Chapter 3
Wilden turned and looked at Nan. “If you’re okay for an hour or so,” he began, “we’ll take the dogs out for a long walk. They need some exercise.”
Nan beamed at him. “I’m absolutely okay. I even had a sandwich earlier today, so don’t you worry about me.”
He frowned, and she waved her hands. “After that big breakfast you prepared for me and leaving behind a sandwich too, that is a lot more than I usually eat.”
He nodded slowly. “It doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of food.”
She chuckled. “There’s not a whole lot of me.”
His smile was infectious as he grinned at her. “I’m hoping we can fix that, and maybe we can get your appetite up a little bit. Right now we’ll head up to the waterfalls.”
She nodded and then looked at the time. “It’s a bit late for a trip that far, isn’t it?”
He frowned and asked, “Have things changed up there?”
“Not that I know of, no,” she said.
“We won’t be too long then,” he replied, with a smile. “It’s a nice area, and I could use a little beauty of nature right about now.”
Nan studied him closely.
He smiled and added, “We’ll talk later.”
Nan glanced over at Vivian and then nodded. “I hope there’s no problem. Is there?” she asked, a confused expression on her face.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Wilden replied. “Don’t you worry about it.”
She sighed. “That’s guaranteed to make anybody worry even more, the minute after you say that.”
He smiled. “This is a good thing. We just have to decide how best to handle it.”
She shrugged. “I can’t say that I’ve seen very many good things lately. So, as long as you’re sure it’s all okay?”
“I am,” he stated. “It is a very good thing. And we’ll get to the bottom of everything else going on soon enough, but let me go catch a little bit of nature and remember all the good things in life.”
She smiled, then rolled her eyes. “Fine. What about food for you?”
“I’ll grab something when I come back,” he suggested. “Or maybe we’ll stop and pick up something.” He turned to Vivian. “Have you eaten?”
“No, I haven’t, but I also have dogs at home that I need to take care of.”
He shook his head. “Of course you do. We should have grabbed them as well.”
“Maybe next time,” she offered, with a grin. “I suggest we get a walk in because I think these two dogs need it. We’ll figure out another walk with mine some other day.”
They said their goodbyes and left.
As they walked outside, Wilden offered, “I’ll drive.” Turning to her, he asked, “Your dogs, … are they rescues?”
“They were obtained through my practice,” she replied, with a smile.
“In one case, it was a family dog. They had just gotten this puppy, and the adults were killed in a car accident. Nobody was left to properly look after the dog, so it ended up in the shelter. So, when they came to me about it, I refused to let them euthanize a puppy like that, so I ended up with Romeo. Juliet is the other one,” she clarified, with a laugh.
Wilden laughed hard because that had love story written all over it.
“Juliet came to me from a patient who couldn’t look after her anymore. They willingly paid for the surgery she needed, but she’s not as strong or as capable of handling life as the other dog is,” she explained. “So, I have two dogs.”
“And you almost got a third.”
She nodded. “And I almost got a third.” She smiled. “But, if it’s not a good solution for you, then I need to come up with a better solution for Dagger.”
“Let’s worry about that later,” he suggested. “Right now, along with Sarge, I think it’s a good pairing.” With him driving, he headed in the direction of the falls.
“How long is the drive up there?” she asked.
“Not long, but it’s about a twenty-minute walk afterward,” he noted. “At least it was. I have no idea what we’re looking at right now, but I used to come up here all the time.”
“How long have you been away?”
“A decade,” he replied. “I guess it’s really more than that.
I try not to think about it. When my father returned after going missing for a very long time, he had this attitude that everybody owed him, especially me—for giving me life or some such ridiculous thing,” he noted in an offhand way, but he had to admit there was still some bite to it.
“Let’s just say we didn’t get along from the minute he moved in, and he made my life and my grandmother’s life miserable.
It was hard to forgive him for that. She was and is a very special person.
She’d always been very loving, but she was so thrilled to see him after all those years had passed.
