Chapter 3 #2
She nodded. “Maybe not even another full-time partner, so maybe he was right to that extent.” She sighed and shook her head.
“It’s been a bit of a scramble ever since he left, as I took over all the clients and surgeries that needed to be done.
So now, of course, it’s just me to do them.
It’s definitely a challenge, but maybe, at the end of the day, there’ll be more profit, and that would help too.
I’m making a living wage. I can’t really argue with that.
Though a lot of people in this world wouldn’t be happy with just a living wage, and I get why.
” She smiled and added, “It’s a lot of work. ”
He nodded.
“I’m not trying to be earth-shatteringly rich. I just want my own clinic, plus a home and a business I can be proud of and that makes me happy. So, if I get that much, I’m okay. It doesn’t always have to be about the money.”
“No, it absolutely doesn’t,” he agreed. He veered off the path slightly when they had walked a little farther down.
She pointed and shared, “That’s something I never would have done.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Veered off the path,” she admitted, with a smile. “If there’s a path, I stick to it.”
“Spending the early part of my life here,” he began, “I know which parts of the path are okay to veer off of and where to stay on the path. So, not to worry. Stick with me, and I will not lead you wrong.”
She laughed. “You say that, but lots of people are out there who would say not veering is wrong or not steering me wrong is not the same thing as steering me right.”
He smiled at her. “True enough, and you don’t know me well enough yet to know which way I’ll steer you anyway.”
“True,” she conceded, “but you appear to be looking after your grandma, so I’ll take that as a good reference.”
He glanced around and muttered, “I didn’t even think of that. I’m sorry.”
“Think of what?” she asked.
He stopped and asked her cautiously, “Are you okay to be out here with me?”
Surprised, she looked back at him. “Yes, I am.”
“You’re sure? I don’t want you feeling as if you have made some major wrong decision.”
“I’m fine,” she declared. “You are not your father, if that’s what you’re thinking of.”
He winced. “I hate that my father has created a completely different opinion of our family name,” he shared. “It’s terrible and is something that should have never happened.”
“Yet it did, but it’s not your fault,” she pointed out comfortably, “so let it go.”
He laughed. “Is it that easy?”
“Probably not,” she agreed cheerfully, “but again not much in the way of options. You let it go and move on. Any other choice is a decision to be unhappy.”
He nodded and smiled, and she followed him through some underbrush, with the dogs making chaotic noises as they moved ahead of them. She could begin to hear the rush of water up ahead, alongside the gurgle of a creek, both mostly hidden by the trees beside them.
She whispered, “I hope no deer or anything are up here. The dogs will run them ragged.”
“Deer are pretty smart, and I’m pretty sure that at least one of the dogs is trained well enough to handle it just fine,” he replied. “With any luck, Sarge can help us keep Dagger under control if we do run into some wild animal.”
“I would still feel better keeping them on leashes, at least for now. It’s interesting the training these War Dogs go through,” she added.
“I haven’t really had any experience with that beforehand, but it’s always lovely to see a well-trained dog in action.
I just assumed Mr. Russell was using Sarge as a service dog, especially when you brought him under control so quickly, but maybe it’s something completely different,” she noted, looking at him.
“Sarge is a retired War Dog, so it’s totally different, unless he did some other training after Jackson Russell got him. That would be another thing for us to consider.”
“It’s not as if I’d seen Sarge or Jackson before, so I don’t really have any answers for you.”
Wilden nodded. “If there are answers to be had, we’ll find them,” he declared. “First things first. In about ten more steps, you’ll see the view we came for.” He brushed past a series of branches.
As she stepped out from behind him, she stopped and gasped. “Oh, wow.” Before them was a beautiful thirty-foot-tall waterfall in a serene area surrounded by trees on all sides, but for the creek carrying the water downstream into a calm pool.
“Yeah. This has always been one of my absolute favorite places to come visit and to mull over life,” he shared. “It kept me sane a lot of the time growing up.”
She slid him a sideways look.
He nodded. “It wasn’t the easiest being raised by my grandmother.
