Clara studies me.Her expression softens from professional curiosity into something warmer.Something like recognition.
"You love him," she says.Not a question.
The word lands in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.Ripples spreading outward.Touching everything.
"I've known him five days."
"I knew I loved Dan in three.These mountain men don't do slow burns.They do forest fires."She touches my arm."It's okay to be scared.It's okay to not have it all figured out.But if what I'm seeing in your face right now is real, don't run from it.This town has a way of giving people exactly what they need, whether they asked for it or not."
I drive back to the K9 facility at noon with Clara's words sitting in my sternum like a second heartbeat.
You love him.
It's too fast.It's too much.I'm here for three weeks, maybe longer now.I've got a federal testimony looming, a family I'm about to demolish on a witness stand, a second book I'm supposed to be writing, and a life in Vermont that I'm not sure I want to go back to.
And I'm falling for a man who trains rescue dogs as penance and can't look at water without seeing ghosts.
When I pull up to the facility, Stephen is in the training field with Koda.But he's not running drills.He's sitting on the ground with the Malinois lying beside him, and he's reading from my book.Out loud.To the dog.His hand rests on Koda's flank, moving in slow, rhythmic strokes.
Koda's eyes are half closed.
I sit in my car and watch through the windshield, and something inside me that's been wound tight since I was eighteen years old and walking out of my parents' house for the last time starts to unspool.
He's learning.He's changing.Not because I told him to.Because he looked at the evidence, acknowledged the truth, and chose differently.A man who was built on pressure and control and rigid discipline is sitting in the dirt reading about positive reinforcement to a dog who was three days from washing out of his program, and the tenderness of it cracks something open in me that I can't close again.
My phone buzzes.
Mom:
Your father says if you testify, you're not welcome home for the holidays.He says you're choosing strangers over family.
I stare at the message.Read it again.Read it a third time.
Choosing strangers over family.
I look up from the phone.Through the windshield, Stephen has noticed my car.He's standing now, one hand shading his eyes against the noon sun, and even from this distance I can see the way his body orients toward me.Like a compass finding north.
Scout whines from the passenger seat and puts her paw on my thigh.
I text back with steady hands.
Me:
I'm choosing the dogs, Mom.The same ones you chose to ignore.I'll see you in court.
I delete the message thread.Set my phone in the cupholder.Open my door.
Stephen meets me at the gate.His eyes scan my face with that precision I've stopped trying to deflect.
"What happened?"he asks.
"Family stuff."I keep walking toward the training field."Tell me about Koda's morning."
He catches my arm.Gentle.His fingers wrap around my wrist, and his thumb finds my pulse point.He holds it there, feeling my heartbeat, reading me the way I read his dogs.The way I taught him to read his dogs.
"Lydia."
"I'm fine."
