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I had thought we could manage to avoid each other once I came back. It wasn't likely, but there was a slim chance. Maybe we would only cross paths every once in a while and then our lives could go on like normal without bringing up too much from the past. I had no idea how his life might have changed in the past ten years. Mine certainly had. Through the years I had dated and finished college. The last time we had spoken had been around the time of our high school graduation...we had basically spent our entire time as adults apart from each other.
Even when my best friend Lorna had tried to tell me about what was happening back here in Ashland, I had always steered her away from any discussion about the Killarnys in general and Alex Killarny specifically. She knew that talking about them was far too painful for me. Even hearing about them in passing was more than I wanted and she had learned a long time ago to leave them out of any conversation we were having about things from the past, no matter how pertinent the Killarnys might have been to the discussion. Beyond that though, I hadn’t shared most of what had transpired between Alex and myself all those years ago with my best friend. As far as she was concerned, it was a breakup and nothing more, but still, she had never pressed.
I doubted that Alex was following me because it was quite likely he never wanted to see me again, but I rushed into my office anyway, uncertain if he even knew what I was doing back in town. Surely he would hear that I had taken over Doc Halloran's practice at some point, but word might not have made it out to their ranch yet. He would find out soon though as I noticed from the schedule Doc had left behind for me. I was due to head out to the Killarny Estate in the next week to check their mares. The place was big though, and there was a good chance I wouldn't see Alex at all while I was there.
But it was probably just as great a chance I would have to see him, and now that bandaid had been ripped off, so it was one less thing for me to worry about.
Lorna was in the front office pulling things out of boxes and setting them out on the desk that had been designated as hers. She was there helping me out until I found a full time office manager. Doc's granddaughter had been helping him out over the past few years, and he hadn't ever gotten around to hiring someone full time since his wife had retired from the practice. Now that was going to be up to me, and I would need to put ads in the paper or up around the noticeboards in town soon, but that was one thing on my to do list that I didn’t feel like focusing on at the moment.
Lorna looked up as I entered the office. “Hey…what’s up with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is everything okay?” She dropped what she was doing, and I could tell from the concerned look on her face that my regular porcelain skin must have gone a full shade whiter—a terrifying thought in itself.
“You might say that. I ran into Alex at the hardware store,” I said as I came around the other side of the counter to where her desk was and put the can of primer down.
“Oh, shit,” she said, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “I guess…well; I guess it’s a good thing it’s over with then. Now you don’t have to wonder when it will happen.”
I shook my head slowly and tried to bring myself back to the present. There was too much important work ahead for me to get my mind in a tangle over seeing a high school boyfriend. But deep down I knew that it was more than that.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lorna asked, perceiving my emotions like she always did.
“Not now, maybe later. Right now I’ve got to get this sign primed and painted and outside so that people know who the new vet is.”
The painting was slow work as I stenciled my name on the wood and filled in the lines carefully. I hadn’t done anything like this since I was a child and it felt good to be doing something a little different from the norm. I had never been very artistic, but there were a few videos and photos I had looked at online to give me the inspiration for the sign. Once the letters were done, I would let them dry before putting a protective coating over the top, sealing it from weather damage. I had no idea how long I would be at the practice, but as it was something I had worked toward my entire adult life, my immediate plans were to stay here for the long haul.
Or as long as my father needed me, which might not be very long at all. The thought sent a pang of sadness directly to my heart, and I felt tears start to build behind my eyes. No, I would wait to cry in the shower later that evening, where no one could hear me.
The doctor had told my father his heart was bad a few years before and that he would have to do what he could then if he wanted to give himself a better chance at living. The particular kind of heart failure he was experiencing wasn’t reversible, but it could be slowed down for a time, and it had been for some years. But his latest report wasn’t good, and the doctor had essentially told him there would be another heart attack. Maybe big or maybe little, but eventually another big one would come, and that would be it. The small heart attacks had done so much damage that there really wasn’t anything left to do.
When he told me about the state of things I knew what I had to do. I had been looking for a practice to take over anyway and wanted to be closer to ranches so that I would have more opportunities to work with equine herds, and I made the call to Doc Halloran. I had done a little work at his clinic when I was in high school, and he was good friends with my family, so I had known that he was getting ready to retire after a long career in the community. It had made sense that I could come back here and take over the practice, to be back home and closer to my father whenever the time came.
He didn’t require any additional care from me, but I felt better being close by. We had found a home healthcare nurse to check in on him and the status of his heart once each week to monitor how things were going and report back to his doctor. In the meantime my father went about his life as he always had, taking pride in the cattle he owned and enjoying the time he spent working with them on what little land we had left.
I dotted the ‘i’ above my first name on the sign and looked down at my work. The sage green had bene a good call, and I thought it would look good contrasted against the red brick of the office facade.
Heading back into the front of the office I saw Lorna packing up, and I thought it might be time for us to have a discussion about what had transpired that day.
"Hey, you want to come upstairs and have a glass of wine?"
She looked at me over her glasses and pushed a stray strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. "Sure. Nowhere else to be."
We headed up the stairs to the spacious apartment above the clinic, and I went to the fridge to retrieve a bottle of sauvignon blanc that had been chilling since I had first arrived at the place. Grabbing a couple of glasses from the cabinet, I opened the bottled and poured generous amounts into each and handed one of them to Lorna.
"Thanks so much for all that you've done to help me. You know I couldn't do it without you," I said with a smile as we clinked glasses and sipped the cold white wine.
"Well, I know that you would have liked it if your sister had been able to help, but since Lucy is busy with work, then I am happy to help you out as much as I can for as long as you need me." She paused and swirled her wine. "But I've got a feeling you want to talk to me about something else, right?"
I nodded. "Bingo."
It had been years since I had voluntary brought up the Killarny family in conversation. Training myself to avoid any talk of them had been pretty easy living far enough away from home that they no longer had any kind of impact on my daily life. But now that I was back in Ashland that was going to change, and I needed to confront at least some of my surface feelings about the family with my best friend.
“You remember that weekend that Alex and I broke up, right?”
She nodded and took a sip of her wine. “How could I forget? You were inconsolable for a month after and then you refused to talk about it at all.”
I sighed deeply and thought back to that time, finally opening up and explaining everything that had gone on between not only me and Alex but our respective families.
It had been not long after my mother had first fallen ill. It was degenerative and in her muscles and while there wasn’t much that could be done, there were several drug studies available for her to take part in if only we would be able to pay for the expense of getting her to the hospital three states away and keeping her there for a week each time during the course of the treatment. It was something that quickly began to add up, and there wasn’t a lot my father could do to make more money at the time. The cattle business is a market like so many things, and there were only certain times of the year when selling really worked, and the rest of the time it was more about maintaining and caring for the herd.
All that we had was the land. And so he had gone to his friend Sean Killarny, Alex’s father, about it to see if he would be willing to loan him some money for my mother’s treatments. It had hit my father’s pride very hard, and it took so much for him to go to Sean and ask for this. My mother’s illness was the only thing that could have driven him that far. He did it for her.
