Chapter 4
Lark
I pulled into the gravel lot ahead of Logan’s truck and killed the engine.
For three seconds, I sat there. I looked at Pawsitive Connections the way he was about to look at it, and everything I’d glossed over at Deja Brew with charm and alpaca jokes came into sharp, unforgiving focus.
The main barn needed paint. Not in an abstract, get-to-it-someday way.
The white had gone gray in patches, and the green trim was peeling in long strips that curled away from the wood like it was trying to leave.
The sign above the entrance had weathered so badly that the P in Pawsitive had faded to a ghost. The gravel lot was more dirt than gravel, with ruts deep enough to swallow a boot.
I got out of the truck. Logan’s headlights swung into the lot behind me, and I found myself straightening my shoulders, tugging at the hem of my jacket, doing the thing I always did before someone new came into my space.
Preparing the version of myself that could explain everything before anyone had the chance to judge it.
My sister would have taken one look at this place and asked me what exactly I’d been doing for six years.
My mother wouldn’t have bothered with the question.
She would have let her silence do the work, the way she always did, standing in her Chanel flats on the rutted gravel with her mouth in a line that said everything she’d ever thought about her youngest daughter’s choices.
Neither of them had ever set foot in Montana, and they never would. But their voices had no trouble making the trip.
I shook it off and started building my answers before Logan had asked a single question.
The paint’s on the list. The sign just needs a touch-up. The gravel’s fine once it dries out.
He was still in his truck.
I pressed my palms flat against my thighs, took a breath, and walked toward him as he climbed out.
“Welcome to the empire,” I said. “Try not to be too dazzled.”
He stood beside his truck and looked at the property.
His eyes moved the way they’d moved in the coffee shop, steady and methodical, taking in everything without rushing.
The barn. The farmhouse up the slight hill with its cheerful yellow paint that was, thank God, still mostly cheerful.
The fenced paddocks stretching out behind the buildings. The tree line in the distance.
He didn’t say anything about the peeling trim or the ruts or the sign. He just nodded once, slowly, and reached back into the truck bed for his duffel.
“Leave that for now,” I said. “I’ll show you where you’re staying after the tour. Let’s start with the important stuff—my babies.”
I led him toward the main barn. The doors were open, and the sound hit us before we crossed the threshold.
Dogs barking, a rooster who didn’t understand that his job ended at sunrise, the goats butting against their pen wall because they heard my truck and assumed food was imminent.
Somewhere in the back, Clarence was screaming a word I hoped Logan couldn’t make out from this distance.
“Dog kennels are along the back wall. But you’re not making it there without being accosted first.”
The goats got to us before we got to them. Pepper, the smallest and bossiest of the three, had already wedged her head through the pen slats and was stretching toward Logan’s hand with her upper lip curled back.
“That’s Pepper. She will eat anything you’re wearing if you let her. Buttons are her favorite.”
Logan pulled his hand back. Pepper stared at him like he’d insulted her personally.
I walked him past the cat room, which was really just an enclosed corner of the barn with climbing shelves, heated beds, and a baby gate that kept the dogs honest. Princess Whiskers was perched on the highest shelf, grooming one paw with elaborate disinterest. Three of the other cats were in a pile on a heated pad, barely distinguishable from one another.
“Twelve cats, give or take a few. Princess Whiskers runs the operation. The rest have accepted her authority.” I pointed to a tabby sprawled across an entire shelf meant for three. “That’s Meatloaf. He was feral when he came in. Now he won’t get off the heated pad unless you physically move him.”
The rabbit and guinea pig enclosures were along the side wall, clean and quiet. The ferrets were in a double-level cage near the door, both asleep in a hammock, tangled together in a way that made it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
“Chickens and the rest of the outdoor crew are behind the barn,” I said. “I’ll take you out there after the kennels.”
We stopped at the first dog kennel, and I crouched down.
Dobby, a brindle pit mix with one chewed-up ear and the gentlest mouth of any dog I’d ever handled, pushed his blocky head into my hand.
I ran my thumb along the ridge of his brow, and he leaned into it with his full weight, which was considerable.
“This is Dobby. Came in about four months ago from a neglect case. Sixty pounds underweight, heartworm positive, scared of his own shadow. Now he’s eighty-two pounds of pure neediness, and he’s about three weeks from being ready for a forever home.”
