Cory emailed the bill for Nala’s checkup and Tyler promptly paid it, but I haven’t heard from him since. The puppies will need deworming soon. If he’s found a new veterinarian, he hasn’t informed me yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he simply stops calling us.
If I could afford to drop Tyler as a client and simplify both our lives, I would. But I’ve crunched the numbers, and losing that income isn’t an option if I can help it. So I go about my days while pretending nothing ever happened between us.
Calla’s brow furrows as she searches for the right answer to a problem she doesn’t fully understand. She gets all her Marie-related gossip secondhand through Jonah, but I haven’t given him the more explicit details, or how far down this gorge I’ve tumbled. Despite everything, I don’t want him hating Tyler.
I don’t hate Tyler. I won’t make excuses for how he hurt me, but my heart does ache for him, for how he still struggles. Maybe that’s foolish. But I let things move too fast and go too far with him, blinded in my attempt to catch what I was beginning to think was a fable.
For just one day, everything that I wanted seemed to be aligning.
For just one day, I truly believed I could have it all.
And yet, there’s also that voice in my head, a jaded voice that whispers what I don’t want to hear—that a woman will come along, and Tyler will make room for her in his heart, that it’s me—I’m just not meant for Tyler. Just as I wasn’t meant for Jonah.
All these years, all these mistakes I keep making, and I haven’t learned a damn thing.
“It’s okay. I’m a big girl. I’ll survive.” I offer Calla a smile that is wide and fake. Surely, she doesn’t buy it. We’ve done the whole forced pleasantries song and dance before, so we know when the other is being genuine. At least this time, our phoniness isn’t directed at each other.
“Well …” She taps her painted fingernails on my counter. “It will cost almost nothing to freshen up this place.”
“Calla,” I groan.
She continues, rushing her words. “Agnes loves to paint, and I’ll get everything from the thrift shop. In fact, I’ve already found the perfect frames for all your degrees. I’m going to spray-paint them gold to match the yellow on the website. Come on, let me do this. Please. Your clients will appreciate the change, and I think you need a change. And I need to keep myself busy. You know how summers are. Jonah’s out flying every day. And when he’s not, he’s driving me insane about the baby. This will be fun for me. I need it. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Her pleas are wearing me down if for no other reason than to serve as a suitable distraction. “It would have to be super cheap. I’m talking a few hundred bucks max.”
“It will be. I swear. This?” She gestures at the wallpaper. “This was free.”
I snort. “It was not free—”
“It was! They gave it to me.”
“They did not just give—”
“Fine. I stole it.”
She says it so deadpan, I almost believe her. My cackle of laughter echoes through the clinic.
*
I scrub the stench of latex off my hands and dry them with a paper towel before tossing it in the trash next to the surgical gloves. I’ve always hated that smell. “Holler at me when she wakes.” Cory answers with a thumbs-up, her attention on the monitor for freshly spayed Mrs. Whiskers.
I smooth my palm over the never-ending ache in my neck as I push through the door and head into the lobby, where my mother sits behind the desk, Molly on her knee.
“… we’ll see you next week. Okay, then. Okay …” Mom is attempting to end the call while angling her head and glasses away from Molly’s grasping hands. She sets the receiver on the base just as Molly shrieks with frustration. “You can’t have those! You can’t!” Mom laughs and collects her granddaughter’s hands in hers and pretends to nibble on her stubby fingers.
I smile as I watch the two of them. “You okay out here?” Vicki’s at school today, and my parents have split babysitting duty. Mom’s on watch now so my father can have his afternoon nap.
She sets her glasses on the desk. Without them on, the wrinkles around her eyes are far more noticeable. “I don’t know how I did this job while chasing you and Liz around here all those years ago. I suppose I am almost forty years older.”
Forty years older, with arthritis working its way through her joints and a slight hunch in her back. Sometimes I worry that we’re asking too much of her, even putting in just a few hours a day behind the desk. “Have you heard from Mrs. Perkins?”