25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
CALEB
Drew Garner shows up on a Thursday.
No warning. That’s Drew. He drives through places the way weather does, blowing in from wherever his last contract took him, staying long enough to drink your beer and tell you about it, then gone.
His truck pulls into the clearing at four in the afternoon. Bear lifts his head, growls low, and settles when I put my hand on his neck.
“Easy,” I tell him.
Drew climbs out, grinning. He’s the same build but thicker now. Same backwards cap. He’s been doing pipeline work in Oklahoma, and he looks it. Tanned, rough-handed, moving with the loose walk of a man who sleeps well because he doesn’t think too hard.
“You’re still living in this thing?” He nods at the Airstream. “Thought you’d have upgraded by now.”
“It works.”
“It’s a tin can.”
“It’s my tin can.”
He laughs. Drops a six-pack on the workbench and pulls me into a hug that smells like diesel and Skoal. Bear watches from the doorway, wary but not spooked. Drew crouches down and holds out a hand. Bear doesn’t move.
“He’s not friendly,” I say.
“Neither are you.” Drew straightens. “Rusty Spur tonight?”
“Sure.”
The Spur on a Thursday is half-empty. A few ranch hands from the Linden place are at the bar. Old Dave Perkins is in his corner booth, where he’s been every night since his wife died. The jukebox is playing something slow and steel-string.
We take a booth near the back. Drew orders bourbon. I order beer. He tells me about Oklahoma, about the crew he’s running, about a woman in Tulsa who broke his heart for the third time.
“Same woman?” I ask.
“Same woman. Different excuse.” He grins into his glass. “I’m a slow learner.”
“You’re not a slow learner. You’re stubborn.”
“Says the man living in an Airstream with no running water.”
“I have running water.”
“From a hose.”
I don’t argue. He’s not wrong.
The bourbon loosens him. The beer loosens me.
We talk about the old days because that’s what you do when someone shows up from your past. High school.
Football. The time we stole Coach Patterson’s truck and drove it to the creek.
The summer we worked fencing for old man Harlow and nearly killed ourselves in the heat.
Drew has a gift for stories. He makes everything funnier than it was. Lighter. He turns the past into something you can hold without it cutting you.
Most of the past.
“She’s here?” Drew says.
The glass stops halfway to my mouth. I set it down.
“Yeah. How did you…?”
“The new vet. Ben told me when I called ahead.” Drew shakes his head. “Of all the towns, right? She picks yours.”
“’She didn’t pick it. She didn’t even know I lived here. Doc Henley retired. She took the job.”
“Still. What are the odds?”
I don’t answer.
Drew leans back. Studies me. He’s got that look, the one he had in the parking lot at seventeen when he pulled out his phone and showed me something that rearranged my entire life.
“You staying clear of her?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He finishes his bourbon. Signals for another. “I know it’s old news, man, but that shit she pulled, you don’t come back from that. Some people are just wired to betray you.”
Some people are just wired to betray you.
The words hit me like they always have. Right in the groove he carved ten years ago. Familiar. Safe. The story I’ve been telling myself every time doubt creeps in.
Except this time it snags. The line doesn’t slide all the way down the way it used to.
Drew’s been handing me that sentence for ten years, smooth as a worn stone, and I’ve taken it every time because it was easier than the alternative.
Easier than asking what I actually saw that night.
Easier than wondering whether two scared kids at a high school prom got to decide who Regan was for the rest of her life.
I don’t say any of it. I drink my beer. But the stone doesn’t sit right in my hand anymore.
“She’s treating my dog,” I say.
Drew frowns. “Can’t you find another vet?”
“She’s the only one in the county.”
“So drive to the next county.”
“Bear doesn’t travel well.”
“Then find a way to do it without her.” He’s serious now.
Leaning forward. Eyes steady. Drew isn’t a bad person.
He saw what he saw. He told me because he loved me.
He still believes it because I never gave him a reason not to.
“You’ve done the hard part already. You got out.
You moved on. Don’t let her pull you back into whatever that was. ”
I nod. Take a drink. Let the beer wash the words down.
He doesn’t know about the workshop. He doesn’t know about her hands on my chest and the sound she made when I pressed her against the bench.
He doesn’t know that “moved on” is a lie I’ve been telling so long it wore through to the truth underneath.
I haven’t moved anywhere. I’ve been standing in the same spot since prom night. Different boots. Same ground.
“I’m clear,” I say.
Drew claps my shoulder. “That’s my boy.”
We drink until the Spur closes. He drives back to the clearing and sleeps in his truck. Bear won’t go near it, just circles it once and comes back to the Airstream door to wait for me.
