27. Nora
— ? —
Nora
The cow costume was June’s idea.
“Absolutely not,” Hunt said, staring at the pile of black-and-white fabric she’d dumped on the diner counter.
“It’s for charity.” June was using her sweetest voice, the one that meant she’d already decided and was just letting you think you had a choice. “The kids love Bessie. Doc Hale wore her for fifteen years before his hip gave out.”
“Then find someone whose hip hasn’t given out.”
“I did.” She patted the costume. “You’re young, you’re spry, you’re trying to prove you’re part of this community. What better way than spending three hours in a foam udder?”
I was laughing so hard I had to grip the counter.
Hunt turned to look at me, betrayal written across his face. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m enjoying this very much.”
“You could defend me.”
“I could.” I wiped my eyes. “But then I wouldn’t get to see you in a cow costume, and I’ve been having a very difficult pregnancy. The doctor says I need more joy in my life.”
“Your doctor is a goat.”
“Waffles has excellent medical instincts.”
June was already unfolding the costume, revealing the full horror of its construction.
The body was a padded barrel with a drooping udder attached.
The head was a separate piece, complete with plastic horns and a permanently surprised expression.
The tail had a tuft of white yarn that someone had clearly added by hand, possibly while drunk.
“This is revenge,” Hunt said. “For a crime nobody’s told me about. I don’t know what yet, but this is definitely revenge.”
“It’s community service.” June held up the head piece. “The festival raises money for the clinic every year. The mascot is the main attraction. You want to support your wife’s practice, don’t you?”
He looked at me.
I looked back at him.
“If you do this,” I said slowly, “I’ll owe you.”
“Define owe.”
“I’ll be so grateful that I might forget to complain about the way you hog the blankets.”
“I don’t hog the blankets.” He said it with the wounded dignity of a lifelong blanket thief.
“You absolutely hog the blankets. You wrap yourself in a cocoon and leave me shivering on the edge of the mattress.”
“That’s because you run cold.”
“That’s because you steal all the fabric.”
June was watching this exchange with undisguised delight. “I’m going to tell everyone in town about this conversation.”
“You were going to do that anyway,” Hunt said. He reached for the cow costume like a man accepting a sentence he’d long since stopped fighting. “Fine. Three hours?”
“Four, actually. The festival runs until sundown.”
“You said three.”
“I said three to get you to agree. Now you’re committed.” June beamed at him. “Don’t worry. The head is surprisingly breathable.”
The Primrose Fall Festival took over Main Street every October.
There were hay bales for seating and strings of lights between the lamp posts and a stage where local musicians took turns playing country songs with more enthusiasm than skill.
The smell of funnel cake drifted from the food booths, mixing with apple cider and the faint undertone of livestock from the petting zoo at the end of the block.
My clinic’s booth was set up near the stage, staffed by volunteers handing out pamphlets about spay and neuter programs. The money raised tonight would cover vaccines for low-income families and emergency supplies for the coming winter.
It was important work, work that made me remember why I’d come to Primrose in the first place.
But I wasn’t thinking about any of that.
I was watching my husband emerge from the back of June’s diner in a cow costume.
He walked with surprising dignity for a man wearing foam hooves.
The barrel of the body swayed slightly with each step, the udder bouncing in a way that was both obscene and hilarious.
He’d put the head on crooked, so one plastic eye was higher than the other, giving Bessie the look of a cow who’d seen things she couldn’t unsee.
The children descended immediately.
“Bessie!” A little girl with pigtails threw herself at his legs. “Bessie, you’re back!”
Hunt caught his balance, reached down, and patted her head with one foam hoof. “Hello there.”
“Bessie doesn’t talk,” the girl informed him seriously. “Bessie moos.”
A pause. Hunt’s voice emerged from somewhere inside the cow head, deadpan and resigned. “Moo.”
The girl shrieked with joy.
More children materialized. They wanted to pet Bessie’s sides and tug on her tail and ask her questions that she answered with increasingly creative variations of “moo.” Hunt was patient with all of them, crouching down to their level, letting them lead him around by the hoof, pretending to eat the handful of grass one enterprising toddler shoved toward his plastic snout.
June appeared at my elbow, a knowing smile on her face. “He’s good at this.”
“He’s humoring them.”
“He’s good at it.” She watched as Hunt let two kids pretend to milk the foam udder, his body language suggesting he was seriously contemplating whether the fundraiser was worth this particular indignity. “That man would do just about anything you asked him to, wouldn’t he?”