Logan stood a few feet back. Hands at his sides, watching but making no move toward the dog.
“You don’t have to pet him,” I said. “Some people aren’t dog people. No judgment.”
“I don’t mind dogs, but, you know, they’re not so much my thing,” he said. “No offense to Dobby.”
“Dobby doesn’t hold grudges. His standards are incredibly low. His last owner kept him chained to a cinder block, so pretty much anyone who doesn’t do that is an upgrade.”
Logan’s jaw tightened. “What sort of asshole would do that to a dog?”
“The asshole asshole kind. But Dobby is going to be just fine, aren’t you, buddy?” I let Dobby out, giving him lots of head scratches, and moved down the row.
Duke was a German shepherd who’d washed out of police work for lacking the aggression: all the instincts, none of the bite.
Next was Tova, a yellow lab, calm and dopey-looking, one of the permanent residents I used for therapy work and general sanity maintenance.
A beagle named Frank who had been surrendered by an elderly woman who’d gone into assisted living and cried when she handed over the leash.
“Duke and Tova will probably be here permanently, but Frank’s placement is already lined up,” I said. “The original owner’s granddaughter is taking him. She just needed a few weeks to get her apartment approved for pets. So he’s temporary.”
“And the dogs that don’t have a plan coming in?”
“They stay until the right situation comes along. I don’t place animals in homes I’m not confident about. Sometimes that takes a while.”
“And you’re feeding all of them in the meantime.”
“I am.” I kept my voice light. “It’s fine. I have a system.”
The system was held together with stubbornness and a credit card that was two months from its limit, especially since our grant had fallen through a few months ago. But Logan didn’t need that information.
I showed him the feed room next. The laminated cards, the color-coded bins, the schedules posted on the wall in clear sheet protectors.
“The feeding system is nonnegotiable,” I said. “Every animal has specific dietary needs, and the cards tell you exactly what, how much, and when. If it’s not on the card, it doesn’t go in the bowl.”
“Understood.”
“I’m serious. Princess Whiskers up there on her throne? She only drinks filtered water. I know that sounds insane. It is insane. But she gets kidney infections from tap water, and the vet bills from the last one almost killed me, so she gets her Brita water and we don’t argue about it.”
“Filtered water. Got it.”
He didn’t even look like he thought it was the most insane thing he’d ever heard, so I took that as a win.
We walked out the back of the barn and into the open air.
The paddocks spread out in front of us, rolling slightly toward the tree line, the mountains beyond.
Two horses stood at the far fence. Duchess, my bay mare, and Maverick, a retired police horse who’d come to me with a behavioral file thicker than a phone book and had since mellowed into the most unflappable animal I’d ever known.
“Forty acres, give or take,” I said. “Pastures, training areas, a few outbuildings. The north fence line is—”
I stopped myself mid-sentence. I’d been about to rattle off the entire list. Every broken thing, every patch job, every temporary fix that had become permanent. Cataloging problems and pre-explaining them so he couldn’t form his own opinion first.
I took a breath. “Let me just show you.”
We walked the north fence line together.
It was worse than I’d described at the coffee shop.
The zip tie I’d joked about was real, and it was holding together a section that should have been replaced six months ago.
Three posts had started leaning. The wire was slack enough in one stretch that a determined goat could walk right through it.
Logan stopped at the first leaning post and wrapped his hand around it. Rocked it gently. It moved about four inches in either direction.
“How deep are these set?”
“I don’t honestly know. They were here when I bought the property.”
“Probably eighteen inches, based on how much give this has.” He crouched and looked at the base where it met the ground. “Should be at least thirty for this soil. Do you have a post driver?”
“I have a manual one. It’s old, but it works.”
“What about an auger?”
“No.”
“Digging bar?”
“I have a regular shovel.”
He stood up and brushed dirt off his knee. “I can reset these with what you’ve got. It’ll just take longer. A ratchet winch would help for the wire tension.”
“I might have one in the equipment shed. I’ll check.”
He nodded and kept walking, stopping every few yards to test another post or run his hand along the wire, checking tension. He didn’t narrate what he was finding. He just looked, and every loose post and sagging wire felt like something I should have fixed six months ago.