I mean, she absolutely did everything right, and it all came from the heart, so I knew I was well loved, which makes all the difference.
However, kids can be cruel, and, when they find out your father abandoned you, they can really tear you down. ”
She winced. “I’m sorry. You don’t really think about that when you come from a whole family.”
“How about you? Do you have a family?”
“I do,” she replied, “but we’re not particularly close.
Not for any negative reason, just that we’re all on different pathways.
My sister is a secretary and never wanted to do more than that, and, as such, has no student loans to battle.
Whereas, I was bound and determined to go into veterinary medicine.
My sister didn’t understand that, didn’t understand the whole idea of needing and wanting to do more. ”
Vivian sighed. “So, we ended up with very different lives. I wouldn’t say anything between us is a problem, but neither is there anything between us that brings us closer. I guess that’s how I would explain it.”
“Understood,” he said, “and there doesn’t need to be. I mean, you grew up together, but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll be close at the end of the day.”
“That’s something that my mother thought should happen, but my father was much more open to the concept that I was entitled to have the life that I wanted on my own,” she shared.
“My mother didn’t feel that way at all and couldn’t understand why I would ever want to even go to college, much less become a vet.
In her opinion, I should have just gotten married and worked some traditionally female job to keep me busy until I started having kids. ”
He winced.
“Ah, yep, heavily religious,” she noted carefully, “and very much of the opinion that education for girls is a waste of time, since I would just get married and have babies anyway—which of course is what my sister did. So, they’re perfectly happy with her life choices, whereas I’m the one who apparently didn’t make a choice that any sensible people could understand,” she quipped, with a shrug.
“And I will confess that I sometimes get a little twinge to see my sister all settled in a nice home with kids and a husband and that whole perfect picket-fence setup.”
“Does she still have the same views?”
“Pretty much, and periodically she likes to throw it in my face that I don’t have kids, that I don’t have a husband, that I don’t have a forever home—all things designed to make me feel like a failure.”
He winced. “Oh God.”
“Yes.”
“I hear you,” Wilden stated, “though I never even got that far because my father probably would have made life hellish for anybody I would ever have brought home. And, considering what he did to you, I’m just grateful that he passed before I ever got to that stage,” he said, with a sad smile, “because that would have been hellish too.”
“Yeah, he probably wouldn’t leave your girlfriend alone,” she said. “Odds are John would have taken a liking to her and would have made life very difficult for the pair of you.”
It didn’t bear thinking about, and yet it was hard not to as he realized just how much trouble Vivian had endured from his father. He felt compelled to apologize again.
She waved her hand and shook her head. “It’s fine.
Thankfully the worst of it was a while back, and, when he finally stopped, things got a whole lot easier for me.
Let’s spend our time here looking at this amazing sight instead.
” They walked closer to the waterfall, her gaze locked on the beauty of it, and she seemed absolutely mesmerized.
The sound of the water sent peace through his soul. “I’m glad I brought you here.”
“I am too,” she beamed. “I had no idea this place was even here, and it doesn’t appear to be very popular with any of the locals,” she noted, glancing around.
“Well, it is threatening to rain, and it’s dinnertime too,” he noted, “but, if nobody’s coming here, that suits me just fine.
” He chuckled. “No matter how tough things got, I could always come here and knew that the world was right still, despite my challenges. It was evidence that the universe was somehow bigger than all my troubles and that, in the end, it would continue to be okay. Just as it has always done.”
He continued. “It’s an odd thing when you come to the point where you look around and see how different everything is in the world, and yet you just really want it to stay the same. That was all I wanted,” he shared. “Yet, once my father arrived, everything just blew up.”
“And now it’s my turn to say sorry,” she noted.
He looked over at her and smiled. “We can say those words to each other until we’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t change the circumstances. Thankfully we’ve both moved on, and that is very important.”
She chuckled now. “I like the way you think,” she said, as she moved closer and closer to the waterfall. As they got up to where the spray sprinkled her face, she tilted her head back and smiled, as if just loving the feel of everything washing over her.