9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
CALEB
She’s early.
I hear the truck before I see it, tires crunching over the dirt track that leads to the clearing.
Bear lifts his head from the workshop doorway, ears twitching.
He doesn’t growl. Two weeks ago, he would’ve been pressed against my legs, shaking.
Now he gets up, slow and stiff, and walks to the edge of the treeline to watch her park.
I clean my hands on a rag and keep my eyes on the carburetor.
“Hey, Bear.”
Her voice carries across the clearing. Bear’s tail moves once. Twice.
Traitor.
She crouches in front of him and waits. She doesn’t reach, just holds her hand out, palm up, and lets him close the distance. He does. His nose touches her fingers, and he exhales, this long, rattling breath that sounds like surrender.
“Good boy,” she says. “There he is.”
I set the rag down. “He’s been off his food again.”
She straightens, pulling her kit from the truck bed. Blonde hair in a braid today, work boots, a flannel rolled to the elbows. She looks like she belongs here, which is a thought I don’t need, and I kill it before it takes root.
“Off his food how? Picking at it and walking away, or not going near the bowl?”
“Not going near it.”
She nods. No panic. No fuss. She kneels beside Bear on the packed dirt, running her hands along his belly while a frown creases her forehead. Her fingers press gently below his ribs and Bear lets her, leaning into the touch.
“Has he been drinking?”
“Some.”
“Vomiting?”
“Once. This morning.”
She pulls a stethoscope from her bag and listens to his gut. Her face doesn’t change. I’ve been watching people’s faces in bad situations long enough to know when someone is panicking. She isn’t.
“His gut sounds are sluggish,” she says. “Not silent, which is good. I think we’re looking at a flare of the inflammation, not a new problem.” She glances up at me. “I want to adjust his medication. Higher dose for five days, then back down. And I need to see him again on Thursday.”
“Fine.”
“I’m also going to show you a massage technique. For his abdomen. It’ll help move things along and it’ll feel good for him.”
I open my mouth to say I don’t need her showing me anything. What comes out is, “Okay.”
She positions herself beside Bear and takes my hand before I can register what’s happening. Her fingers are warm and slightly rough at the tips, callused from work. She presses my palm flat against Bear’s side, just below the ribs, and guides it in a slow circle.
“Feel that? Firm but not hard. You’re encouraging the muscle, not pushing through it.”
I nod. My hand is on my dog. Her hand is on my hand. The sun is warm on the back of my neck, a cardinal is going off somewhere in the pines, and I need her to let go of my hand right now.
She doesn’t.
Her hand stays over mine, holding my palm flat against the dog’s side. The circle slows. Stops.
She looks up. I’m already looking down. There’s a foot of air between us and it’s gone thin and charged and quiet, nothing to do with the dog asleep under our hands.
Her eyes drop to my mouth. Half a second. Back up.
Lean in. Don’t. Lean in.
I know that catch in her breath. Knew it at seventeen in the cab of my first truck. Know it now. Ten years between then and now and it doesn’t count for a thing.
Neither of us moves. The whole afternoon balanced on the back of one hand and a held breath.
She clears her throat, steps back, makes a note on her phone, and breaks the spell.
“Do that twice a day. Morning and evening, five minutes each time. He’ll probably fall asleep during it.”
Bear is already halfway there, his eyes heavy, side rising and falling under my palm.
“He trusts you,” she says. Not to me, exactly. More like she’s observing it.
“He doesn’t have a lot of options.”
“That’s not why.” She looks at me then, direct and unhurried, and I can see her choosing whether to say the next thing. She says it. “He trusts you because you showed up. Every day. You didn’t try to rush him. You just kept being there until he believed it.”
I don’t answer because I can’t find the words.
She turns back to her kit, packing the stethoscope away. “He’s got good coloring today, though. His gums look healthy. Coat’s improving.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been brushing him.”
“He likes it.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “Caleb Callahan, brushing a dog’s coat every night. The guys in your unit would’ve had a field day.”
The joke, the ease of it, dropped without weight, like she’s forgotten who we are to each other. Like we’re just two people standing over a sick dog on a warm afternoon.
My mouth moves before I can stop it. The start of a smile, or whatever’s left of one after this long.
I catch it. Pull it back. Set my jaw.
She sees it, though, and knows exactly what I’m doing. Her eyes hold mine for exactly one second. Then she looks away, zips her bag, and the moment is gone. Whatever passed between us, I fold it up and put it somewhere dark.
“Thursday,” she says, standing. “Same time. Call me before then if he stops drinking.”
“I will.”
She walks to her truck. Bear watches her go. I watch Bear watch her go, which is safer than the alternative.
The truck pulls out. Dust rises and settles. The clearing is quiet again. Just me and Bear and the smell of engine oil and pine sap and, underneath it, her shampoo. Coconut. Same brand she used at eighteen.
I can’t do this.
I go back to the carburetor and try to distract myself for the next few hours.
