Chapter 4
Sloane
Mrs. Delgado at the feed store has started saving me the good grain.
She doesn’t ask if I want it. She sets it aside, the organic blend, the one I mentioned once for the goats at Copper Ridge Veterinary.
When I come in, it’s on the counter with my name on a sticky note.
My name. In her handwriting. As if I’m a regular, which I’m not.
I’m a locum vet on a temporary contract filling a gap until Dr. Fenn’s hip heals, and temporary people don’t get their names on sticky notes at the local feed store.
Micah at Peak Grounds knows my order. Black coffee, no sugar, no conversation beyond a nod and the quiet slide of a mug across the counter.
He starts pouring the moment I walk in, which means he’s watching for me, which means I have a routine here, which means the routine has become visible to other humans. That’s a problem.
I know the name of everyone who saves things for me without asking. There are now four. I haven’t unpacked my suitcase.
And then there’s the card.
The rancher whose colicky mare I saved, the one south of town, the emergency that had me driving back roads at midnight and spending hours with my arm inside a horse, sent his daughter to the clinic with a plate of cookies and a handmade thank-you card.
From the horse. The horse’s name is Duchess.
The card is in crayon. It says “Thank you for saving my life” with a drawing of a horse that looks like a dog wearing a hat.
I put it on the fridge.
I don’t think about what that means—a card on a fridge in an apartment where nothing else is on any other surface, where the suitcase is still packed, where the walls are bare because bare walls are portable and portable is the point. I stuck a crayon horse on the fridge and I’m not examining it.
The town is pulling me in. It’s like a current in water you’d swear was still: no tug, nothing you can point to. Then you look down and your feet aren’t where you left them. Copper Ridge closes around you gently. You don’t notice you’re held until you try to leave.
Grady keeps coming back. For the dog.
The dog is nearly healed. The burns are resolved; the dermatitis is managed with medication that’s working.
The follow-up visits continue because the medication needs monitoring, which it does, and because the dog still benefits from consistent check-ups, which he does, and because Grady Sullivan is constitutionally incapable of accepting that a woman is unmoved by him. Completely. Unmoved.
Each visit follows the pattern: he walks in, he’s warm, he’s funny, he tries. I’m professional, contained, not trying. The exam room is small and he’s tall and the dog sits between us like a furry demilitarized zone.
He’s started asking questions. Not personal ones.
He’s learned that personal questions hit a wall.
Professional ones, about the dermatitis, the medication, and the treatment timeline.
Real questions with clinical answers, and the fact that he’s listening to the clinical answers and remembering them and following up is doing something I don’t have a veterinary term for.
He stopped bringing coffee after the vanilla latte disaster, which means he learned something, and that’s worse than the coffee. A man who can’t read the room is annoying. A man who reads the room and adjusts is something else.
Today he brought the dog’s chart. The actual printed chart from the clinic, the one I gave him at the first visit with the medication schedule and the wound-care instructions.
He’d highlighted the follow-up dates. Color-coded.
Green for completed visits, yellow for upcoming.
A firefighter with a highlighter system for his dog’s dermatitis appointments.
I stared at it longer than I should have and said, “This is very thorough,” which came out warmer than I meant it to, and his grin landed before I’d finished the sentence.
There are things I notice that I don’t want to notice.
The scar on his forearm, the one he doesn’t seem to register, the way you stop registering a scar after enough years of living with it.
The way his energy shifts when something goes quiet: a half-second gear change, covered instantly, so smoothly you’d miss it if you weren’t trained to watch.
The way he is with the dog: patient, gentle, softer than his volume suggests.
Once Grady and the dog leave, I start examining him.
Grady, not the dog. He’s got to be running a front of some kind.
I can’t tell if he knows he’s running it, or if the front has been up so long it’s become his actual structure.
I’ve seen this in animals: the dog that limps when it knows you’re watching and walks fine when it thinks you’re not.
A limp he learned young enough that it’s just how he walks now.
I shouldn’t be diagnosing the firefighter. The firefighter isn’t my patient.
His type is familiar, though.
My brother Owen was like this. Not exactly. But the same genius, the energy, the charm, the way he moved like stillness was a personal failing. The room went dark, and the room has stayed dark, and the pattern is right there in front of me.
