Her head came up. Eyes a little wide.
"You're the best vet this town has had in thirty years."
She huffed out a breath that was half a laugh.
"You don't know that."
"I know what Caldwell did with my dog for three months. I know what you did in ten minutes. I'm not gonna let him make either one of those things a question for you."
She looked at me for a long beat. Her eyes went a little glassy at the edges, but she didn't let them tip.
"Astrid."
I reached across the table, put my hand over hers, and felt her palm turn up to meet me without her looking down to find it.
"He's not gonna do this to you," I said.
"You can't promise that."
"I'm not promising you a result. I'm promising you, you're not gonna do this part alone. You don't have to call me. You don't have to ask. I'm a hundred and twenty feet from your front door. Whatever the next move is, you've got somebody on this side of it."
She looked down at our hands. She didn't move hers.
"Okay," she said.
She ate after that. So did I.
Some of the air came back into the kitchen. Pen had fallen asleep on her side on the rug with all four feet pointed at the refrigerator. Moose stretched out alongside her, his chin on her shoulder. They breathed in time without trying.
I asked her about the contractor. She talked about the surgical light she was going back and forth on and the used autoclave she'd found outside Albany. I listened. I asked a couple of questions she answered easily, and a couple I could see herthinking through as she went. By the time she finished her chicken pot pie, she looked like a woman again instead of a woman who'd answered her door an hour ago.
I told her about the pinball machine. She laughed at the right parts, wanted to know if the flipper coil was original. She'd played pinball in college. Of course, she had. We split the cherry pie because she said I was going to want some of it, whether I knew it yet or not. She was right.
I got up and did her dishes at the sink. She came over and dried.
That was the first time we'd done that.
I clocked it, not looking up from the plate to confirm because I didn't want to make her notice it, too. Her shoulder bumped mine once when she reached past me for the dish towel. She left it there for a second. So did I. Then she stepped back.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
She'd turned her body fully toward me at the sink.
"Thank you."
"For dishes?"
"For the dishes. For dinner. For not making me say any of this twice."
I set the last plate on the rack and dried my hands on the towel she handed me.
"You don't have to thank me, Astrid."
"I wanted to."
"Alright."