Ethan and Josie’s kitchen is chaos by six thirty.
Grace is in her high chair, smearing sweet potato across the tray with both hands like she’s painting a masterpiece.
Josie is pulling a casserole out of the oven while telling Ethan to move, which he doesn’t, because he’s trying to get a dish towel away from Grace, who has decided it belongs to her now.
Maeve is setting the table. Jack is carrying in a stack of chairs from the porch because there are never enough chairs at this table.
Luke has his boots on the kitchen counter, and Amy is telling him to move them, which he also doesn’t, because Callahan men are constitutionally incapable of doing what they’re told the first time.
Noah comes in with Mason holding one hand and Quinn holding the other. Mason has opinions about the seating arrangement.
“I want to sit next to Uncle Caleb.”
“You sat next to Uncle Caleb last time,” Noah says.
“He’s the best one.”
Luke puts a hand over his heart. “Wounded, bud. Genuinely wounded.”
“You’re okay,” Mason tells him. “But Uncle Caleb lets me have his bread roll.”
I pull out the chair next to mine. Mason scrambles down from Noah and climbs up, tucking himself in with a smug smile because he’s secured his territory. He looks up at me.
“Did you bring Bear?”
“He’s resting at home.”
“Is he still sick?”
“He’s getting better.”
“Because of the vet lady?”
I swallow down some water. “Yeah. Because of the vet.”
Mason nods, satisfied, and reaches for the bread basket. I hand him my roll.
Ben is across the table, eating quietly, watching the room in that Ben way he has. He catches my eye and lifts an eyebrow. I ignore it.
The casserole goes around. Maeve is telling a story about a woman at the post office who tried to mail a live chicken, and Luke is asking follow-up questions that are making Amy laugh.
Jack is cutting Grace’s food into smaller pieces while Grace tries to feed him sweet potato from her fingers.
Ethan has one arm along the back of Josie’s chair, like he hasn’t gotten used to the fact that she’s here, even now.
It’s loud. It’s warm. It smells like garlic and rosemary and the woodsmoke coming through the screen door.
I’m sitting in this kitchen with my family, eating food someone made because they love us, listening to Mason tell Noah about a caterpillar he found, and I try.
But my mind is somewhere else. Standing in a clearing, watching a woman in a flannel kneel beside my dog, feeling her hand press mine flat against his side.
“The new vet’s great,” Maeve says, passing the salad. “She’s so good with the horses. And she’s lovely, honestly. I really like her.”
The table murmurs agreement. Amy says something about Regan coming into the Briar Rose for coffee every morning and always remembering her order. Josie mentions she was wonderful with Prospect’s hoof.
I focus on eating and say nothing.
Luke is watching me from the end of the table. I can feel it without looking up, like crosshairs between my shoulder blades. I give him the look. The one that says don’t.
Luke, for once in his life, picks up his fork and goes back to his food.
Ben notices the exchange. He’ll bring it up later. Or he won’t. With Ben, you never know.
Mason tugs my sleeve. “Uncle Caleb?”
“Yeah, bud.”
“Can I come see Bear tomorrow? I want to show him my caterpillar.”
“The caterpillar might not make it through the night, Mase,” Noah says.
“He will. I made him a house.”
“Out of what?” asks Quinn.
“Your good Tupperware.”
Noah closes his eyes and Quinn splutters a laugh into her hand. I almost smile.
Almost.
Grace throws a piece of sweet potato across the table. It lands in Luke’s hair. The table erupts. Luke picks it out with two fingers and holds it up like evidence. “This child is feral.”
“She’s expressing herself,” Josie says.
“She’s expressing herself into my hair, Josie.”
Ethan doesn’t look up from his plate. “Don’t criticize my daughter’s aim. She hit you dead center.”
The laughter rolls through the kitchen, warm and layered, the sound of people who’ve been doing this their whole lives. I sit in it. My family. My people. The only thing in the world I’m sure about.
And under it, quiet as a bruise, the sound of her voice.
He trusts you because you showed up.
My plate gets cleared. Maeve gets help with the dishes. Mason shows me a drawing of Bear he did at school, where Bear is purple and has six legs and is smiling, which is more legs and more smiling than Bear has ever done in his life.
The drive home is windows down. The air is cooler now, early September settling in, an evening caught between summer and fall. Crickets. A barn owl somewhere. The headlights picking out the dirt road.
Bear is where I left him, curled on his blanket by the fire pit. He lifts his head when I get out of the truck. His tail moves.
The ground beside him is cool when I sit down. My hand finds his side, the way she showed me. Slow circles. Firm but not hard. Bear sighs and drops his chin onto my knee.
The clearing is quiet. Stars coming out through the pines. The creek running somewhere below, steady and constant, the sound I fall asleep to every night.
She’s the town vet. She treats my dog. That’s all she is.
Bear’s side is warm under my palm. He falls asleep to the circles.
I don’t sleep for a long time.