’ll know people. Roland probably knows the most, but they might be too young for you.”
“Yeah. I don’t want someone fresh out of high school who thinks she knows everything, I want someone who’s lived a little bit and realizes that maybe there are a few things she has left to learn.”
“Is that how we were in high school? We thought we knew everything?” Amy called out behind him as he walked away.
“I know I was. I don’t recall you being that way though.”
“You’re just buttering me up. Because you want my mom.”
“I want your mom’s Rolodex,” he called over his shoulder.
If people heard what they said to each other, they’d probably think they were crazy, but he knew he could say anything with Amy and she’d either laugh or roll her eyes or maybe tell him he was being an idiot, but she wasn’t going to get mad at him and never talk to him again. She wasn’t going to get mad at him at all, most likely. They’d never really gotten into a huge fight. He could only remember once, and that was over a dog. Of course. Since they were both animal lovers .
They kept working, talking as they did, or working in silence, it didn’t really matter. Whatever it was, when he and Amy were together they didn’t need to talk in order to be comfortable with each other. It was one of the best things about his relationship with Amy. It was just...comfortable.
He didn’t really know if it was comfortable the way it was with siblings or not, since he didn’t have any. He was an only child. His mom had mentioned a few times growing up that she wouldn’t have minded not having any children at all.
Regardless, he had lived at or below the poverty level his entire life, and he had spent most of his life hanging out with the McBride family and Amy in particular. Mrs. McBride and Mr. McBride had taken him in like he was theirs, and he even called them Mom and Dad.
Neither he nor Amy even thought about his parents as people who could help. They had never been a help. If it hadn’t been for the McBrides, he doubted that he would have finished high school, let alone gone on to be a veterinarian.
“What about Lily Wright?” Amy said as she came back from walking Scout, a lab mix, who must have some kind of husky in him, with his blue eyes and curly tail.
“Lily Wright?” he said, aghast that she’d even suggest such a thing. “I don’t know what she actually looks like. She wears her makeup so thick it’s impossible to tell what shape her actual face is, assuming she has an actual face. I wouldn’t want to see her for the first time on our wedding night and be scared. It would be like...sleeping with a stranger.” Which was repulsive. He didn’t want to be with a stranger. He wanted to be with someone who was going to build a home with him. Who was going to stay with him for life.
“Well, there’s Zelly Sanchez,” Amy said as they went to the next pen, the occasional barking of the dogs breaking the stillness of the morning as the sun rose higher in the sky, burning off the sleepy haze that had been lying on the tops of the mountains. It wasn’t uncommon for fog to roll in, even after the sun came up, obscuring the sun. All one had to do was go down a few hundred feet in elevation to get out of the hazy white. He liked it on those mornings, when the clouds rolled in and made it feel like Amy and he were the only two people in the world.
But that feeling evaporated when she mentioned Zelly Sanchez.
“Amy, really? She’s like ultrahigh maintenance. I mean, I stood behind her in the grocery store checkout line once, and she yelled at the clerk for handling her bananas too roughly.”
“Well, she’s a nice lady.”
“Sure, but I’m never going to be able to handle her bananas the correct way.” He wasn’t sure why he was being so belligerent. Zelly was nice. But she just wasn’t...exactly what he wanted.
“What about Opal Huerta?”
Thankfully, he was walking away with the dog, and he didn’t have to answer her immediately. Opal wasn’t a bad person. But he had to think of something, because the idea of marrying her gave him chills, and not in a good way.
“You know she’s a good one!” Amy called as she dumped the wheelbarrow at the refuse pile and turned around to go back in the pen for more.
He walked slowly back, thinking hard until he figured out something he could say. “She doesn’t like cats.”
He felt a little triumphant as he put Geiser in the pen and unhooked the lead from his collar. He slid back out the door, and Amy shut it.
“How do you know that?” she asked, sounding a little bit exasperated.
“Because she told me so at the clinic. She has a dog, and she was just saying that she was a dog person, not a cat person.”
“It doesn’t mean she doesn’t like cats.”
“Why should I take that chance? I bet I’m right, and I can’t be married to someone who doesn’t love all animals. ”
There wasn’t anything wrong with Opal either, except...she just wasn’t Amy.
“Okay, well, all three of those girls are available. And I’m not sure they would marry you in a heartbeat, exactly, but they probably like you enough to consider it.” Amy paused. “For ten million dollars.”
“Are you saying I’m not exactly a catch?” Jones said as he grabbed a hold of the wheelbarrow and started pushing the load of poop toward the area at the edge of the woods where she spread it out.
“No, I’m not saying that. Actually, I think you have a ton of things in your favor. I mean, you’re handsome, you’re funny, you are a little bit immature at times, but I think that’s just because you’re male and not because there’s something actually wrong with you.”
“Well. Thanks.” Maybe?
“I’m just being honest.” She paused for a moment, walking beside him with the shovel, so she could spread the poop out. “Yeah, you’re even-tempered, you’re dependable, a hard worker, you don’t shirk your duty, you pay your bills... You’re honest, and yeah, I don’t think that you should have any trouble getting any one of those girls to fall for you. In fact, I don’t know why you haven’t been working on this earlier. You know, if you’d taken some time to get a girl and start to cultivate a relationship with her, this wouldn’t be nearly so hard.”
“How was I supposed to know I was going to inherit ten million dollars from my aunt, only if I was married? Who else in the world has that ever happened to?” And honestly, he wasn’t sure that he would have wanted to have “groomed” someone to marry him. He wanted... He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but someone like Amy, only...a girlfriend, not a friend. Yeah. That was what he wanted. He just had never felt “it” with anyone else. Not that he hadn’t been looking; there were definitely times where he’d long for a wife, but he didn’t want to get married to the wrong one and end up regretting it .
“You’re supposed to be prepared for any contingency.”
“No one in their right mind would have seen this contingency coming. I mean, it’s the stuff of dreams. The kinds of dreams that you know aren’t going to come true.”
“Yeah. I was just giving you a hard time,” she said as they reached the edge of the woods and he dumped the wheelbarrow. She took the shovel and started spreading the pile out. “But it would have made it easier, you’ve got to admit.”
“I’m not going to argue with you. But we have to work with what we have. And we have to do it fast.”
“Mom will have an answer,” Amy said with confidence. He hoped she was right.