“I didn’t ask him to wear the cow costume.”
“You didn’t have to. He saw your face when I suggested it. That was all the asking he needed.”
The crowd around Bessie was growing. Parents had pulled out phones, taking pictures of their kids with the mascot. Hunt was doing a bit now, pretending to chase a boy who’d stolen his yarn tail, his movements exaggerated and silly in a way that made the children scream with delight.
I didn’t realize I was crying until June pressed a napkin into my hand.
“Hormones,” I said.
“Sure, honey.”
“The pregnancy makes me emotional about everything.”
“Absolutely.” June didn’t even pretend to believe me.
“I cried at a commercial for laundry detergent last week.”
“This is definitely the same thing.”
Waffles arrived while Hunt was posing for a photo with Mrs. Patterson’s grandchildren.
The goat had escaped from his pen at the petting zoo, as he did every year, and was making his way down Main Street with the air of a general surveying conquered territory. People stepped out of his path automatically. The festival committee had long since given up trying to contain him.
He stopped when he saw Hunt.
The crowd went quiet.
Nobody outside my kitchen had seen what happened over breakfast that morning, and I hadn’t said a word, because I wanted to watch this play out in public. Half the town had money riding on it. The smart money was still on “never.”
Waffles stood there, his yellow eyes fixed on the cow costume.
Hunt stood there, frozen, two children still clinging to his hooves.
“Moo?” one of the children suggested.
Waffles walked forward.
He circled Hunt once, twice, examining the costume from all angles. His nose twitched. His ears swiveled. The crowd held its collective breath.
Then Waffles pressed his head against Hunt’s leg and made a sound of contentment.
The same sound he’d made in my kitchen that morning, when Hunt had scratched behind his ears while making breakfast.
The crowd erupted.
“He’s not attacking!” someone shouted.
“Did the goat just forgive him?”
“I had fifty dollars on ‘never’! June, you owe me a refund!”
June was laughing so hard she was bent double, tears streaming down her face. “No refunds! The pool was on total forgiveness, not partial!”
“That looked pretty total to me!”
Waffles was leaning against Hunt’s leg now, his eyes closed, radiating smug satisfaction. Hunt reached down with one foam hoof and scratched the spot behind the goat’s ears, and Waffles made a sound that could only be described as a purr.
The photos would be all over town by morning.
I pushed through the crowd to reach them.
“Hi,” I said.
Hunt looked at me through the crooked eye holes of the cow head. “Your goat has forgiven me.”
“I noticed.”
“In front of the entire town.”
“I saw.” I couldn’t stop smiling, and I’d stopped trying to.
“June is going to be insufferable about this.”
“She’s already insufferable about everything.” I reached up and adjusted the cow head so both eyes were level. “You look ridiculous.”
“I feel ridiculous.”
“You’re also the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
His hand found mine, foam hoof and all. “I’m a man in a cow costume being cuddled by a goat in the middle of Main Street.”
“And I’m a pregnant woman who can’t stop crying about it.” I squeezed his hoof. “We make a good pair.”
The auction started at sunset.
June had transformed the stage into a bidding platform, complete with a podium and a gavel she’d borrowed from the county courthouse.
The items were arranged on tables behind her: donated goods from local businesses, handmade crafts, gift certificates for services.
The crown jewel sat in the center, draped with a yellow ribbon.
A crib.
Hand-built from reclaimed barn wood, sanded smooth, stained a warm honey color that matched my grandmother’s kitchen cabinets.
The headboard was carved with wildflowers, the same kinds that grew in the pastures behind my farmhouse.
A matching mobile hung from the ceiling bracket, featuring tiny wooden animals.
I knew those wildflowers. And I knew, the second I saw the careful joinery and the surgeon’s patience in every sanded edge, exactly whose hands had made it.
“Item number one,” June announced into the microphone, straight-faced. “A beautiful handcrafted crib, donated anonymously, with every dollar going straight to Dr. Smith’s emergency fund. Do I hear fifty?”
The whole crowd turned to look at Hunt.
He was standing beside me in the flannel he still hadn’t fully changed out of, and I watched him remember, in real time, that “anonymously” means nothing in a town this small.
“Fifty!” Cal Boone called, grinning at Hunt.
“Seventy-five!” Mrs. Patterson countered, also grinning at Hunt.
“A hundred.” That was the feed store owner, who had never once looked at Hunt without suspicion and was now looking at him with open glee.
I understood what was happening half a second before Hunt did.