Chapter 1 #4
“Yeah, you would think so, but if he’s anything like his dad—” And, with that, the cashier just let her voice drop off as she turned to the next customer and started ringing up her purchases.
Vivian quickly packed up the rest of her stuff, put her bags in the buggy, and headed out to the parking lot.
She loaded up her stuff in her car, wondering at a community that could be so blasé and yet so quick to judge, without even having a clue about who and what they were judging. Maybe the townspeople were all like that. Vivian didn’t know for sure.
Small towns were hard to understand, particularly if you weren’t born and raised here.
You didn’t know the nuances of the families and the interactions of everybody who had lived and died here.
And there always seemed to be undercurrents in small towns, things that you probably didn’t really want to know about.
Yet you were at a disadvantage because you weren’t aware of them.
She drove home, happy to be out of that John situation, but her mind was still stuck on the fact that John had passed on.
He had treated her like crap once she had turned him down, refusing to date him.
He had been old enough to be her father and had been adamant about the fact that his age shouldn’t matter.
She had no easy way to tell him to piss off, not that he was willing to take a hint anyway.
Then he just made it ugly for her, anytime he saw her.
He went out of his way to make loud nasty comments and just hassle her, like at the grocery store. She’d learned to be very cautious whenever she saw him and to avoid him as much as she could. Apparently other people had noticed, something she hadn’t considered either.
It was one thing to have your own demons and to worry about people in town, but it was another to have everybody else notice too.
That was worrisome. Only as Vivian got home and inside her own house did she realize what a relief it was that John was gone.
She hated to even admit that. However, he had caused her no end of stress.
Every time she’d gone out, if she saw him, he would make her life miserable.
She’d called the cops several times when he’d come by the clinic, and that had made her feel even worse, mostly because she knew he was doing it on purpose, hoping to maybe bully her into going out with him, as if that would make things any better in his world. It sure didn’t from her perspective.
He also appeared to be drunk most of the time—something else she had very little tolerance for.
All in all, it had been a relief when he’d eased back, and she thought maybe he’d found somebody else to hassle.
She pitied the poor new woman. Vivian didn’t even know why he’d picked on her, but he sure had, and it made her life almost impossible.
Now that he was gone, she didn’t quite know how to feel, except the relief was overwhelming.
Now he couldn’t pop out of the woodwork anymore, yelling and screaming at her as he had done the last time she’d seen him.
She shuddered, then turned her attention to her animals, which always made her feel better.
She proceeded to feed the dogs first and then checked on the cats, who were still recovering from surgery.
As she walked into the special room that held the cat cages—to restrict the cats’ movements so that their stitches weren’t pulled out early—she was greeted with meows.
She checked out each of them, gave them fresh water and new pain meds, and then fed them, hoping to tempt them with the tastier treats she had brought.
By the time she was done, she was ready to sit down and maybe have a bite to eat herself, something she always did only after the animals were fed.
Just to know that they had their needs met allowed her to relax, to focus on her needs for the next few hours.
She made burgers for herself, two small patties, one that she would end up taking into work tomorrow, because she couldn’t leave to eat out somewhere.
As she stared down at it, she wondered why she was forever making more food than she currently needed, but it was a holdover still from when she had been looking after her mother, before she had passed on.
And Vivian still hadn’t been able to adjust her food prep, mostly because it made her feel bad.
She hated to say it, but she was obviously still dealing with the trauma of losing her mom, which was understandable since it had been so recently.
The cancer had been brutal, and it had slowly wasted her away into nothing, with a painful morphing of the bright, vibrant woman Vivian had known into a woman who was rather desperate for it to all end, just so she could find some painless peace.
That had been one of the hardest things for Vivian to deal with, her mother’s constant need and wish for her life to be over.
Vivian understood that she could do nothing to help her mom, even though her mother told Vivian that she could have done something.
Vivian shook her head. No way she would voluntarily end her mother’s life, even with her mom demanding it.
So instead her mother had alternated between blaming Vivian for her mother’s pain because Vivian refused to take that final step, then bouncing to gratitude that her daughter was the person she was and was here to help her.
It had been a roller coaster ride of emotions. When her mother passed a couple months ago, Vivian felt such a sense of relief, yet sorrow too, like she had never experienced before. Her work at the clinic throughout it all had kept her going and plugging forward.
Even now, as she sat here, staring down at the extra burger, she realized she still wasn’t quite there.
She hadn’t quite recovered, still hadn’t quite dealt with the loss that she knew would take a whole lot longer to accept.
She’d had a complicated relationship with her mother.
However, at the end of the day, Vivian had been there for her mom, and that was something nobody could take away.
Still ruminating over it all, Vivian was jerked out of her thoughts as her phone rang.
“Hey,” he greeted her. “This is Wilden.”
“I presume it was you who picked up Sarge today.”
After a moment of silence and then a chuckle, he replied, “Wow, I didn’t even introduce myself, did I? Sorry. That was very trusting of you.”
“Yeah, I finally realized that immediately afterward. I let you take an animal, and I didn’t even know who you were to make a notation in the file. So I phoned Kat,” she admitted on a laugh, “just for my peace of mind.”
“Good. I’m sorry. There was such a din and an urgency to get him out of there.”
“And I’m grateful,” she stated, with a chuckle. “Believe me that I’m so grateful that you did because he was obviously very unhappy here.”
“Sarge is doing much better. While we have been to Jackson’s place, unfortunately I don’t have any answers. Nobody seems to have been there in several days. I went through the house and found no sign of anybody. His wheelchair’s not there either. So I’m not sure what may have happened.”
“What will you do?”
“It’s late enough that I’ll head in for the night, and then I will pick it all up again in the morning,” he shared. “I just wanted to thank you and to give you an update.”
“I appreciate the update,” she replied. “I was just finishing a burger here, wondering what had happened with Sarge.”
“He’s doing well, and I’ll head back to my grandmother’s place right now and check in on her. Hopefully the two of them will get along, and I’ll continue looking for Jackson in the morning.” He rang off at that point in time.
His tone had been all business, yet he was heading to his grandmother’s.
Vivian had to smile at that. It was always hard to imagine these big, strong, capable men as having grandmothers, and yet apparently not only did he have one but he had one who mattered to him, and that made him all that much easier to like and to get along with.
With that thought, Vivian got ready for an early night, knowing that tomorrow would be a whole lot crazier—but maybe not. Without Sarge howling in the back of her clinic, things might be that much easier.