He had basically just walked away, leaving everybody else to handle the mess he didn’t want to deal with. ”
Vivian shook her head. “Isn’t it lovely when people find a way to make life the way they want it, instead of the way it really is?”
He smiled. “Yeah. And that’s what happened. He just kept being himself, and, next thing I knew, he was kicking me out. Even my grandmother asked me if I could go somewhere else. She told me that my presence was upsetting my dad, and her saying that made me realize that it was time to move on.”
“She asked you to leave?”
“Not outright but it was obvious that she was completely maxed out stress-wise. He was making her life very difficult, and he wasn’t listening to anything I had to say.
I was young and didn’t have enough gumption to fight back, and so Nan was caught in the middle. It had become all about the fighting.”
Vivian winced but didn’t say anything.
Wilden continued. “I didn’t have the age or the maturity to understand that there were better ways to go about it,” he admitted.
“So, the two of us were at loggerheads, which made it way worse for Nan. I didn’t want to cause her any more trouble, so I joined the military.
John thought that was hilarious and basically told me not to come back when I was all broken-up and a useless piece of shit because I was already a useless piece of shit.
And, if I didn’t come back whole, I would be even more useless, so not to bother,” he shared, with a headshake.
“So, what did you do?”
“I left and didn’t look back. I never contacted him again. I kept in touch with my grandmother, but I don’t know whether she ever mentioned anything to him or not. Things were never great after that.”
“Of course not,” she muttered in amazement.
“How could anything be great after that? John was a very strange person. … Very arrogant and seemed to think that, whatever he wanted, he could get it, and everybody else better be on board. And, if I wasn’t on board with dating him, then I was playing hard to get. ”
He glanced at her and asked, “Did he ever touch you?”
“No, but I did have to get a restraining order against him, and that wasn’t fun. The police certainly knew he was difficult, and he had no real friends in town. That was a saving grace in a way because people believed me more than they believed him. Still, it wasn’t a pleasant scenario.”
“I’m so sorry,” Wilden said. “I had no idea he was sleazy in that way.”
“I don’t think most people did.”
Wilden pulled into a small roughly graveled parking spot. Then hopped out and opened the back door so the dogs could jump out. Both immediately raced around, wandering into the greenery, sniffing everything around them with pure delight.
He smiled, seeing Sarge and Dagger chase each other. “Nothing like having dogs who absolutely appreciate an opportunity to get outside,” he pointed out. “I’m sure Jackson never had a chance to take Sarge out like this, not if Jackson was wheelchair-bound.”
“No, I don’t imagine so,” she agreed. “It’s not something I ever really thought about. There should be a dog-walking service for older people who have active dogs like this.”
“The trouble with big service dogs is that the rescue centers don’t do it either, not on this scale anyway,” he clarified, with a smile. “Yet you’re right. There should be a way for them to get out and to just be dogs for a while.”
She nodded as she joined him on the path and added, “I’ve never been up here before.”
Still surprised to hear that, he said, “I guess it’s probably not all that common.
However, this is definitely one of my favorite places to be.
Still a bit wild, not full of people and kids.
And maybe that’s why I like it,” he noted, with a laugh.
“I mean, as much as some people are okay, I really don’t want them in my space. ”
“That’s pretty common for most people, I think,” she agreed, with a smile. “Almost everybody I know has a similar opinion.”
He nodded. “And most people are okay,” he repeated.
“It’s just that, every once in a while, you just want to go off on your own and not deal with too much for a bit.
So, for me, it is literally more about peace and quiet.
” She didn’t say anything to that, and he glanced at her and asked, “Are you happy with your clinic here?”
“For the most part, I think I’m doing pretty well.
My business partner left recently, so that was a bit of trouble because I had to buy him out.
He didn’t think there was enough money in the practice for both of us and thought I was probably better off without having a second vet here, but I can tell you for sure that he was wrong.
Lots of times I could have used him. Another practice in town also closed not that long ago too, so I am getting some new clients from them. ”
“Is that even more true now? Needing another partner?”