19. Brovish
CHAPTER NINETEEN
brOVISH
Drogar looked between Laina and her mother, read Laina’s stunned expression, and took the twin from my arms.
“I’ll return her to her mother,” he said. “And I’ll examine the gate catch and fence.”
He carried the twin out into the hall. Laina followed, leaving me in the supply room with Carol.
Carol dried her hands with paper towels and placed them in the trash. Her gaze fell on the scattered cabinet contents.
“Someone will need to straighten that mess,” she said. “Throw it all out, I suppose. It’s a good thing Traig said this place was solvent.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Instead of following Laina, which I’d expected her to do, she remained inside the room, watching me. When I’d finished, she followed me down the hall to my office, even stepping inside and taking the chair across from my desk.
I worked. Or pretended to, wondering where this was going.
“You’re always writing in that notebook,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What do you write in it?”
I leaned back in my chair. “Observations about the creatures. Their patterns of behavior, what they ate, what they avoid, and when they change. I’ve always written things down. It settles me.”
She held out her hand. “May I see it?”
I’d shown it to Laina, and the moment had mattered more than I’d known how to say. Handing it to Carol felt different. Riskier.
I lifted it off the desk and held it out.
She opened it to the first page and started reading. She turned pages steadily, not skimming. Her expression stayed neutral, and I got the feeling she was working to keep it that way.
When she paused, I knew which pages she’d reached.
She read through the entire journal.
I didn’t speak because I’d learned that Laina’s mother approached everything with caution.
Finally, she closed the notebook.
“You care for my daughter,” she said softly.
“I do. She’s special.”
Carol raked her lower teeth across her upper lip.
“She’s always been good at her work. Since she was a little girl, tagging along with Dave to farm calls at six in the morning.
She has excellent instincts.” She handed the notebook back.
“He encouraged her, told her she could one day care for animals just like he did. He would’ve been delighted that she took over his clinic.
Disappointed that she was selling it to his old partner.
I still cannot believe my daughter is willing to set aside his entire life. ”
“She was ready for a change.”
“A change that takes her away from everything she’s ever loved.”
“She stayed at the clinic because it was the last piece of him. If she let it go, she’d lose what remained. That’s not choosing. That’s grief making decisions.”
Carol’s gaze traveled to the window behind me. “And here she remains, still stuck in this small town. Working at a rescue operation. Creatures who need her specifically.” Her attention fell on me again. “You see the pattern.”
“She recognized something here was worth building and moved toward it instead of standing still.”
“How is that not standing still?”
I sought the right words and found kingdom ones first, which I worried she wouldn’t understand.
Surface words couldn’t show her what I hoped to describe.
“Where I come from, when a healer stays at their post for the wrong reasons, the person feels it. They stop trusting the hands that treat them because those hands and mind are somewhere else.” I kept my voice steady.
“The creatures here don’t behave like that.
They come to her. Sofia chose her on the first night. That’s—”
Carol waited.
“She belongs here,” I said. “She could’ve gone anywhere, but she chose to be here. This is the place she can grow into.”
Carol’s expression could’ve been carved from stone.
“What do you truly want from my daughter?” she asked.
“I want to give her whatever she needs. If it’s me, good.
If she chooses something or someone else, I’ll support her.
If she wishes to stay, I hope to build something here alongside her.
I want her to know her value isn’t only in what she can do for the creatures or for this facility.
She needs to see she’s valued for herself. ”
Carol studied me with the same assessing focus she’d used on the mirrormoose. “You’ve only known her a month.”
“That’s true.”
“And in that month you’ve developed intentions you’re prepared to declare to her mother.”
“You asked.”
She looked down at her hands clasped on her lap.
“If you know my daughter even a little, you know what she shows when she’s excited about a creature and what she looks like when she’s doing work she loves. You know the version of her that’s running toward something.” She looked up. “Do you know what she’s running from?”
Her huff told me she thought I didn’t.
“Do you know what she looks like when she takes on other people’s limitations as if they were her own and calls it loyalty?” Her voice remained low. “My daughter has always been very good at deciding that limitation is actually choice.”
I had no answer for that. I hadn’t seen that version of Laina.
I’d seen her certainty, her easy competence, and the way she strode through this place like she’d been walking it for years.
I’d seen her soften for wounded creatures and speak to animals in voices she didn’t use for people.
She’d knelt in a cave in the rain, and I’d seen her in my arms the next morning.
What I hadn’t seen was what she’d left behind when she stepped into my life. Whether she’d locked something inside when she walked away. If the version of her I’d been given was whole or just the parts she’d decided were safe to show.
My notebook sat open between us, full of observations and certainty about creatures, plus careful notes about Laina.
Not one entry asked if I’d seen her afraid.
Carol rose and started toward the door, pausing to turn back.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong about her,” she said. “I’m saying you don’t know yet whether you’re right. A month isn’t long. It’s a start, but it’s nowhere near a finish.”
She walked out, closing the door behind her.
I tugged my notebook closer and opened to a clean page, lifting my pen.
Outside, a vehicle started. Then a second one. Laina’s pink truck and Carol’s silver rental started down the road toward the gate.
I wrote.
Carol asked if I know what Laina is running from. I know what she runs toward. I know that she stayed beside a laboring animal in a cave in the rain without question. That she handles frightened creatures with steady hands and a voice that doesn’t change pitch. These things I know with certainty.
I started a new line.
What I don’t know: whether I’ve seen her afraid. Whether the version of her I’ve been given is the whole of her or only the brave pieces.
Carol Mercer is not a soft woman, though she is, perhaps, an honest one.
I needed to know Laina differently than I did. The woman who’d spent three years in her father’s clinic not growing, calling it loyalty.
Carol had asked if I knew what Laina was running from.
I didn’t.
But I was going to find out. If I wanted to keep her, I needed to know all of her. Not just the brave pieces she’d shown me so far.
I picked up my pen again and turned to a new page.
The question isn’t whether she belongs here. The question is whether she’s chosen to stay or whether she’s still running and just ended up here by accident.
Tomorrow I’ll ask.