In the morning, Drew’s gone. A note on the workbench: Good seeing you, brother. Stay sharp.
The note gets folded twice and tucked in the glove box with the old parking citations and an AAA card I’ve never used.
Stay sharp.
I’m trying.
Bear’s worming treatment is due Friday. I’ve been doing his flea and tick myself, but the intestinal protocol needs a weigh-in and a blood draw to check his liver panels first. Regan set it up three weeks ago, back when three weeks ago was a different world.
I could cancel. I could call the clinic in Millerton. I could drive Bear forty minutes each way and sit in a waiting room full of strangers while some vet who doesn’t know his history pokes him with a needle and watches him panic.
Or I could walk into Regan’s clinic and stand three feet from the woman I’m trying to forget and pretend I’m fine.
I load Bear into the truck. He sits in the passenger seat with his nose against the window, fogging the glass.
Every red light is a chance to turn around. Every intersection is a choice I keep making the wrong way, which is forward, toward the clinic, toward her.
The clinic is clean. White walls, blue trim, the smell of disinfectant and something softer underneath. Lavender, maybe. The receptionist waves me through.
Regan is in the exam room. She’s wearing a white coat and her hair is pulled back. She’s reading something on her clipboard. When I walk in, the air changes, and neither of us acknowledges it.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
Professional. Level. Two people who know each other the way neighbors know each other, not the way her back knows my workbench.
“Bear looks good.” She crouches. He goes to her, tail low, and lets her run her hands along his sides. “Coat’s filling in. How’s his appetite?”
“Good. Eating twice a day. No more coaxing.”
“Weight bearing?”
“Both hips. No favoring.”
She nods. Makes a note. Gets the scale. Bear steps on without fussing, which is new. Three months ago he wouldn’t go near it.
“Seventy-eight pounds,” she says. “Up from sixty-two at intake. That’s exactly where I want him.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
The word hangs there. Same word. Same tone. Same three feet of tile between us that might as well be the Tennessee River.
She preps the blood draw. Tourniquet, swab, the vial snapping into the holder with a click that’s too loud in the quiet room.
Her movements are precise. No wasted motion.
She’s like this with every animal, focused and unhurried, and it undoes me every time because this is who she is.
Not the girl from prom. The woman who rebuilt herself into someone capable and certain, and whole.
While I’ve been sleeping on a mat in an Airstream, she became this.
She draws the blood. Quick, efficient. Bear flinches once and settles.
Her fingers are steady on the vein, and she talks to him while she works, in her calm voice which works on everyone and everything.
The same voice she used on me the afternoon she found me in the workshop during the episode, sitting on the floor in a pool of my own sweat, and she didn’t touch me, didn’t panic, just sat down three feet away and waited.
“Results will be back Monday,” she says, labeling the vial. “If his panels look clean, we’ll start the dewormer protocol Tuesday. Two doses, ten days apart.”
“I’ll bring him in.”
“You can drop him off if it’s easier. My tech can handle the administration.”
The offer is careful. Precise. She’s giving me an out. A way to not be in this room with her again.
I should take it.
“I’ll bring him in,” I say again.
She looks at me. Just for a second. Steady hands on the vial, steady eyes on mine. Not angry. Not sad. Asking. The same question Ben asked.
Have you actually talked to her?
“Tuesday,” she says.
“Tuesday.”
She turns to the counter. Puts the blood vial in the rack. Peels off her gloves.
Bear’s leash clips on, and I walk to the door.
“Caleb?”
I stop, but don’t turn.
“Bear. He trusts you completely. You know that, right?”
My hand tightens on the leash.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“That’s not easy. For a dog like him. To let someone in after what he’s been through.”
She’s not talking about the dog. I know she’s not talking about the dog. She knows I know she’s not talking about the dog.
I turn. She’s standing by the exam table. Arms at her sides. Not angry. Not hurt. Just there. Waiting. The way she waited on the workshop floor. The way she always waits, patient and present, like she’s got all the time in the world for me to stop running.
“Regan,” I say. Her name sits in my mouth like a stone.
“It’s okay.” She smiles, but it looks sad. “Tuesday.”
I walk out. Bear trots beside me. The parking lot is bright, October sun still warm, and I sit in the truck with the engine off for a long time.
Drew’s note is in the glovebox. Stay sharp.
Ben’s voice is in my head. Have you talked to her?
Her voice is in my chest. He trusts you completely.
The past pressing in from one side. The present pressing in from the other. And me in the middle, being ground down to nothing because I can’t let go of either.
I start the engine. Bear puts his head on the console.
Just drive.
I drive.