I’m immune to it. The grin doesn’t work on me. The humor doesn’t work on me. The careful hands and the restless energy and the half-second gear change when things get quiet don’t—
Not going there. I’m not thinking about this.
Owen called every Sunday. Every single one.
Even from fire camps, even from the middle of nowhere with one bar of signal, he’d find a way.
That last Sunday, he didn’t call. The phone sat on my kitchen counter and didn’t ring, and by Monday morning I knew, and by Monday afternoon the call came, and everything I’d built, the apartment, the practice, the boyfriend, the life that was starting to look permanent—came apart like a structure with its foundation removed.
The fire-safety fair at Station 7 is a town tradition, and I’ve been invited, and “invited” in Copper Ridge means someone shows up at your door with a casserole dish and says, “We’ll see you Saturday,” which is less an invitation and more a gentle kidnapping with baked goods.
What do I bring? What’s the protocol? Is there a sign-up sheet?
There isn’t a sign-up sheet. How does anyone know who’s bringing what?
Do they just know? That’s anarchy, and I don’t say that out loud, but I think it with my whole body while standing in the baking aisle of the Copper Ridge Market holding a box of brownie mix like it’s got instructions for disarming a bomb.
The station is crowded when I arrive. Folding tables, paper plates, bunting that looks hand-strung by someone who either loves this town deeply or lost a bet.
Families. Children. Dogs. A volunteer fire engine parked on the lawn for kids to climb on, which they’re doing like gravity is a rumor they haven’t confirmed yet.
I use the same protocol as always: calm, competent, politely present.
My professional face, the one that works on anxious pet owners and large-animal emergencies, slides on like a coat I’ve worn so long it feels like skin.
I shake hands. Smile. Answer questions about Dr. Fenn’s recovery and whether cats really can get depressed and what to do if your horse won’t eat, and I do all of this while fumbling through a crowd where everyone else knows the steps.
I don’t have social anxiety. I’ve been temporary for so long that I’ve forgotten how to belong somewhere. When to arrive, what to bring, how long to stay, the rhythm of a room where everyone knows everyone and the conversations have histories I haven’t read.
A woman with a firm handshake and a determined smile corners me near the potato salad.
“My nephew is also in medicine,” she says, leaning in, shoulders squared, clearly rehearsed. “Also, he’s outdoorsy.”
She talks for what feels like a geological epoch.
Her nephew is outdoorsy. Her nephew is kind.
Her nephew has a good job and “all his own teeth,” which is a selling point I wasn’t aware was on the market.
I nod and smile and contribute the minimum syllables to maintain the illusion of engagement, and I do this like I’m handling an animal that hasn’t decided whether to bite.
It turns out her nephew sells urinary catheters. Still medicine, I suppose. Barely.
Hanna Larsen, according to the name embroidered on her uniform shirt, saves me. She appears with lemonade and a look that says she’s seen this aunt corner every newcomer in town. “She means well,” Hanna says, once the woman moves on. “Her nephew is actually very nice.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“He’s also terrified of horses, so it would never work.” She says this with absolute certainty, and I like her immediately, which is a problem, because liking people is how the perimeter thins.
Cal finds me somewhere between the nephew pitch and the dessert table.
He introduces me to everyone in the area simultaneously, because Cal doesn’t do introductions sequentially—he does them as a wave, pulling people into his orbit and depositing them into mine whether either party is ready for the transfer or not.
“This is Dr. Hartley, she’s the temp vet, and she saved a horse the other day. She’s great.” He turns to me. “Doc, have you met Rivera? Rivera, Dr. Hartley. Dr. Hartley, Rivera.” Rivera and I shake hands.
“Rivera makes the chili and it’s legendary. Don’t believe him when he says it’s mild. He’s lying.”
Cal moves on. Rivera and I stand there holding paper plates and looking at each other like two people who’ve been pushed into a pool and are deciding whether to swim.
The chili is scorching. Rivera watches me take the first bite and waits. My eyes water. He nods. “Told you,” he says, though he told me nothing. Cal told me, and Cal wasn’t lying. So this is how friendships work in Copper Ridge: collaborative deception about capsaicin levels.