“You mean like for a snack?”
I see him nod out of the corner of my eye.
“Um cereal, sandwiches, apple and peanut butter. The usual.”
His long-suffering sigh fills the cab.
“If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not hungry,” I say, echoing one of Mom’s favorite after-school mottos.
“And you’re not Mom.”
I grip the steering wheel. It’s like I’ve been punched in the throat. Mattie’s eyes in the rearview mirror are as big as sand dollars. I see her glance from me to Harry, worry etched on her sweet brow.
The light at Cajundome Boulevard turns red, and I stop. The only sound in the car is the drumming rain and the rhythmic squeegee of the windshield wipers.
I test the waters. “Harry…”
But my brother stares fixedly out the side window, jaw set, arms crossed over his chest.
He’s angry. I need to just let him be angry. I curse the stupid cold front that’s coming through because if he were at practice, he’d be working some of this off. Yeah, he’d come home hungry—ravenous even—but he’d feel better.
When I pull onto the driveway, I note Luc’s truck is gone. This shouldn’t depress me further, but it does.
“Whoa,” Mattie says as we pass the debris pile on the lawn.
“Yeah,” I say. “Brace yourselves. It looks different already.” I glance at Harry as I come to a stop in the garage to see if this elicits any reaction.
Nope. He’s out of the car and slamming the door before I even kill the engine.
Mattie takes her time gathering her backpack, purse, and lunch box. “He didn’t mean it,” she says softly.
I take a breath, wanting to tell her something reassuring. That I’m fine, and his bombshell didn’t just crush my spirits, but I’m not that good of an actor.
“I know,” I say on a sigh.
Mattie opens her door. “You coming in, Millie?”
I don’t look back at her. “In a minute. I’m going to wait out here for Emmett’s bus. I’ve got the golf umbrella.”
“Okay,” she says, slipping out of the SUV.
“Take Clarence with you, would ya?”
“Sure.” She calls the dog, and it’s only when I see the kitchen door close behind them that I let my head fall to the steering wheel.
I really, really don’t want to cry today, so I take a few sharp inhales and exhales and then dig my phone out of my purse and tap the third number on my favorites.
“Loftin Veterinary Hospital, this is Kath.” I like everyone at the clinic, the techs, Dr. Loftin and his wife Sarah, but I’ve bonded with Kathleen Morvant. We haven’t hung out beyond work, but we eat lunch together almost every day. And we talk. A lot.
“Hey, it’s Millie.”
“Hey, I thought I recognized the number,” Kath says, a smile in her friendly voice. “What are you doing calling in on your day off?”
I give a thready laugh. “Is it a day off? I think being at work would be a lot easier.”
“Ohhhh,”Kath draws out the word, her voice rising like a soap bubble. “What’s wrong?” Her ready compassion makes me smile. It was the second thing I noticed about her, how attentive and gentle she is with clients whose pets are sick or dying. The first thing I noticed was that she seemed to have a new book every day.
Kath is the first new friend I’ve made since moving back. My two best friends from vet school, Grace Stolworth and Abbie McKenna, both moved out of state when we graduated. Grace went home to Tallahassee and took a job at a clinic with a vet who’s semi-retired, and Abbie got her dream job at the St. Louis Zoo. We try to keep in touch. They know what I’m going through, but the distance makes it hard, and our lives are undeniably busy.
