Chapter 13 Elena
Dad made chili that night.
It was his go-to comfort food, the recipe he'd been making since before I was born. Ground beef, kidney beans, enough chili powder to strip paint. Mom used to joke that she married him for his chili and stayed for his bedside manner. He'd always laugh and say it was the other way around.
I sat at the kitchen table and watched him stir the pot, the same way I'd watched him a thousand times growing up. He moved slower now, more deliberate, but his hands were still steady. Even when Mom was dying, even when everything was falling apart, those hands never shook.
The kitchen smelled like cumin and tomatoes and something that might have been home, if I let myself think of it that way.
Two days since I'd met Bryan at that diner. I’d spent those two days helping at the clinic, eating Dad's cooking, sleeping in my childhood bed. And, most of all, I’d spent them not thinking about what came next.
"You talk to a lawyer yet?" Dad asked, not looking up from the pot.
"Not yet."
"Probably should."
"I know."
He nodded and kept stirring. That’s how Dad operated. He'd say his piece once, then let it sit. He wouldn’t push or nag. Instead, he just planted the seed and waited for you to come around on your own.
We hadn't talked about it, not really. I'd shown up on his porch at 3 AM, fallen apart in his arms, and he'd held me without asking why.
In the days since, he'd fed me and given me space and let me work at the clinic, and not once had he asked what Matt had done.
What had sent me running three hours in the middle of the night.
But he knew… Dad always knew. He'd been reading people—and animals—for forty years. You didn't get to be a vet in a small town without learning when to push and when to hold back. When to ask questions and when to just be there.
He knew my marriage was over, that Matt had done something unforgivable. He probably knew more than that, pieced together from the way I flinched when my phone buzzed or the look on my face when I came back from meeting Bryan.
He just wasn't going to make me say it until I was ready.
"Goat looked good today," he said after a while. "The Nigerian Dwarf. Becca brought her back for a follow-up."
"Hoof's healing clean. Should be fine in another week."
"Mm." He tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot. "You did good work there. Quick diagnosis. Good bedside manner with the girl, too. She was convinced that goat was dying."
"They always are."
"They always are," he agreed. He turned to grab bowls from the cabinet, his back to me. "Been nice having the help this week. Forgot what it was like to have someone competent around."
He set the bowls on the counter, still not looking at me.
"Shame I'm winding down," he said. "Forty years I've been here. Hate to think what happens to this place when I'm gone. All these people, all these animals, and nobody to take care of them."
"Dad."
"Small town. Middle of nowhere. Run-down clinic with equipment older than you are. Not exactly a hot destination for young vets looking to make their mark."
"Dad."
"What?" He turned around, face perfectly innocent. "I'm just talking. Man can't talk in his own kitchen?"
I shook my head, but I was almost smiling.
He set a bowl in front of me, the steam curling up from the chili.
We ate in silence for a while, and it was a good kind of silence. Outside, the sun was going down, painting the fields in gold and pink.
"It's good," I said. "The chili."
"Always is."
"Modest."
"Accurate."
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Dad mopped up the last of his bowl with a piece of bread, pushed back from the table. He was halfway to the sink when he stopped, looking out the window over the yard.
"Someone's coming," he said.
I turned in my chair. Headlights were coming down the gravel drive, moving slow. A car I didn't recognize at first in the fading light… and then I did.
Matt's car.
Dad set his bowl in the sink, calm and unhurried. Then he crossed to the back door and grabbed the shotgun that had been leaning there since I was a kid.
"Dad." My voice came out tight. "What are you doing?"
"Being neighborly." He checked the chamber, the motion so practiced it was almost casual. "Man shows up at my house unannounced, least I can do is greet him proper."
"Dad, put that down."
"He's not welcome here, Elena." He looked at me, and the humor was gone from his face. There was only iron underneath. "Not after what he did to you."
The car had stopped now. I could hear the engine still running, the headlights pointed at the house.
I stood up from the table.
I thought about the last time I'd seen Matt. The way he'd reached for me and I'd told him to step the fuck back. I thought about all those texts I'd ignored, all those voicemails I'd deleted without listening. I thought about driving away from our house and not looking back.
I'd been hiding here. Letting Dad's house be a fortress, allowing the distance to do the work I didn't want to do myself.
But Matt was here now, and I was done hiding.
I was done running.
"Dad," I said.
He looked at me and I held out my hand.
"Give me the shotgun. I'll take it from here."